Evil And Suffering Flashcards
Describe natural evil and the problems with it
- evil found in nature out of human control
- can blame God for it
- god uses it to punish people (Egypt)
- if god controlled natural evils 2000 years ago, why doesn’t he now?
- why is there so much of it?
Describe moral evil
- Evil that humans commit through their actions
- humans know right from wrong (conscience) and they choose wrongly
What is makie’s inconstant triad
If God is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent then why does evil exist.
If God wants to prevent evil but cannot, then he is not omnipotent.
If God has the ability to prevent evil but doesn’t not want to, then he is not omnibenevolent.
What is Mackie’s formalised logical argument
P1 - evil and suffering exist
P2 - god is all loving and all powerful
P3 - an all loving and all powerful god, if he existed, would remove evil and suffering
C - god does not exist
What is the evidential problem of evil
- Evil that is overwhelming in quality and quantity
extreme natural:
- eruption of mount Vesuvius
- Indonesia tsunami (230,000 died)
extreme moral:
- Dostoyevsky (parents torturing a child for no reason)
- the holocaust (6,000,000 Jews died) - Evil that is pointless as it serves no purpose
William Rowe:
- lightning strike causes a forest fire
- a baby deer is trapped, horribly burned and lies in agony for days before dying
- no living thing witnesses this
- the deers agony is pointless as no good comes from it
Describe the general free will defence
In order to have genuine free will we need to have
- permission to do evil
- ability to do evil
- opportunity to do evil
Humans are morally responsible agents and free will allows for positive and negative qualities to develop - moral evil is the price of free will.
Describe mackie’s account of the free will defence
- There are first order goods (happiness, pleasure etc)
- Second order goods maximise the first order goods (generosity, love etc)
- Second order goods also minimise first order evils (sympathy, compassion etc)
- There are first order evils (unhappiness, pain etc)
- second order evils maximise the first order evils (selfishness, meanness etc)
- second order evils also minimise first order goods (jealousy, envy etc)
- Freedom is our third order good given to us by God (fourth order good)
Why does Mackie say the free will defence fails
God could have created humans so that they only make free good choices, god did not do so.
What are the problems with Mackies account of the free will defence
- you could not lie
+ only references intrinsically wrong things, people lie to protect others for good - Being created to do only good, is not being created free at all
- logically impossible to make morally free agents with no freedom to choose
+ if God is omnipotent he should be able to make logically impossible possible - god has to stick to his own laws of physics
What was Plantingas MSR1 response to Mackie
PW1 - god creates persons with free will, god does not determine people = logically possible
PW2 - God does not create persons with free will, God determines people = logically possible
PW3 - god creates persons with free will, god determines people choices = logically impossible
What was Plantingas MSR2 response to Mackie
God allowed evil to enter the world due to Adam and Eve’s punishment.
Why could natural evil exist
- To follow the laws of nature
- things have to act under the laws of nature (water under the influence of gravity = tsunami) - Second order goods
- allows us to show sympathy, compassion to others (would be impossible) - World would collapse
- if evil just didn’t occur, the world would be whack! (Cars magically swerving to avoid things etc)
Evaluation of free will defence
+ humans value risk of pain and gain pleasure from it
- lots of pains gain no pleasure
+ a world with free creatures is more valuable than one without them
- why? Surely pleasure is most important over evil
+ there is no sense of achievement, happiness is not real
MSR1+2 may or may not be true, have no idea, only logical.
- freedom is not worth the price tag - can not justify
+ there will always be a ‘worse’ action if you get rid of the worst one - they are so bad - why 6 million Jews not 100,000
- God cannot have the judeo-Christian qualities.
Explain griffins process theology
Rejects:
- creation from nothing
- gods omnipotence
- any religious text to be true
God:
- god ‘persuades’ matter that has always been there into order
- matter has the power to resist god
- he is not transcendent
- evolution is him persuading things into order
God + Universe:
- they exist panentheistically = ‘in’ eachother
- god is the ‘soul’ of the universe
Explain how griffins process theology can explain evil
- The more complex we become, the more opportunity we have to deviate away from god.
- Gods original intention was to produce good.
- ‘Low grade entities’ e.g atoms are nearly impossible for god to control except for over long periods of time.
- Inanimate objects have no soul and so cannot be influenced by god.
