Why Has God Allowed Evil to Occur Throughout History?
Human beings have prayed during wars and watched the wars continue.
They have prayed during genocides, famines, epidemics, slavery, massacres, rape, torture, persecution, earthquakes, and the deaths of children. Sometimes rescue came. Sometimes nothing discernible happened.
For anyone who believes in a God who is simultaneously good, powerful, and aware of human suffering, this creates one of the oldest and most difficult problems in philosophy:
Why does evil happen at all?
The difficulty becomes sharper when we stop discussing evil abstractly and look at history. Human history contains suffering on a scale that makes simple religious answers uncomfortable.
Perhaps the most intellectually responsible starting point is therefore not to defend God, nor to prosecute God, but to admit:
We do not know why reality permits so much suffering.
What we can do is examine the possibilities.
I. The Problem of Evil
The classical problem can be expressed simply.
Suppose:
God knows when terrible suffering occurs.
God possesses the power to prevent it.
God is perfectly good.
Terrible and apparently unnecessary suffering nevertheless occurs.
How can all four propositions be true simultaneously?
The philosopher Epicurus is traditionally associated with an early formulation of this dilemma, while later philosophers developed much more sophisticated versions of it.
The problem becomes especially severe when considering suffering that seems to accomplish nothing.
A child dying painfully does not obviously become morally improved by dying.
An animal trapped in a forest fire has exercised no morally significant free choice.
Victims of genocide did not require genocide in order for their perpetrators to possess meaningful freedom.
So the question is not merely:
Why does evil exist?
It is also:
Why does apparently excessive, indiscriminate and pointless suffering exist?
II. The Free-Will Defence
One of the strongest traditional responses says that God created beings capable of genuine choice.
If humans are genuinely free, they must be capable of choosing badly.
A universe in which murder is literally impossible might also be a universe in which certain forms of moral agency are impossible. Courage, forgiveness, loyalty and sacrifice acquire some of their meaning because betrayal, cowardice and cruelty are possible alternatives.
Under this interpretation, God does not cause murder merely because God permits a murderer to possess agency.
The responsibility belongs to the murderer.
This explains at least some human evil.
But free will does not solve everything.
It does not obviously explain earthquakes.
It does not explain childhood cancer.
It does not explain parasites that evolved before human civilisation.
And even regarding human evil, another question remains:
Why couldn’t God preserve freedom while preventing its most catastrophic consequences?
A parent can allow a child considerable freedom while still preventing the child from killing another person.
Why could an omnipotent God not do something analogous?
The free-will defence therefore offers a possible explanation for some evil without necessarily explaining the historical magnitude of suffering.
III. Perhaps God Does Not Constantly Intervene
Another possibility is that the universe operates according to stable laws rather than continuous divine micromanagement.
Gravity does not ask whether the person falling from a building is innocent.
Fire burns saints and criminals alike.
Viruses reproduce according to biology rather than moral deservingness.
Tectonic plates move without consulting the ethical character of the cities above them.
There is something valuable about this regularity. Science itself depends upon nature behaving consistently.
Imagine instead a universe where bullets magically stopped whenever aimed at innocent people, oceans became solid whenever someone was drowning, malignant cells disappeared whenever their host was virtuous, and gravity temporarily ceased whenever someone fell accidentally.
Such a universe might contain less suffering.
But it would also be radically different from the intelligible physical universe we inhabit.
Perhaps creation possesses genuine autonomy.
God establishes reality, but reality is allowed to unfold.
This resembles certain forms of deism, process theology and other non-interventionist conceptions of divinity more than the popular image of God personally orchestrating every event.
It raises another disturbing possibility:
Perhaps many events attributed to “God’s plan” were never individually planned at all.
IV. The Soul-Making Argument
Another ancient response proposes that adversity makes possible certain forms of moral development.
A world without difficulty could never produce courage because nothing would require courage.
Without vulnerability, compassion would have little function.
Without uncertainty, trust would mean something different.
Without suffering, humans might never develop medicine, humanitarianism, law or institutions devoted to protecting one another.
This is sometimes called a soul-making theodicy.
There is clearly some truth in the observation that suffering can transform people.
But a crucial distinction must be preserved:
Good can emerge from suffering without suffering therefore becoming good.
A survivor becoming compassionate does not retroactively justify the abuse.
Medicine emerging because disease exists does not make disease benevolent.
Human beings frequently create meaning despite catastrophe.
Calling every atrocity a divine lesson risks transforming the suffering of victims into teaching material for everyone else.
Some suffering builds character.
Some suffering destroys people.
