8) A Response to the Problem of Evil: is the Standard which Judges Evil Natural or Supernatural?

To escape holding to an absurd conclusion, the atheist would have to demonstrate one of the first two premise to be false (or they could demonstrate that the conclusion does not logically follow, but clearly that is not an option).  They could not deny premise (1) without thereby denying their own worldview.  If the standard exists outside the natural world, then it would exist in the supernatural.  Denial of premise (1) would prove the supernatural, and thus prove the atheist to be wrong in his convictions, since the atheist denies the supernatural. 

Can the atheist deny premise (2)?  Perhaps.  The keyword in (2) is all.  The atheist might say that not all of the natural world is being compared to the standard.  They could also say that the standard is within the part of the natural world which is not being compared to it.  Thus, the standard is not being compared to itself.  The ability of the standard to be within the natural world is saved.  But is such a contention – that not all of the natural world is being compared to a standard of good – able to be made?  Can it be amply supported by evidence?

To put this in perspective, let us consider what such a sector of the world would be like.  If there is no standard of good, it then follows that there is no evil in such a world, since evil is dependent on an objective standard of good.  Moral evil cannot exist unless there is an objective standard of moral good, etc.  I ask you to imagine such a world – where good and evil do not exist.  Difficult, isn’t it?  The fact of the matter is that humanity has never bothered to entertain such a notion, any more than they have bothered to entertain the notion that there are parts of the natural world where there are no natural laws, such as gravity and laws of thermodynamics.  Science fiction affirms our intuition that good and evil are universal – there is no part of the world where injustice, malice, and suffering could not potentially exist.  If we lived on Jupiter, there would still be murders and disease and whatnot.  Same as with any planet infinities away.  There is no good reason for us to think otherwise.

I do not necessarily say that it is impossible for there to exist a sector of the observable universe where good and evil do not exist.  But, as of now, there is no “model” for understanding how this might work, and such a notion is still juxtaposed with powerful inductive reasoning.  In short, the burden of proof is on the atheist.  We assume that good and evil are universal until we have good reason to think otherwise.  If someone came forth claiming that the law of gravity was not universal throughout nature, surely we would not believe such a person unless he presented irrefutable proof of such a conclusion.  I ask the same from the atheist.  If he wishes to deny that all of the natural world is compared to a standard of good, and thus escape (2), then he would have to bring to the table proof of this amoral swath of nature.  Until then, the conclusion that not all of the world is judged by the standard remains counterintuitive, defiant of induction, and thus invalid.

So.  We cannot deny premise (2), except by evidence which does not yet exist.  We cannot argue that the conclusion does not logically follow from the premises.  We cannot accept that the conclusion is true, since it is absurd.  It seems that we have only one option here – we must deny premise (1).  Placing the standard of good outside the natural world avoids the complication of self-comparison; the standard is here, the natural world is there, and we’re perfectly entitled to this conclusion by logic.  But this simultaneously brings us to terms with a grasping truth; the existence of evil has just proven the supernatural.  We have seen that affirming the existence of evil requires us to affirm the existence of a standard of good.  We have seen evidence that such a standard is objective rather than subjective.  We have seen that an objective standard of good cannot exist inside of the thing which it is judging, and since it is judging the natural world, it must exist apart from the natural world in the supernatural world.  Well, there’s no use denying it now.  If evil exists, there exists some objective, supernatural standard of good.