8. The Evidence of Evil
Chapter Eight
The Evidence of Evil
Can God and Evil Coexist?
Jackie Corbin was eight years old in 1980 when she was kidnapped on the street in front of her home. Her parents were cooking Christmas dinner. They didn’t see what happened to her, and she couldn’t hear their calls as they desperately searched for her into the evening hours.
Two days later, officers discovered her body lying in a field north of Los Angeles County. The crime was horrific, and it shocked our community. Nothing like it had ever happened in our city, and the murder mobilized everyone in our police department. Over four hundred leads were developed in the first two weeks, and dozens of detectives worked the investigation feverishly. A suspect, Francis Denny, was ultimately arrested.
Denny was twenty-two years old at the time—a seemingly distant (and often quiet) loner, but acquainted with Jackie’s family. He’d been seen in the area of the crime, and several family members suspected him. The first detectives on the case were convinced Denny was the killer and began to assemble a case against him.
Denny was sometimes disconnected and dispassionate in his interviews, and this led detectives to believe he was hiding something. When they told him the gruesome details of Jackie’s death, Denny seemed unconcerned. Over one thousand pages of transcripts were written from those interviews, and to this day they contain the most disturbing crime scene descriptions I’ve ever read.
It’s difficult to comprehend how anyone could respond so calmly to these descriptions, and I can understand why investigators suspected Denny, given his apparently uncaring responses. But as it turned out, Francis Denny didn’t commit the crime for which he was accused. Prior to taking him to trial, and sixteen months after the crime was committed, detectives eliminated him as a suspect with two forms of exculpatory evidence (see sidebar).
First, detectives discovered a witness who said Denny told her he was attending a movie on the day of the murder. That would make him unavailable for the crime. This testimony didn’t deter the investigators immediately; after all, Denny could have been lying to his friend about the movie to provide an alibi, and detectives were unable to verify Denny’s attendance. This first piece of exculpatory evidence—Denny’s alleged alibi—could be interpreted in two different ways: as evidence eliminating him from the case, or simply as behavior consistent with his nature as a young man needing an alibi.
Cold-Case Approach:
But a more important piece of exculpatory evidence emerged as the crime lab slowly examined the evidence from Jackie’s body. Denny failed to match the biological evidence detectives recovered. Forensic DNA comparisons were still unavailable to us at the time, but Denny was ultimately excluded with the blood evidence we had at our disposal (even though it was relatively primitive and took months to examine). By the time we eliminated Denny, over a year had passed and the trail to the real killer was cluttered and cold. The murder of Jackie Corbin is still an open, unsolved case.
In the many years I’ve investigated murders such as these, I’ve struggled to remain empathetic and compassionate. It’s tempting to become calloused to such events as a defense mechanism. I was an atheist and this kind of crime was consistent with my worldview.1 Stuff happens, and there’s no point in trying to make any sense of it. Bad things happen to good people, and bad people often get away with murder. The universe isn’t paying attention to the suffering and actions of insignificant beings such as ourselves.
But my perspective toward evil began to change when I first became seriously interested in the evidence “inside the room” of the universe and how it pointed to the possible existence of a Divine Intruder. As the evidence began to point to a benevolent Creator, I initially suspected the stubborn presence of evil and injustice would ultimately eliminate such a Being as a reasonable suspect. It wouldn’t be the first time exculpatory evidence eliminated someone I thought was a good candidate: Denny was eliminated on the basis of such evidence. I needed to know if evil was like Denny’s story about the movie (something I could reconcile with the nature of my suspect) or like the biological evidence at Jackie’s death scene (something eliminating my suspect altogether).
The Evidence “In the Room”:
THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL AND INJUSTICE
Perhaps the most obvious and pervasive reality of the universe is the existence of evil and injustice.2 Most of us, even as casual investigators, have had personal contact with this form of evidence. If we are prepared to look “outside the room” of the universe for a suspect to explain the seven pieces of evidence we’ve examined so far, we must also account for the presence of evil and injustice with this same suspect.
