--based on Book 2 of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity-Evil exists in the world. How do we account for it?

The basic assumption here is that the world as we know it (with evil and pain) is complex and requires a complex explanation. The two most basic schools of thought
Chart created by Charlie Mooney at www.mooneytheology.blogspot.com

Flow Chart of Evil (5 views)

broad theism (god(s) exists)

atheism (no god(s) exists)

If everything is god (pantheism), this includes what we call good and evil. The two are conflated. Lewis employs the reductio ad absurdum here, revealing that, by this definition, cancer (or a slum) is neither good nor bad. This god does not take sides, because it is beyond good and evil. Any view that can't say definitively that Hitler was evil is too simple.

too simple Atheists usually will agree that there is

evil in the world, but they have no way of defining what evil is. How can we know what evil is without some good standard by which to judge it. Relativism is unable to declare anything as evil. Because it can't define evil, it is too simple to explain the complexity of the existence of evil in the world.

Pantheism

Righteous God

too simple

Simple Religion
(e.g. watered-down Christianity)

Complex Religion

too simple Dualism Biblical Christianity

too simple
Simple religion recognizes that God is supremely good (omnibenevolent) but refuses to address issues of evil, Hell, death, depravity, etc..., choosing to focus only on positive thoughts and concepts. Lewis says one form of this is watered-down Christianity. This simplicity is not satisfactory because it can't or refuses to account for the real existence of pain and evil in the world. Dualism claims that there is a supremely good power (or God) and a supremely evil power (or God), and the two oppose one another. They are equal and opposite forces. This presents a major problem: how do we know which one is good? It is a matter of preference unless there is a higher standard by which to compare them, at which point it collapses back into monistic theism. This inability to distinguish good from evil makes it unsatisfactorily too simple.

Adequate complexity
Biblical Christianity, properly understood and reasoned, explains that very real evil and pain exist but that God did not create it. Evil does not require creation, because it is not a separate entity (as in dualism). Augustine argued that evil is merely the perversion of something good. Good, therefore, can exist independent of evil, but evil cannot exist without good. Evil is a privation of evil. He writes,Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world 'made up out of His head' But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world and that God insists...on our putting them right again.

Version 1.0 (6/26/2012)