In the last section, I assumed that when the critic speaks of evil, he means simply any instance of fear, pain, and so on. I did so because I find that when atheists in general (and admirers of Dr. Branden’s atheism in particular) refer to the Problem of Evil and are challenged, “What are your grounds for supposing that there is in fact evil in the world?” they almost always reply by citing the first negative they can think of and saying, “What more do you want?” I therefore thought it worth while to point out that this approach leads to intolerable difficulties.

But I am confident that Dr. Branden, in any other context, and after a moment of reflection in this one as well, would reply:

“Of course I do not think that every instance of pain, et cetera, is an evil. No Objectivist does. As Miss Rand clearly states, it is not evil that there should be such a thing as pain, nor is it desirable that an individual should be born incapable of feeling pain. [01] I urge you to read Miss Rand’s article, ‘The Conflict of Men’s Interests.’ [02] In it she points out that, if a man competes for something (say, a job) and loses fairly and squarely, then losing is not contrary to his interest, even though it is something that he has rightly struggled to avoid. His losing was an integral part of the whole context of interaction, competitive and otherwise, among free individuals, the maintaining of which context is certainly not contrary to his interests. Similar, when pain, frustration, and the like occur in the context of an overall structure which is good, and which entails the possibility of their occurrence, then that possibility is not an evil. As Miss Rand says,

Suffering as such is not a value; only man’s fight against suffering, is. [03]

“I freely grant that (in your terminology) some negatives are justified. But you seem to leap to the conclusion that all negatives are justified. And here lies the dispute between us. I maintain that some negatives are clearly unjustified, and hence evils and hence evidence against the perfection of God.”

Supposing this to be Dr. Branden’s position, I shall undertake to reply to it in the next few sections.

References
[Editor’s notes are in blue.]

* In the dot-matrix printout, this section begins with the unexplained notation “(p7) 8 May 81.” Since the discussion of disasters and pain occupies quite a large number of pages of the printout, and are listed as “Section 7” in James’s table of contents, it is entirely possible that this section was completed nearly a year later than the rest of the printout.]

† The title refers to Nathaniel Branden’s lecture “The Concept of God,” from his lecture series “The Basic Principles of Objectivism.” That lecture is fully transcribed in his book The Vision of Ayn Rand, chapter 4. Partial and perhaps complete audios seem to be available throughout the Internet. See also R.A. Childs, “The Epistemological Basis of Anarchism,” Note 19.

[01] A. Rand, VOS 17e-18a [The Virtue of Selfishness, (New York: Signet Books, 1964); pages 17-18.]
  Now in what manner does a human being discover the concept of “value”? By what means does he first become aware of the issue of “good or evil ” in its simplest form? By means of the physical sensations of pleasure or pain. Just as sensations are the first step in the development of a human consciousness in the realm of cognition, so they are its first step in the realm of evaluation.
  The capacity to experience pleasure or pain is innate in a man’s body; it is part of his nature, part of the kind of entity he is.
  ... The physical sensation of pain is a warning signal of danger, indicating that the organism is pursuing the wrong course of action, that something is impairing the proper function of its body, which requires action to correct it.... [Children] who are born without the capacity to experience physical pain ... do not survive for long....

[02] A. Rand, “The ‘Conflicts’ of Man’s Interests” 1/8/31-32, 35 [References of this form refer to The Objectivist Newsletter, so that volume 1, number 8 would be August 1962] & VOS [The Virtue of Selfishness, pages 50-56].

[03] AS 984k-l [pb]; (1060a-b) [hb].