Is the problem of evil a strawman?

Question

It is absolutely bewildering that this argument even exists when it only argues against the Christian conception of god. In Islam, which is the fastest growing religion and has the second most adherents, there is no literal conception of perfect goodness in God found anywhere in the Qur’an. And yet to this day, popular encyclopedias such as the SEP maintain that this is the conception of god in Islam. It simply isn’t true. How is this encyclopedia respected when it can’t even get basic conceptions of god right?

Secondly, in order to make an argument from evil, one must first define what evil is. But evil is a concept that obviously only exists in one’s head. One cannot get an ought from an is. There is no objective, ontological status of the concept of evil, so why is this argument taken seriously at all in philosophy?

Here is the relevant section as to where God is referred to as All-Loving when this attribute doesn’t exist anywhere in the traditional Islamic conceptions of Him or in the Qur’aan: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-religion/#ProbEvil. “ One of the important problems for Abrahamic religions is to explain the presence of evil given the assumption that an all-wise, all-just, all-powerful and all-loving God created and is continuously conserving the world”

Even a cursory glance at the Qur’an would make it obvious that Allah, for example, does not love those who don’t believe in Him.

Answer 1

Normally I try to respond to questions on their terms, rather than quibble over the background premises. However, the OP is trying to denigrate the main basis for peer-reviewed citations such as we are supposed to be using on the PhilosophySE, as if a vague "error" in one article invalidates the entire Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (I should note that there are many errors there, but if the preface paradox applies to shorter texts by one author, how much more does it apply to an indefinitely larger text by myriads of others). This notwithstanding that SEP entries are frequently updated, even to the point of substantive revision, to try to correct for deficits and mistakes; the authors of all entries are named per entry, so if someone objects to something they say, one can email them with one's concerns. Considering the number of errors thinkingman has made on the PhilosophySE over their time here, I would caution them against calling for the dismissal of others lest thinkingman be dismissed similarly.

Now Yazici[22] notes:

Based on a question posed by global philosophy of religion project regarding the absence of literal attribution of omnibenevolence to God in the Qur’ān, this paper aims to examine how to understand perfect goodness in Islam. I will first discuss the concept of perfect goodness and suggest that perfect goodness is not an independent attribute on its own and it is predicated on other moral attributes of God without which the concept of perfect goodness could hardly be understood. I will examine perfect goodness by a specific emphasis on the attribute of justice as one of the conditions to be satisfied by a perfectly morally good being. In so doing, I will appeal to the distinctions made among great-making properties by Daniel Hill, and Al-Ghazālī’s definition of justice by applying them to God’s moral attributes. I will argue that justice has a crucial role in maximality-optimality balance between great-making properties and it seems quite difficult, if not impossible, to conceive of goodness without justice. Having said that, I will claim that the conceptual frame I suggest sheds light on why omnibenevolence is not literally attributed to God in the Qur’ān. Then, I will briefly show how the divine attributes mentioned in the Qur’ān and the discussions about divine names and attributes in the Islamic tradition supports the understanding of perfect goodness I defend. Consequently, I will try to show that far from indicating that the Islamic concept of God doesn’t involve perfect goodness, the Qur’ān establishes the proper meaning of perfect goodness by focusing on its constitutive attributes, and thus provides us with a sound conception of it.

Ali[16] has this abstract:

This article explores the various ways in which Muslims, in the past and the present, think about God. The article canvasses a range of views on questions and puzzles pertaining to the essence and attributes of God, the basis of God's Justice, the transcendence of God, and our ability to know and understand God. We encounter a diverse, and at times radically divergent range of views on how best to understand divinity within the tradition of Islam. Given the various conceptions of divinity, available within the tradition, I develop an argument for the view that God is best understood as love. The view that God is love, I contend, emerges directly from the Quran, which is a document that sits at the very heart of the Islamic tradition.

In the Recital itself, Surah 23:62 reads:

We do not lay a burden on anyone beyond his capacity. We have a Book with Us that speaks the truth (about everyone); and they shall in no wise be wronged.

Surah 16:60 reads (c.f. Anselm's maximal-being theology):

To those who disbelieve in the Hereafter belong all evil qualities, whereas to Allah belong the finest attributes, the highest description.

Not to mention that the types of Islam that are so prominent are types in which the hadith (Sayings) are accepted on top of the Recital, so one wonders why we would detain ourselves so much with the words of the Recital alone and not also the Sayings, here (not to mention the writings of later Muslim scholars). I myself don't know what the Sayings say about God's attributes, but I imagine that they include nuances that undermine the OP's claim further.

If one wants definitions of the word "evil" (other than those in the SEP entries pertaining to the problem of evil) one can read through "The Concept of Evil" and "Kinds and Origins of Evil". The is/ought gap is not an undeniable axiom or a theorem of other undeniable axioms, so claiming that subjective definitions of "evil" are the only allowable definitions seems presumptuous. (Note that there is an intuitive inference from, "He is obligated to do A," to, "He ought to do A," so formulating the is/ought gap is not a trivial matter.)

Answer 2

There IS a concept of God's perfection in Islam. As a concept, Allah is essentially similar to Plato's One (except He speaks).

As for evil, it's indeed banal, as Hannah Arendt said. It exists in all of us, as does the opposite inclination to do "good".

Answer 3

An argument is valid (not a strawman) if it argues against a claim that someone is actually making.

If I'm arguing against you, and you believe that God is made of spaghetti, I should address that conception of God, rather than whatever Christians and Muslims believe God to be.

As for the popularity of the problem of evil: Christianity is the most common religion in the world, and the all-powerful all-loving conception of God is very common within Christianity. So even if the problem of evil is only specific to Christianity, that's still very noteworthy. But given what others are saying, the argument might extend to Islam as well.

Also note that you can't make an argument against all conceptions of a god or gods (even if we just limit it to the beliefs of those who call themselves Christians) at the same time, because all of those are just too different. The argument needs to be specific to some claim that's being made.

Answer 4

It's about the infusion of Greek philosophy, which largely happened through preservation and translation in the Islamic world, during the Christian Dark Ages. See Mu‘tazilitism and the role of al-Kindi and al-Razi, who hailed Greek philosophy as a form of liberation from the shackles of dogma or blind imitation (taqlid).

The god of the Old Testament is vengeful (Angel of Death against Egyptians/Canaanites), spiteful, cruel (Job), and capricious. Christianity has the doctrine of Progressive Revelation to patch discrepancies with the New Testament. The Quaran is stated by Muslims to simply be the directly revealed word of god, and it restates some Old Testament accounts. But, you can do whatever you like about definitions, Muslims still have to account for things like the fall of the Ottoman Empire. See Religious responses to the problem of evil: Islam.

You imply that the theology of Islam is monolithic, with no disputes or controversies. But there are substantially different interpretative schools, hence the differing schools of jurisprudence and other Islamic schools and branches. It's fair to say the Problem of Evil is not an issue for some, like al-Ghazali who wrote The Incoherence of the Philosophers which some have argued was the underpinning of the decline of Islamic science and the end of the Islamic Golden Age. But, you cannot say the Problem of Evil is of no concern for any Islamic scholars. A similar mix occurs in fact among Christian groups, with different currents and concerns.