Exculpatory evidence often eliminates a particular candidate based on the nature of the candidate in view. If, for example, there had been forensic evidence at the crime scene indicating Jackie’s killer was an Asian female, Denny would have been eliminated on the basis of his nature as a Caucasian male. Is the evidence of evil inconsistent enough with the nature of a Divine Creator to eliminate such a suspect from consideration?
If the Creator of the universe is powerful enough to create everything from nothing, this Creator is most certainly powerful enough to eliminate all imperfection, including moral imperfection.3 Such a perfectly “good” Creator, therefore, would be a reasonable source for the moral virtues we recognize in our universe.
But does the degree of evil we see “inside the room” contradict the nature of a Divine Creator?4 The challenge posed by the presence of evil has been pondered for thousands of years. An ancient form of the problem is sometimes attributed to Epicurus:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”5
If the morally benevolent, all-powerful Divine Creator of the universe we’ve described from the evidence in prior chapters does indeed exist, how are we to explain the existence of evil “inside the room” of the universe?
As Epicurus first observed, such an all-powerful, morally benevolent Being should be capable of creating a universe in which all evil is eliminated. If evil still exists in our “crime scene,” are we mistaken about the nature of the suspect we’ve described so far?6 Does this Divine Creator lack the power we expect, or does the Creator lack the benevolence we’ve described? If either case is true, the suspect we’ve profiled so far would be eliminated from consideration.
Charles Darwin asked similar questions and was deeply motivated by these concerns. He expressed his distress in a nineteenth-century letter, when he wrote, “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent god would have designed parasitic wasps with the express intention of feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.”7
A Tool for the Call-Out Bag:
Unless we can explain how the presence of evil is somehow consistent with the external suspect we’ve profiled, we will have to reconsider our conclusions about this suspect’s identity.
As we begin to evaluate this exculpatory evidence, we can look to criminal cases as an example of the task at hand. Criminal cases are incredibly complicated. My experience as a cold-case detective has given me some insight into the complexity of evidential cases, reasonable explanations, and causal connections in criminal investigations. I’ve found every criminal act is the result of complex, interconnected circumstances contributing to the suspect’s motive and explaining the suspect’s actions.
Jackie’s killer, if he’s like other homicidal pedophiles I’ve investigated, experienced a number of complex, interrelated events in his own life leading to his choice to assault Jackie. He was likely the victim of a disturbing childhood and upbringing of his own, and the causal factors underlying his desires and behaviors were most certainly multifaceted. In addition, his decision to commit this particular crime was also the result of complex causal factors.
If it hadn’t been Christmas Day, Jackie’s parents may not have asked her to play outside while they prepared the elaborate meal, and they would most likely have been more attentive to her actions.
The crime was also dependent on the kind of girl Jackie happened to be. She was gregarious, agreeable, and trusting—the perfect victim for such a crime. She may have entered the suspect’s vehicle willingly.
The successful completion of the crime required yet another complex array of circumstances. If it had been earlier in the day, the killer would have committed his crime in broad daylight, making it more difficult. The killer must have possessed the perfect vehicle to commit the crime—unremarkable and private enough to hide his activity. He may have picked a location with which he was familiar to dispose of Jackie’s body without being caught. The complex, interconnected circumstances, motives, causes, and actions came together to create the ideal scenario for this crime. As a result, it occurred without detection and remains unsolved.
When trying to explain the manner in which a crime occurs (or when trying to make a case for the involvement of a particular suspect), we must always be prepared to explain and illustrate the cumulative, complex, interconnected causal factors involved. There are no easy answers. The truth is always more complicated than we would like.
In a similar way, whatever explanation there may be for the presence of evil and injustice in the world, it will certainly involve a cumulative, complex set of explanations and causal factors. There will be no easy answer. Instead, we should expect a tangled web of complexity.
Searching “Outside the Room” for an Explanation:
CAN THE PRESENCE OF EVIL BE RECONCILED WITH THE EXISTENCE OF AN ALL-POWERFUL, ALL-LOVING CREATOR?
