The credibility of some of the various defences against this problem of evil will be examined in the following paragraphs. But first, what is evil? The commonly adopted definition of evil consist of two sub-classes, physical evil and moral evil. Physical evils consist of diseases, pain, natural disasters such as earthquakes, famines et cetera. The problem of evil here is quite straight forward, why would a morally perfect God inflict such suffering on human kind if he had the power to prevent it. Moral evil, on the other hand, is the human capacity to perform evil actions. The question here is why would an omnipotent God allow humans to be capable of such deeds.

One of the theists' reply to the problem is the means-ends defence which claims that evil

The problems with this defence range from the non-selective nature of some forms of punishment (earthquakes), to the question of whether the means (of justified ends) themselves require justification. But here, I shall touch on another problem: the speciesistic nature of the argument. The world which God created does not consist of the human kind alone. There are innumerable alternate forms of life in the world. Most of these animals do not have the ability to understand or to heed warnings. Less-complex life-forms do not even have the capacity to learn from punishment. Yet all life can and will experience death. Animals (and some plants) have sensory systems that are capable of experiencing pain. Mammals and other higher-order animals have limbic systems with which to feel emotions such as stress and fear. Quite clearly all life forms are subjected to some sort of physical evil. The question is why? Why should these living things be cursed with the damnation of suffering when they are not even capable of making moral judgments? Were these billions and trillions of other forms of life simply denied the goodness and benevolence of the morally perfect being? The point here is that since all life-forms experiences suffering, the justification of evil must remain logically applicable to all sentience beings. The means-ends explanation fails thoroughly in this aspect.

Another form of defence against the problem of evil is the argument that good logically requires evil. Since evil is logically required by good and God, being a morally perfect being, wants to create good and as a result, evil's existence is justified. There are two levels of this argument, general and specific, both of which have problems of their own when taken individually; but here I would like to deal with a problem that, I believe, undermines both forms of this solution: the problem of good. The notion of good is fundamental in the theists' justification of evil. But just exactly what is good? Compassion, altruism, love, selflessness, and kindness, these are some of the second order goods which theists claim justifies first order evils. Let us now take a closer look at these goods from the light of evolutionary psychology.

The organic whole solution is one

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Approximate Word count = 1510
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)