Evil And Suffering Flashcards
The Free Will Denfence
- This argues that God has to allow evil in order to preserve free will.
- The good has to be freely chosen. In order to bring about the best ‘goods’ in life, such as love and compassion, we have to be ‘free’ to choose the opposing vices of hatred and heartlessness.
- If God controlled evil, there would be no freedom.
- Humans are therefore morally responsible for moral evil and God is not.
Logical Problem of Evil
- This is an a priori, deductive argument which questions the existence/characteristics of God given the existence of evil in the world.
- This argument states that logic tells us that three things cannot be true at the same time - evil exists, God is all-powerful and God is all-loving.
Logical Problem
-St Augustine: either God cannot abolish evil, or he will not; if he cannot then he is not all-powerful; if he will not then he is not all-good
Evidential Problem of Evil
-This is an a posteriori, inductive argument which argues that, given the huge amount of evil and suffering in the world around us, we surely cannot believe in an all-powerful, all-loving God.
Moral Evil
- Humans are regarded as ‘moral agents’.
- The word ‘agent’ refers to any being capable for acting in accordance with what is right and wrong.
- Moral evil refers to any action where the moral agent uses their will to bring about morally bad consequences.
Natural Evil
- Natural evil is that which the world does to us.
- It includes accidents, deaths, diseases, floods, earthquakes and many more.
Free Will Defence- Swinburne
- This world is the logically necessary environment for humans to develop.
- It provides freedom to make choices, both good and evil. Without such choices, people would not be free.
- God cannot intervene because to do so would be interfering with human freedom.
- “The less he allows men to bring about large-scale horrors, the less freedom and responsibility he gives them”
- The world had natural laws that can cause suffering. GOD CHOOSES TO GIVE US FREE WILL IN ORDER FOR US TO LIVE A FULL AND ENRICHED LIFE.
John Hick - British Philosopher and Theologian
- Agreed with St Irenaeus. He said that God had to allow humans to develop for themselves.
- If God had made humans perfect, then they would have had what he called the “goodness of robots”, who would automatically love God without thought.
- This is not the most loving thing to do.
Hick Argues:
- God had to create humans at an epistemically distance from himself so that god would not be so close that humans would be overwhelmed by him and have no choice but to believe.
- By keeping at a distance, God allows humans to choose free will.
- The world has to be imperfect because if it were perfect, then there would be no evil and suffering and humans would not be free to choose, because in a perfect world, only good could happen.
- Evil and suffering allow humans to develop positive qualities, such as love and courage.
- If God constantly interfered, then humans simple could not develop. This is known as the counter-factual hypothesis.
- Hick said that the world is a place where humans have to face challenged in order to gain perfection.
Free Will Defence - Plantinga
Reason 1 deals with moral evil -
- Moral evil comes about through free will as God couldn’t eliminate much of the evil and suffering in this world without thereby eliminating the greater good of having created persons with free Will also are able to love one another and do good deeds.
- Plantinga presupposes the view known as libertarianism.
Free Will Defence - Plantinga 2
Reason 2 deals with natural evil -
-God allowed natural evil to enter the world as part of Adam and Eve’s punishment for their sin in the Garden of Eden. Plantinga claims Mackies criticisms of the FWD doesn’t work.
Free Will Defence - Mackie
- Mackie explains Free Will Defence by constructing and then rejecting his own version of it - first, second, third-order goods and evil
- First order goods are things like happiness and pleasure
- First order evils are unhappiness, pain and misery.
- Second order goods exists to maximise first order good and to minimise first order evil.
- Without the evils of pain and suffering, we could never have sympathy, love.
- Freedom is third-order good. Higher order food because it allow us to choose between instantiating first and second order goods and evils. Teaches us the love of good.
Process Theodicy - Griffin
- Believes that God didn’t create the universe because the universe is an uncreated process of which God is himself a part.
- “God is responsible for evil in the sense of having urged the creation forward to those states in which discordant feelings could be felt with greater intensity”
- God himself has to suffer evil and suffering as he is part of the world. And he cannot stop evil because he doesn’t have the power to change the natural process.
Problem of Evil and Suffering - Augustine
- Augustine believed that evil didn’t come from God.
- Evil comes from those beings that had free will, angels and humans turned their back on God.
-God is perfect, therefore the world is perfect.
Evil came about because of Adam and Eve- free will
- 4th Century Theologian
- Soul deciding theodicy
Criticisms:
Anti-Evolution
How can perfectly created beings choose to do evil
Was the world really made perfect?
Problem of Evil and Suffering - Iranaues
- God couldn’t have created humans in compete perfection.
- 2nd Century Theologian
- Humans must grow in the likeness of God
- Us humans make the world perfect by living in a world of evil and suffering
- It’s a soul making, developing theodicy - from imperfect to perfect.