When I’m investigating evidence related to a particular suspect, I consider the relationship between inculpating evidence and exculpating evidence. The detectives investigating Jackie’s murder weighted Denny’s interview reactions as an overwhelming piece of inculpating evidence. In fact, they rejected his statements to a friend about the movie because they believed this one potential alibi could be explained, given what they had observed with Denny.
When they finally got the results from the crime lab, however, they had to admit there was simply no way to reconcile these results with Denny as a reasonable suspect. In a similar way, we must consider the cumulative case inculpating a Divine Creator (based on the origin and fine-tuning of the universe, the origin of life and appearance of design in biology, the existence of consciousness and free will, and the presence of objective moral truths) and weigh these inculpating evidences against the one potentially exculpating piece of evidence: the presence of evil and injustice.
In a case such as this, when we have multiple lines of evidence pointing to a particular suspect, it’s reasonable to tentatively conclude we have the right suspect, then test this suspect against the arrival of any potentially exculpating piece of evidence.
Given the nature of Denny’s responses during the interviews, his proximity to the crime, and his relationship to the victim’s family, the detectives investigating Denny had good reason to believe he was the man who killed Jackie. From this conclusion they began to test Denny in light of additional evidence.
A Tool for the Call-Out Bag:
In a similar way, given the abundance of evidence pointing to a Divine Creator, it’s reasonable to conclude this is the most sensible explanation for the uncaused first cause of the universe. From this conclusion we can test our suspect in light of additional evidence. While evil is only a single piece of exculpating evidence relative to the many other inculpating evidences we’ve discovered, it is not an insignificant piece of data. Whatever explanation we consider, it must account for the existence of moral evil (like the evil caused by humans), natural evil (like the hardship we see resulting from earthquakes and tsunamis), and pain and suffering (like the anguish experienced by disease).8
Can these evils be reconciled to the existence of a Divine Creator, and if so, what are the complex, interconnected causal relationships between the explanations?
EVIL CAN BE RECONCILED IF WE HAVE AN ACCURATE VIEW OF ETERNITY
Most of us can think of examples of young people such as Jackie and Ryan (the young boy who was shot by his father in chapter 5) whose lives were cut short by tragedies of one nature or another. This form of evil seems particularly painful and unjust given the young age of the victims involved. We all hope to live long lives without unnecessary pain or hardship. But what if this hope for pain-free longevity was a reality for each of us? What if we knew, in advance, we could live forever and could be guaranteed a pain-free existence for all eternity? Would we view our current pain and suffering differently (even if it lasted for ten to twenty years) if we knew we would eventually experience bliss for all eternity?
If we have been fashioned by a Divine Creator who offers us life beyond the limits of our short, material existence, this would surely change the way we look at pain and suffering on this side of the grave, wouldn’t it? If we are eternal creatures, all forms of perceived evil must be considered in light of eternity.
EVIL CAN BE RECONCILED IF WE HAVE A PROPER REVERENCE FOR FREE AGENCY
Expert Witness Profile:
The vast majority of attributes and activities we value and revere require free agency. Love requires freedom; no true expression of love has ever been coerced. Rationality also requires freedom; we cannot evaluate evidence and reason through an argument unless we have the freedom to choose between explanations.
Even those who deny the existence of a Divine Creator must first have the personal freedom to do so. Freedom is a high value for all of us, because without it, we would be enslaved robots unable to love, hate, reason, or rebel. If the Divine Creator of the universe respects freedom as much as we do, we should expect a beautiful universe in which love and reason are possible, even though hate and irrationality must also be tolerated and allowed (at least in this mortal portion of our existence). Freedom, in all its beauty, does not come without associated dangers. Some forms of perceived evil may be the necessary consequence of free agency.
EVIL CAN BE RECONCILED IF WE HOLD AN APPROPRIATE DEFINITION OF LOVE
We typically view evil as the antithesis of love. But our definition of love has been deeply compromised by the way it is portrayed in contemporary novels and movies. Love is far more than sentimentality, romance, or affection. Parents know this better than anyone else. There are times when the deepest, truest expression of love is some form of discipline or correction. Hardship is a necessary part of life, especially if our Creator loves us enough to give us the free agency required to love, reason, and interact with one another. The existence of evil is incompatible with a loving Divine Creator only if our definition of love is restricted to a simple, unrealistic caricature.
