Evil Simpliciter Does Not Exist

Over at the Orthosphere, a propositional argument for the existence of God.

The syllogism is simple. Let P = God is ultimate; let Q = there is evil. Then:

1. ¬ P → ¬ Q
2. ¬ ¬ Q
3. ¬ ¬ P

In English:

1. If God is not ultimate, then there is no evil.
2. It is false that there is no evil.
3. It is false that God is not ultimate.

Clever, but wrong. It has been the position since St. Augustine that evil does not in fact exist because it cannot exist; and it cannot exist precisely because of God's ultimate status as creator of all, combined with God's goodness. Evil simpliciter would be a created thing that was not in any way good; but everything that follows from God must be good, because God is perfectly so (and in a way that is higher and better than things we encounter in the world are).

The orthodox position is that "evil is a privation," that is, a failure of the material to realize God's perfect design. Thus, all evil turns out to be is an imperfect realization of the good. Everything that exists must be good to some degree just because God created it.

[Even more emphatically in the later Aristotelian Christianity of Aquinas and his era, God's existence and his goodness are a mere prioritization of thought about the same quality. God's essence is existence: and as existence is the thing that all things desire, existence is just another name for the good (per Aristotle; because all things desire to continue to exist, to reproduce, to perfect their health and thus their existence, etc, 'the good' simpliciter is existence). Therefore, everything is good insofar as it has being; and evil thus cannot exist because it cannot have being, i.e. goodness.]

Then the syllogism doesn't work: 

1. ¬ P → ¬ Q
2. ¬ Q
3. ¬ P

That syllogism is a known fallacy, "Affirming the Consequent" or the "converse error." It doesn't prove anything because the form is invalid. For example, you could give the argument:

1. If she screams, someone pinched her.
2. She screamed.
3. Therefore, someone pinched her.

In fact it's obvious that there could have been several additional causes for the scream; she might have seen a dead body instead of being pinched.

Of course one can take the position that orthodoxy is wrong, and evil simpliciter does exist: that's the Manichaeist position, which in Christianity is traditionally considered a heresy. It doesn't work out logically to have two basic creative principles, as Avicenna explains: either one is really superior, or there must a third thing that holds them together and allows them to interact, in which case that thing is the ultimate creative principle (and you're back to one). Since this is the case, any syllogism that asserts that 'God is ultimate' but that evil simpliciter also exists as a countering force will prove to be illogical. 

One could further take the position that logic does not give you access to knowledge, but only preservation of knowledge, and that knowledge about God is ultimately ineffable at best (and thus inadmissible to logical forms). This is close to the Buddhist position, which might be true but won't be logical. At that point there's just no reason to even talk about syllogisms.