[pmoriarty]

"If you can get to the understanding that all of the outcomes in human thought and behavior are based on inputs of some level, be they genetic, or nurture, or through interaction with others or impacts from the natural environment, then it seem truly odd to believe in a concept like evil."

Again, this doesn't explain at all why there is suffering caused by natural forces like hurricanes, earthquakes, and diseases.. and such sources of suffering are (along with human-caused ones) central to the Problem of Evil.[1]

But even were we to only focus on human beings, and even were we to grant for the sake of argument that we have no free will, then there's still the question of why we are the way we are.. if the answer is evolution and the physical laws of the universe and the history of the universe, then why is it all the way it is?

To theists the answer is "god". But why did god (a perfectly good, all-powerful, and all-knowing god) choose to make it that way... a way that entailed a lot of (or even any) suffering?

That's The Problem of Evil.

It's really a theological and philosophical question having to do with why the world is imperfect and yet supposedly the product of a perfectly god.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27801917

[alex_young]

I think I understand the argument well, but I don’t see that there is much room for an ‘evil’ upon we could all agree given the observational reality we find ourselves in.

Leaving aside the religious matter of a higher power, I think it’s safe to say that evil in the general context means something more than merely undesirable; perhaps intrinsically wrong from all possible rational observers or something like that.

Finding that biological systems have desirable or undesirable situations and that they having higher order communication systems can agree on a set of shared undesirable outcomes still doesn’t quite get to that concept of evil does it? If not, then I think we can agree that hurricanes are bad for us in general, but not exactly evil unless there is some unobservable force acting upon us which sounds a bit like magic to me.

[pmoriarty]

While the technical term in philosophy is "The Problem of Evil", it's really more about suffering and imperfection than it is about the loaded term "evil" as such.

It can be reduced to the general question "if god is perfect, why is the world imperfect?"

Or, to narrow the question a bit while still avoiding the use of the word "evil", we can ask "if god is omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent, why does suffering exist?"

We can agree that hurricanes, earthquakes, other natural disasters and diseases cause suffering, without getting in to the question of whether they're "evil" per se.

Such non-human causes of suffering don't seem to be necessary in a world created by an all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly benevolent god.. yet they still exist. Why?

Couldn't such a perfect god have created a world without all this suffering?