Any serious theology must acknowledge both.
V. Evil May Be Emergent Rather Than Created
There is another possibility.
Perhaps God did not create “evil” as though evil were a substance.
What we call evil may emerge whenever beings capable of desire, competition, fear and power interact.
Evolution produces organisms concerned with survival.
Human beings inherit aggression, tribalism, status competition, sexual desire, fear and territoriality.
Civilisation then gives these ancient impulses increasingly powerful technologies.
A frightened primate can throw a stone.
A frightened civilisation can launch a nuclear weapon.
Under this interpretation, much historical evil results from combinations of:
biology + scarcity + hierarchy + ideology + technology + human choice.
No supernatural evil force is required.
Human beings themselves are capable of producing astonishing cruelty once institutions reward obedience, dehumanisation or domination.
This interpretation shifts the practical question from:
Why didn’t God stop us?
toward:
Why haven’t we built institutions capable of stopping ourselves?
VI. What About Satan, Demons and Evil Gods?
Many religions solve the problem partly by introducing adversarial supernatural beings.
Satan.
Māra.
Demons.
Malevolent spirits.
Cosmic forces of disorder.
These figures can symbolically represent something psychologically profound: human beings experience evil as though something has taken possession of ordinary moral reasoning.
But introducing another supernatural being does not completely solve the philosophical problem.
If God is omnipotent, why can Satan operate?
If an evil deity causes suffering, why can a good deity not stop it?
The problem has merely moved one level upward.
Dualistic religions sometimes avoid this difficulty by imagining good and evil as genuinely competing cosmic powers.
But classical monotheism cannot easily do this because nothing can ultimately rival an omnipotent God.
VII. Perhaps Our Definition of God Is Wrong
The problem of evil becomes particularly severe because of a particular definition:
God is omnipotent + omniscient + perfectly benevolent + personally interventionist.
Change one property and the logical landscape changes dramatically.
Perhaps God is powerful but not omnipotent.
Perhaps God influences rather than controls reality.
Perhaps God created the universe but rarely intervenes.
Perhaps God is identical with existence itself rather than a supernatural person governing existence.
Perhaps consciousness participates in something divine without that divinity functioning as cosmic government.
Perhaps God is not “someone” deciding whether earthquakes happen.
Pantheism, deism, panentheism, process theology and various mystical traditions each alter the problem by altering what the word God means.
Under pantheism, for example, asking why God “allowed” an earthquake may be conceptually mistaken.
If God means ultimate reality itself, there may be no external ruler sitting outside reality deciding which events to authorise.
VIII. The Most Disturbing Possibility: There Is No Intervention
There is also the possibility that atheistic philosophers have emphasized:
Perhaps suffering occurs because there is simply no supernatural protector preventing it.
The universe may be morally indifferent.
Stars explode.
Species disappear.
Predators consume prey.
Diseases evolve.
Humans sometimes protect one another and sometimes slaughter one another.
Nature provides no obvious guarantee that goodness will triumph.
This hypothesis has an uncomfortable explanatory simplicity.
If no interventionist God exists, then God’s apparent absence during atrocities requires no explanation.
But atheism generates its own existential questions.
If the universe provides no ultimate moral authority, human beings must determine how morality, dignity, justice and meaning can be grounded and defended.
For many humanists, that is not a defect.
It is a responsibility.
IX. Perhaps God Is Not the Explanation but the Question
There is another way of approaching the matter.
Perhaps religions made a mistake when they tried to explain every event through divine intention.
“This happened because God wanted it.”
“This tragedy was part of God’s plan.”
“You suffered because you needed to learn something.”
Such statements frequently claim knowledge nobody possesses.
We usually do not know why a particular tragedy happened in any cosmic sense.
Sometimes we know perfectly well why it happened in the ordinary sense.
A dictator ordered it.
A soldier fired.
An institution concealed abuse.
A government failed.
A disease spread.
A building collapsed.
Someone drove drunk.
Sometimes replacing these explanations with “God’s plan” actually obscures human responsibility.
X. History Changes the Question
Consider what humanity eventually did about many ancient sources of suffering.
We developed vaccines.
We created antibiotics.
We built sewage systems.
We abolished many forms of legal slavery.
We developed international human-rights frameworks.
We invented anaesthesia.
We constructed earthquake-resistant buildings.
We developed emergency medicine.
We prosecuted some war criminals.
We created shelters for abused people.
We established laws against rape, torture and murder.
None of these systems is perfect.
But they reveal something important.
When humans encounter suffering, our greatest moral achievements usually come not from explaining why suffering was permitted but from preventing it from happening again.
