Joseph Smith and the Problem of Evil

[Calm]

44 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

All this discussion basically comes down to:

Do you trust God or not?

That is a choice we all have to individually make.

I trust that God is a loving, merciful being who knows what He is doing and that this will all be reconciled and make sense in the end.

 

I agree.  So when we start offering explanations that justify actions which implies we don’t have to trust because it’s reasonable to be this way, we err imo.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Some have progressed so far in their pre-mortal state that gaining a body is really the only thing they needed to do.

If so, then why not just die painlessly at birth.  Why the needless suffering, sometimes horrendous agony?

Edited October 21, 2025 by Calm

[ZealouslyStriving]

10 minutes ago, Calm said:

If so, then why not just die painlessly at birth.  Why the needless suffering, sometimes horrendous agony.

I don't know- but someday I will.

That is what choosing to trust God is all about.

I feel that spending inordinate amounts of my time second guessing God and being angry that He permits evil to run it's course is counterproductive.

[Calm]

6 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

I don't know- but someday I will.

That is what choosing to trust God is all about.

I feel that spending inordinate amounts of my time second guessing God and being angry that He permits evil to run it's course is counterproductive.

I agree, that is why I think giving partial explanations like ‘those who die young only needed a body’ that don’t make sense or are inconsistent in greater context often do more harm than good.

It’s like giving reasons for plural marriage we thought we knew were right, but actually didn’t have the evidence to support it, such as it was so faithful women could marry when there were fewer faithful men around.  When someone finds out the reality, it can backfire.

Edited October 21, 2025 by Calm

[ZealouslyStriving]

18 minutes ago, Calm said:

I agree, that is why I think giving partial explanations like ‘those who die young only needed a body’ that don’t make sense or are inconsistent in greater context often do more harm than good.

My musing/theory/idea somewhat meshes with Ostler's model of progression where he postulates that God and Jesus advanced in such a degree in love that they were able to organize a plan to help others come to the level they achieved. Who is to say that others didn't advance as far as them, but did to a degree more than others to where they didn't need the full experience of mortality?

Are we now pooh-poohing thought experiments in this forum?

18 minutes ago, Calm said:

It’s like giving reasons for plural marriage we thought we knew were right, but actually didn’t have the evidence to support it, such as it was so faithful women could marry when there were fewer faithful men around.  When someone finds out the reality, it can backfire.

 

[Calm]

32 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Are we now pooh-poohing thought experiments in this forum?

No, but it didn’t address the problem of evil causing suffering because even if some individual didn’t need mortality to practice agency so it was no loss to them to die young and even if we believe we can safely assume God (because we trust him) never allows someone to die before they have enough experience in agency, it does not address why God allows them to suffer so much in the process.

(You also stated it as a fact, so it wasn’t obvious you presented speculation.  It’s an error everyone makes, I probably do it countless times a day, but if we talk that way, then we should expect challenges of fact and not see it as someone saying we can’t speculate).

Edited October 22, 2025 by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

If you truly believe this, then you should go to nurseries and just kill every baby and child you see. If they die, they go to the celestial kingdom and you do more to ensure that God's children are saved than any missionary possibly could. If God wants them to not die, then He'll make sure that doesn't happen, I guess.

I think that reasoning fails if (I recognize it’s a big “if” ) one believes salvation and exaltation is a group effort, we are saved with our dead implies our dead are saved with us.  Therefore sacrificing our own salvation by becoming murderers—which must change our souls imo and not for the better since we are taught to value life in the gospel, our own as well as others even mortality is not seen as important as eternal life—is likely harmful to those we intended to save by killing them in some fashion.

I sometimes wonder given this scripture if salvation is more like a three-legged race, only with our entire family rather than one other person (and maybe that means all of humanity except those who intentionally cut the bonds and walk away, assuming that is even possible).  It benefits ourselves to help others then as much as helping ourselves and the reverse is true as well, whether we hurt ourselves or hurt others, the race towards salvation is hampered.  We may think we can somehow help others by depriving ourselves of necessities and giving them to others instead, but that just ends with us being heavy baggage they have to carry around, slowing them down more than speeding them up or increasing their endurance because they can’t abandon us and still get there.

