exam 3 Flashcards
FWD
1) God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent
2) evil exists
3) God creates a world containing moral goodness
4) And, it is possible that all possible persons suffer from trans world depravity
5) hence it is consistent with Theism and gods attributes (goodness and power) to actualize a world in which there is evil
what are the counters to the FWD
1) Mackie (it is limiting gods omnipotence to say that he cannot strongly actualize a world in which everyone freely does the right thing)
2) snyder hawthorne (TWS is as likely as TWD)
3) hume kraal (it is not necessarily consistent with gods attributes to create a world with this amount of goodness if the evil vastly outweighs the goodness)
Further Responses to counters to FWD
1) Mackie
2) snyder hawthorne
3) hume kraal
1) Not limiting gods power as forcing someone to freely do something is a contradiction
2) TWS is not as likely based on rational intuition
3) Felix culpa
Assumptions about FWD
1) incompatibalism about free will
2) moral goodness presupposes freedom
3) consistent with theism for god to create a world containing moral goodness
4) its possible that every possible person suffers from transworld depravity
Quantitative FWD
1) It is consistent with gods attributed to create a world with as much goodness as this world
2) it is possible that this amount of goodness couldn’t be had without this amount of evil
3) it is consistent with gods attributes to create a world containing this amount of evil
Mackie POE
(1) God is omnipotent
(2) God is perfectly good
(3) Evil Exists
(4) there are no limits to what an omnipotent being can do (implication from 1)
(5) a good thing eliminates evil as far as it can (implication from 2)
Counter to Mackie POE + further responses
He assumes that Mackie holds it to be a necessary truth that a good thing must eliminate evil as far as it can
He then tries to disprove this
Counter to counter:
We do not need to ask if ‘it is a necessary truth that a good thing must eliminate evil as far as it can’ because this is not the belief that Mackie held. This is what he was trying to say theists believed in order to draw a contradiction
Epicurean POE
0) God = powerful, good being
1) if god is powerful, he can remove evil
2) if god is good, he wills to remove evil
3) Evil exists (suffering exists)
4) god can and wills to remove evil
5) hence, evil does not exist
6) Contradiction
Assumptions in Epicurean POE
extra assumption 1 (4): god does whatever god wills / god achieves everything he wishes
Extra assumption 2 (also in 4): god does right now whatever god wills right now
extra assumption 3: it makes sense to ascribe these things to god
what are the counters to the Epicurean POE
1) Pre christian (god don’t care ab us)
2) Christian (god brings good out of evil)