EVIL CAN BE RECONCILED IF WE UNDERSTAND ITS ROLE IN CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
A Tool for the Call-Out Bag:
Loving parents are usually more concerned with their children’s character than their comfort, and character is developed more through adversity than advantage. Hard times can bring out the best in all of us, providing us with opportunities to help those in need, rise to the occasion, and come to the rescue. Valor is seldom displayed in times of fortune, good health, or success. Some forms of perceived evil may simply be an effort on the part of a Divine Creator to develop the character of His children with eternity in mind.
EVIL CAN BE RECONCILED IF WE RECOGNIZE ITS POWER TO DRAW US
In desperate situations, many people consider life beyond the material universe for the very first time. Tragedy has a way of redirecting our thoughts and pointing us to a life beyond the limits of our present experience “inside the room.” If there is a loving, Divine Creator who has designed us for an existence beyond the grave, it might not be unreasonable for this Creator to use hardship to refocus those of us who haven’t been paying attention. When we come to the end of ourselves, we often start looking for something (and someone) “outside the room.” Some forms of perceived evil may simply be evidence of a loving effort to point us in the right direction.
EVIL CAN BE RECONCILED IF WE ACCEPT ITS EXISTENCE AS A CONSEQUENCE
Sometimes our suffering is simply the result of bad choices on our part, and it’s not always easy to see how our prior choices eventually cause such suffering. There are times when choices we made years earlier eventually catch up with us. In my line of work, poor choices often lead to the intervention of the criminal justice system. My arrestees ultimately end up paying for their prior bad decisions.
EVIL CAN BE RECONCILED IF WE ACKNOWLEDGE OUR LIMITED UNDERSTANDING
But even with these prior explanations in mind, there are times when suffering seems entirely inexplicable. I’ve seen this repeatedly in the cases I’ve worked. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do people sometimes get away with murder?
I’ve never investigated a case in which I was able to answer every possible question a juror might ask. In fact, the majority of my cases have been successfully prosecuted in spite of a number of unanswered questions. If there is a vastly superior Divine Creator, we shouldn’t expect to understand every motive, every thought, or every set of concerns in the Creator’s mind. One thing is certain, however: the answers will involve the entire complex web of causal factors and relevant issues we’ve described so far in this chapter. Consequently, some forms of perceived evil may have to be patiently endured, given our limited perspective and the complexity of the issues involved.
CONNECTING THE EXPLANATORY DOTS
There are many reasonable ways to reconcile the presence of evil with the existence of an all-powerful, all-loving Divine Creator. But remember what I said about the explanatory complexity of such an effort. For every act of evil we try to explain, we can begin by visualizing the potential causes as a cumulative case:
This simple diagram illustrates the dilemma each of us faces when trying to offer a simple explanation for the problem of evil. No single explanation will account for every act of evil. There are often several causes involved in explaining any given episode of suffering.
But it’s even more complicated than that. Every act we investigate must engage all of these potential explanations in their proper proportions to one another, with their proper connections to one another, and with their proper relationships to the lives of every other human with whom we interact. This is difficult enough when examining the motives of a killer at a fixed point in history (as the previous explanatory diagram for Jackie’s murder illustrates), but it’s nearly impossible when examining why a Divine Creator might allow evil or injustice in the dynamic, ever-changing world involving millions of free creatures.
Why would a benevolent Divine Creator allow Jackie to be murdered?
The answer involves a complex web of explanations. Human free agency was obviously a significant factor: if free agency is to be revered and respected above all else, evil of this nature should be expected. But, if a Divine Creator exists, such evil must be evaluated in light of eternity. Whatever Jackie suffered in those moments prior to her mortal death, they must be considered in the context of her eternal life beyond the grave. Given the nature of this eternal life, it is difficult to know how this act ultimately contributed to the character and focus of those who knew Jackie and eventually worked hard to help other victim families.