Quote

15 And now, my dearly beloved brethren and sisters, let me assure you that these are principles in relation to the dead and the living that cannot be lightly passed over, as pertaining to our salvation. For their salvation is necessary and essential to our salvation, as Paul says concerning the fathers—that they without us cannot be made perfect—neither can we without our dead be made perfect.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/128?lang=eng

Edited October 22, 2025 by Calm

[ZealouslyStriving]

29 minutes ago, Calm said:

No, but it didn’t address the problem of evil causing suffering because even if some individual didn’t need mortality to practice agency so it was no loss to them to die young and even if we believe we can safely assume God (because we trust him) never allows someone to die before they have enough experience in agency, it does not address why God allows them to suffer so much in the process.

The question of "Why, why, why?" will, most often, never be answered in this realm- and a single-minded focus on the question often does more to embitter than anything else. Either choose to believe in the goodness of God or not. But trying to intellectually answer the question of "Why?" does little to bring peace, nor does nihilism. But really those are your options:

1) Choose to believe in a merciful, good, loving God who will make sense of all this in His time.

2) Drive yourself crazy trying to figure out "Why does God allow suffering?!"

3) Descend into atheistic nihilism.

**I prefer option one.**

 

Edited October 22, 2025 by ZealouslyStriving

[The Nehor]

10 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Some have progressed so far in their pre-mortal state that gaining a body is really the only thing they needed to do.

That is a folklore belief.

10 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

All this discussion basically comes down to:

Do you trust God or not?

I don’t. Not really.

10 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

That is a choice we all have to individually make.

It is not purely a choice. Many have little to no reason to believe God is trustworthy.

[The Nehor]

8 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

The question of "Why, why, why?" will, most often, never be answered in this realm- and a single-minded focus on the question often does more to embitter than anything else. Either choose to believe in the goodness of God or not. But trying to intellectually answer the question of "Why?" does little to bring peace, nor does nihilism. But really those are your options:

1) Choose to believe in a merciful, good, loving God who will make sense of all this in His time.

2) Drive yourself crazy trying to figure out "Why does God allow suffering?!"

3) Descend into atheistic nihilism.

**I prefer option one.**

 

I want to know which option brings me closer to understanding reality and not which one might make me feel better. If I was choosing a belief on how it made me feel there are far happier options to pick from.

Also nihilism is not always atheistic nor is it always despair. It can be. Then again a belief in a divine judgement can lead to despair too. So can a belief in reincarnation or that you will die and go to Sheol.

[Benjamin McGuire]

15 hours ago, JVW said:

I think moral agency is defined within a scope or boundary that God sets. Every breath we take is a gift from God and He can stop giving us that gift at any second of any day. With some He stops breathing in them when they are a baby, and with others they are over 100 years old. The fact that our breathing is only possible via God's power (which is something that I believe) means that the agency I exercise is only able to be exercised as long as God feels like letting me exercise it. When I also consider all of the things that have happened to me in my life that were out of my control and shaped who I was (Chris Williams comes to mind as an example. He lost his pregnant wife and a few children when he was hit by a drunk driver) I can see that the choices I'm presented with are influenced, in large part, by a reality that is outside of my control.

I have been thinking about this thread for a bit.

I don't agree with Paulsen much on this question. I haven't agreed with him for years. There are a couple of things that I think are important.

(1) It is hard to have a discussion about "the problem of evil" without defining evil.

(2) There is a strangeness (at least for me) in going to the King Follett Discourse when we discuss Joseph Smith and the problem of evil. I have several reasons for saying this - but perhaps the most important two are these - 1) the KFD shows no indication that Joseph Smith was trying to address the problem of evil, and 2) had Joseph Smith lived more than three months after giving it, he would almost certainly have changed some of the ideas that he presents in this sermon. The KFD is a glimpse into a process of thought, and it isn't some sort of finished product.

(3) In contrast, the Book of Mormon provides us with texts that are very much interested in the problem of evil, and provide very different solutions to that problem than what Paulsen reads into the KFD.

(3A) The Book of Mormon argues that evil is necessary.

(3B) The Book of Mormon also argues that agency (especially moral agency) is very limited - there is no such thing as absolute agency (moral or otherwise). There are whole classes of people, the Book of Mormon suggests, who have no moral agency.