Perhaps that is the more useful response to the problem of evil.
XI. Don’t Explain the Screaming Child—Help the Child
Imagine encountering a suffering child.
One person says:
“This must be God’s plan.”
Another says:
“This suffering will strengthen their soul.”
Another says:
“It is karma.”
Another says:
“Satan caused it.”
Another says:
“There cannot be a God.”
And another person simply kneels beside the child and asks:
“What do you need?”
Whatever the ultimate metaphysics of existence turns out to be, the final person has understood something morally essential.
The existence of suffering creates an obligation before it creates a philosophical puzzle.
Feed the hungry.
Protect the threatened.
Treat the sick.
Rescue the abused.
Stop the perpetrator.
Build institutions that make repetition harder.
Investigate what happened.
Tell the truth.
Then philosophers and theologians can debate eternity.
XII. Perhaps Humanity Has Been Waiting for the Wrong Miracle
For thousands of years humans have asked:
Why doesn’t God stop evil?
There is another question worth asking:
Why don’t we?
Not because humanity possesses unlimited power.
We clearly do not.
But a remarkable proportion of historical suffering has been caused, amplified or tolerated by human institutions.
Wars are organised by humans.
Slavery was institutionalised by humans.
Propaganda is produced by humans.
Abusive hierarchies are maintained by humans.
And those institutions can also be dismantled by humans.
Perhaps the theological mystery of evil should never become an excuse for political, technological or moral passivity.
Whether God exists or not, the ambulance still needs to arrive.
The court still needs to function.
The medicine still needs to work.
The threatened person still needs somewhere safe to go.
The truth still needs evidence.
XIII. Three Possibilities Remain
After thousands of years of theology and philosophy, at least three broad possibilities remain intellectually open.
God exists and has reasons we do not understand.
This preserves classical faith but accepts enormous epistemic humility.
God exists, but humans have misunderstood God’s nature.
God may not be an interventionist supernatural ruler controlling individual events. Divinity might instead concern consciousness, existence, creativity, moral possibility or reality itself.
There is no God governing history.
Humanity inhabits a natural universe and bears responsibility for creating whatever justice exists within it.
There are sophisticated philosophical arguments for and against each position.
History has not conclusively settled the metaphysical question.
But history has demonstrated something else with considerably greater clarity:
Waiting for supernatural intervention is not a substitute for human action.
Conclusion: From Theodicy to Responsibility
The problem of evil may never receive an answer capable of satisfying someone standing beside a mass grave.
Perhaps no answer should.
Some suffering is too enormous to be converted comfortably into theology.
If God exists, humanity can still oppose evil.
If God does not exist, humanity must oppose evil.
If God is nature itself, conscious beings remain part of nature capable of reducing suffering within it.
If there is an afterlife, justice here still matters.
If there is no afterlife, justice here matters even more urgently.
So perhaps the mature response to the problem of evil is not:
“Everything happens for a reason.”
It is:
“Whatever the reason, unnecessary suffering should not be allowed to continue.”
The greatest answer humanity can give to historical evil may therefore not be an explanation of God’s silence.
It may be the construction of a civilisation in which fewer people ever have reason to ask why nobody came to save them.
The question begins with God.
The responsibility returns to us.
So would you say that most evil that has occurred in history has happened because of human beings instead of god?
Yes—with an important distinction.
If by evil we mean morally wrongful acts—genocide, slavery, rape, torture, persecution, exploitation, deliberate warfare, abuse—then the direct causes we can historically investigate are overwhelmingly human beings, human institutions, and human decisions. We have evidence for rulers issuing orders, armies carrying them out, institutions enabling abuse, and populations resisting or participating. We don’t need to posit divine causation to explain those events.
Natural suffering is different. Earthquakes, cancers, epidemics, congenital diseases, predation, and floods aren’t normally considered morally evil in themselves because they aren’t moral agents making choices. Philosophers often call this natural evil or, more neutrally, natural suffering.
The unresolved theological question is one level higher: if an omnipotent and benevolent God exists, why permit humans to cause such enormous suffering? That’s the problem of evil. Saying “humans committed the atrocities” identifies the proximate cause; it doesn’t by itself resolve why God would permit them.
So I would distinguish:
Who demonstrably committed much of history’s moral evil? → Humans.
Did God cause, permit, or have reasons for allowing it? → That’s a metaphysical claim history alone cannot establish.
And this distinction matters: attributing a human atrocity to “God’s will” can obscure the responsibility of the people who actually chose, ordered, enabled, or committed it.