We can’t predict the future causal relationships resulting from this change in their character, or know how many future acts of evil were suppressed by the impact this event had on our community and the families involved. In my casework, I’ve repeatedly worked with surviving family members as we’ve investigated, arrested, and prosecuted the suspects who murdered their loved ones. I’ve seen their belief in a Divine Creator actually deepen as they’ve navigated life after the tragedy. Today, their lives continue to inspire others, and their strength has encouraged many to consider the existence of a Divine Creator for the first time. As with every case I’ve worked, the interconnected complexity of causal factors behind each act of evil is difficult to understand, but the answers are even more difficult to apprehend if we attempt to factor in the future consequences of this crime on Jackie’s family and friends (or even on Jackie in eternity). Only a Divine Being could know what good might eventually outweigh the evil Jackie experienced.
Staying “Inside the Room” for an Explanation:
CAN NATURALISM ACCOUNT FOR EVIL IN THE FIRST PLACE?
I’ve had the privilege of working with some of the best prosecutors in the state of California. The very best, in my opinion, is Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney John Lewin. We’ve been working cases together for nearly twenty years, and we’ve faced some of the finest defense attorneys in the county.
Most recently, we investigated and tried a cold-case homicide in which Robert Shapiro (of O. J. Simpson fame) defended our murder suspect. The trial occurred in Los Angeles over the course of several weeks, and the defense team called a number of witnesses in an effort to demonstrate their client’s innocence. None of these witnesses were effective. In fact, John Lewin systematically rebutted each and every one of them during his cross-examination. Some of these witnesses were caught in lies. Others eventually agreed publicly with our conclusions related to the guilt of the defendant rather than with the defense’s conclusions related to the innocence of the defendant.
When this happened in front of our jury, Shapiro’s defense witnesses unwittingly became our best possible prosecution witnesses. There are times when what seems like an asset to one side of the argument becomes an asset for the other.
In a similar way, while the existence of evil might at first appear to be a strong evidence against the existence of an all-powerful, all-loving Divine Creator, it may actually be the best possible evidence for the existence of such a Being. In my effort to describe why evil is, in fact, evidence of the Creator’s existence, I’ve yet to find a description as clear and evocative as that of C. S. Lewis:
Expert Witness Profile:
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: A fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense.9
Unless, as Lewis suggested, we are prepared to dismiss evil as nothing more than whatever fails to please our “private fancies,” we’re going to need a transcendent “straight line” by which to evaluate the “crookedness” of evil. Unless there is a transcendent, Divine standard of “straightness,” evil is simply a matter of opinion. If this is the case, we can eliminate evil tomorrow. All we have to do is change our opinion of it.
“Inside the Room” or “Outside the Room”?
CAN INTERNAL EVIL EXIST WITHOUT AN EXTERNAL SOURCE FOR GOOD?
As much as we might like this to be the case, we can’t eliminate evil “inside the room” of the universe by simply changing our minds. That’s because the very standard of goodness we contrast with evil doesn’t come from “inside the room” in the first place.
We’ve assessed exculpatory evidence, identified the connected complexity of cumulative cases, tested a known “suspect,” and learned the importance of accepting unanswerable questions. As a result, we’ve come to recognize a simple reality: True evil requires a source of transcendent righteousness, a source for goodness transcending the universe and everything in it. Evil “inside the room” can be reconciled with the existence of an external suspect and, in fact, requires an external standard of benevolence for its existence. The very existence of evil is evidence for God.
Our Emerging “Suspect” Profile:
We’ve examined eight forms of evidence in four categories as we’ve slowly developed our “suspect” profile. We investigated what many skeptics believe to be the most damaging piece of exculpatory evidence (the persistent presence of evil and injustice) and found it to be one of our best pieces of inculpatory evidence.
As a result, we can now add one last characteristic to the “suspect” profile. The external uncaused first cause of the universe is nonspatial, atemporal, and nonmaterial. It is powerful enough to create everything we see in the universe and purposeful enough to produce a universe fine-tuned for life. This first cause, as a conscious Mind, is intelligent, communicative, creative, and resourceful. It is the personal source of moral truth and obligation and the standard for good by which we define evil.
Our suspect is in view. Now it’s time to act.