(3C) Consequently, the Book of Mormon argues, we are only held culpable when we actually exercise agency (which means, of course, that some with no agency have no consequences for their actions).

And here we run into our first set of problems - problems that require us to define evil. Why? Because of 3A. Any definition which links the notion of evil to God creates a circular argument. Paulsen writes this:

Quote

The ancient philosopher Epicurus framed the contradiction in the form of a logical dilemma: Either God is unwilling to prevent evil or He is unable. If He is unwilling, then He cannot be perfectly good; if He is unable, then He cannot be all powerful. Whence then evil?

But the Book of Mormon (specifically Lehi) argues something entirely different - and these are arguments that find their way into broader Mormon thought - including Joseph Smith. The whole premise of the pre-existent war in heaven is the argument that (4) God could prevent evil. We see this in Moses 4:1 -

Quote

And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.

And yet, this idea, of creating a world of all good (of preventing evil) was itself evil - as 2 Nephi 2:17 points out:

Quote

And I, Lehi, according to the things which I have read, must needs suppose that an angel of God, according to that which is written, had fallen from heaven; wherefore, he became a devil, having sought that which was evil before God.

So God could (at least in theory) create a world without evil. But the desire to do this is also evil. The argument becomes problematic because instead of confronting the traditional question of the problem of evil, the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith make an entirely different argument - that good and evil should be determined not by the moral or ethical dimensions of a specific act in context but by the relationship of that act to God's purposes. God's purposes include the notion that what we traditionally define as evil (on ethical and moral grounds) is a necessity - and that acting in an unethical or immoral way is only subject to accountability when the individual has sufficient agency to make a moral or ethical choice. Further, the Book of Mormon suggests that many of our choices are sufficiently influenced by our mortal condition as to remove that element of agency (2 Nephi 2:27).

The King Follett Discourse can be read in line with this thinking. And so it is difficult for me to accept Paulsen's perspective that Joseph Smith answers the problem of evil. I don't think that Joseph Smith even attempts to answer that problem. Joseph's assertion is that the traditional understanding of evil is necessary: the fall is necessary, the veil of forgetfulness is necessary, the conditions of the mortal body - "the flesh" is necessary, suffering is necessary, and so on. The Book of Mormon goes on to provide specific examples in various contexts. The death of Laban is one such example. Even more important is the necessity of the suffering of Jesus. The example of Jesus is even more telling in the Book of Mormon, which, in Alma 7:12 points to the necessity that the Messiah had to experience suffering:

Quote

And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.

This is a natural extension of Lehi's opposition in all things. Only by experiencing suffering does the Messiah become capable of completing the necessary sacrifice and subsequent judgment. It is necessary that Jesus experience this traditional evil. Again, the Book of Mormon turns this traditional view of evil on its head. For Joseph Smith, the effect is that the problem of evil is asking the wrong questions. It is the desire to have no suffering that becomes evil. At any rate, I have beat this horse half to death.

There is a final thing that has to be said in all of this. None of this really replaces our own understanding of ethics and morality. Paulsen says something that I find interesting: "All of us have struggled, or likely will struggle, in a very personal way with the problem of evil." I think that very few of us do what should come next, which is to discover for ourselves the meaning of ethics or morality and to produce our own ethical and moral code. There is a real risk in our lives of asserting that people deserve to suffer. When our actions cause suffering, we are the ones who may be held accountable for that suffering. And this is especially true when we do so deliberately. It is just as true that if we allow others to suffer when we could alleviate that suffering we may also be held accountable. I think that on judgment day, there will be many who will be shocked that the actions (or non-actions) that they took which they felt were in line with some "higher principle" yet resulted in suffering or the continuation of suffering will be accounted to them as evil.

[Nofear]

Setting aside for me the moment what evil is (plenty of discussion on thoughtful-faith.com 1.6), my perspective is more from the physics side of things (e.g. determinism). While not everybody accepts Galen Strawson's Basic Argument, I personally tend to find their objections inadequate.

The Basic Argument is as follows:

1. You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.
2. To be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are—at least in certain crucial mental respects.
3. But you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.
4. So you cannot be ultimately responsible for what you do

Creatio ex nihilo cleanly falls afoul of this argument. The common rebuttal is that God gave Adam and Eve free will and they chose to take the "apple". Their choice, not God's. The simple answer to that is why didn't got (in his infinite foreknowledge) simply create them with the character and personality such that they would have freely chosen to rebuff Satan's temptations. There is no reasonable response to that. And by extension, all the other problems associated with humans choosing evil.

LDS theology, however, provides a clean escape from The Basic Argument. It's been over two decades since I read Paulsen's argument (and he doesn't bring up Strawson) but if I recall correctly, he does point out that escape hatch.

 

 

Edited October 22, 2025 by Nofear

[the narrator]

15 hours ago, Calm said:

I think you misunderstood.

I did. Sorry. Thanks for clarifying things for me, though I should have read your reply more closely.

[the narrator]

15 hours ago, Calm said:

If so, then why not just die painlessly at birth.  Why the needless suffering, sometimes horrendous agony?

This is what I have to ask  for Jesus in much of contemporary Mormonism, where his death seems to be the only thing ever discussed anymore, with his mortal ministry an "auxiliary" thing that seems to be increasingly ignored (except where he is interpreted to be speaking in relation to his death).

[the narrator]

15 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

I feel that spending inordinate amounts of my time second guessing God and being angry that He permits evil to run it's course is counterproductive.

This is precisely why I have argued elsewhere that most responses to the problem of evil are actually defending the existence of evil rather than the existence of God. If one decides to forego critical thought and instead fully embrace a shallow and simplistic view of God in relation to the world, then the need to counter and prevent evil becomes an unnecessary labor.

[the narrator]

14 hours ago, Calm said:

I think that reasoning fails if (I recognize it’s a big “if” ) one believes salvation and exaltation is a group effort, we are saved with our dead implies our dead are saved with us.  Therefore sacrificing our own salvation by becoming murderers—which must change our souls imo and not for the better since we are taught to value life in the gospel, our own as well as others even mortality is not seen as important as eternal life—is likely harmful to those we intended to save by killing them in some fashion.

I sometimes wonder given this scripture if salvation is more like a three-legged race, only with our entire family rather than one other person (and maybe that means all of humanity except those who intentionally cut the bonds and walk away, assuming that is even possible).  It benefits ourselves to help others then as much as helping ourselves and the reverse is true as well, whether we hurt ourselves or hurt others, the race towards salvation is hampered.  We may think we can somehow help others by depriving ourselves of necessities and giving them to others instead, but that just ends with us being heavy baggage they have to carry around, slowing them down more than speeding them up or increasing their endurance because they can’t abandon us and still get there.

Fully agree with you here, at least in how Joseph Smith proposed salvation as a communal project rather than an individual one.  Unfortunately though, this view of salvation was abandoned long ago in contemporary Mormonism, which has largely adopted a protestant soteriology of individual salvation (with a nuclear family twist).

[Teancum]

22 hours ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Welp, I hope you're not too defiant in your review!  (AutoComplete or AutoCorrect strikes again? )  That would definitely be a problem.  

Sorry.    Couldn't resist!   We now return you to your regularly-scheduled on-topic programming, already in progress.  

Ha!  You always catch my frequent typos.

[Teancum]

22 hours ago, teddyaware said:

The fact that through the atonement of Jesus Christ nearly all of mankind will receive a glorious physically and spiritually healing resurrection, and thereafter obtain a sure inheritance in one of the Father’s heavenly mansion’s of glory, where they will receive joy and a very real deliverance from the transitory effects of evil, any of apparent philosophical loose ends that uninspired men continue to wrestle with as they confront the  so-called problem of evil will be dispelled and banished forever. Since all will eventually be saved and redeemed (the only exception being that class of men who utterly refuse to receive Christ’s forgiveness and be saved) our experience in coming face to face with evil is going to end marvelously and miraculously well. In the end, the divine laws of justice and mercy are going to be fully satisfied, and consequently there will be none remaining who will rightly be able to protest that they are yet the victims of unresolved injustices. In the end everything is going to wonderfully work out for the best, with truth, the sum total of existence, remaining eternal and unchanged forever more.

I know that there are many who will say that these scripturally based answers are too pat and facile to take seriously because there are some who take a certain measure of perverse handwringing “joy” by being forever perplexed and troubled, shunning simple and reasonable answers to life’s great questions. I suppose it’s like finally catching that proverbial big fish and instantly wanting to throw in back into the lake.

Well that is a nice sermon and certainly wishful thinking. 

[Teancum]

20 hours ago, the narrator said:

Because if God can split the Red Sea, raise the dead, cause soaking bushels of wood on fire, send bears to kill children for mocking a balding prophet, kill every first born son in a region, turn water into wine just to please Mary, feed thousands with just a little bit of food, cure leprosy, STOP THE SUN FROM MOVING, help people find their car keys, etc., then He should be able to prevent a young child from being brutally raped and murdered.

The claim that Paulsen and others make that God doesn't stop children from dying of malnutrition because he is not all powerful falls pretty flat if you also accept that Jesus turned water into wine to not ruin the fun for wedding guests.

It is amazing how after the advent of the modern camara how miracles suddenly pretty much stopped happening.

[Teancum]

22 hours ago, JVW said:

I think moral agency is defined within a scope or boundary that God sets. Every breath we take is a gift from God and He can stop giving us that gift at any second of any day. With some He stops breathing in them when they are a baby, and with others they are over 100 years old. The fact that our breathing is only possible via God's power (which is something that I believe) means that the agency I exercise is only able to be exercised as long as God feels like letting me exercise it. When I also consider all of the things that have happened to me in my life that were out of my control and shaped who I was (Chris Williams comes to mind as an example. He lost his pregnant wife and a few children when he was hit by a drunk driver) I can see that the choices I'm presented with are influenced, in large part, by a reality that is outside of my control.

I think your idea that breath is a gift from God that he can stop giving any second of the day is nonsense and it conflicts with your belief in agency as well as the idea that God won't interfere with anyone's agency. If God can stop you from exercising your agency at any time God feels like it then you really do not have much agency.

[the narrator]

2 hours ago, Teancum said:

It is amazing how after the advent of the modern camara how miracles suddenly pretty much stopped happening.

John Hick's notion of epistemic distance is another apologetic response that LDS theologians have latched onto, but that still leaves the problem of miracles alive and begs the question of why God didn't seem to care about keeping himself hidden in biblical times. 

[Teancum]

22 hours ago, JVW said:

I agree with you and I think we all have an impetus to act to reduce the suffering in the world. However, we are not God, our vision is not His vision. You or I may think that the best thing in life is getting a good job, a good house, raising a few kids, fighting for social justice, advancing scientific knowledge, etc. But to God those may be (IDK) things that make it more difficult to do His job. I learned back in 2011 that I'm a very poor judge of determining what is good and bad in my life. But I do believe that it is good to act with integrity and if something is wrong to do whatever it takes to make it right.

I'm not purporting to know what the mind of God is, but my current best guess is that His primary concern is all of us coming to Christ for salvation and redemption. In the scriptures I read about how God is in all things and that all things testify of Christ. It's as if God designed the entire universe from the quantum to the astrological realm to communicate one thing: the reality and divinity of Jesus Christ.

Your entire post and theories actually seem to show that you think yo do know the mind of God. 

[Teancum]

21 hours ago, the narrator said:

If you believe that the Holocaust, Palestinian genocide, children dying of malnutrition by the thousands across the globe, malaria, thousands of children being abused each day resulting in trauma that harms them for the rest of their lives, countless rapes, murders, etc. are all for the greater good... then I have nothing to say.

Exactly.

[Teancum]

20 hours ago, Calm said:

Those are man made evils, evil intent is involved, intentional removal of others’ agency and therefore are not seen by me as answered by the argument I used for natural disasters (and even there that pushes the boundaries for me).

Added: I said “not acting for the greater good”

So with man made evil, say those who murdered Jews during the Holocaust, when the victim is murdered they lose their agency. So if agency in regards to human afflicted atrocities, whose agency wins out? The perpetrator's or the victim's?

[Teancum]

20 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I don’t find the idea that a lot of evil comes from the decisions of humans convincing. We were put in a world that fosters this kind of competition and predation on each other. It is baked into the system. If God created the world he was okay with the suffering we would inflict on each other since the environment and our own nature actively encourages it. It is like putting three rats into a cage with only enough food for two to eat enough to survive and enough for one to eat their fill and then tutting them as bad for getting violent about it.

Such a grand and wonderful plan....😕