Good And Evil Flashcards
Define conscience
a person’s moral sense of right and wrong, viewed as acting as a guide to one’s behaviour.
Define evil
The absence of good and the impulse to seek our own desires at the expense of others
Define free will
Able to choose right from wrong without being controlled by other forces
Define goodness
The quality of being like God: seeking the well-being of other selflessly
Define incarnation
“Made flesh” the Christian belief that God became man and the person of Jesus, fully human and fully divine
Define Natural law
The moral laws of right and wrong which are universal and not dependent on human laws. The belief in natural law is the that the moral law is discoverable by every human being and is the same for all human beings in all places at all times.
Define privation
Loss or absence of a quality or something that is normally present. Evil is a privation of good.
Define suffering
Pain or loss which harms human beings. Some suffering caused by other human beings some is not.
Define moral evil
Suffering caused by humans
Define natural evil
Suffering that is not caused by humans
Catholic response to why evil exists
- Free will
- Original sin
- To test us
St Augustine’s response to evil
- Evil helps us to appreciate.
- Evil is not a thing.
- evil makes us better.
Who is john hick
- John hick is a Christian who argues how his and evil can both exist.
- His argument is called ‘The Vale of soul making’.
- Evil helps us grow
Jewish views on the origin of evil
- Don’t believe original sin.
- People of bone was two natural ways to act: Yetzer ha tov and yetzer ha ra
- Evil culture us and we have a choice whether to keep the mitzvot or not.
What is yetzer ha tov
The inclination or urge to do good actions
What is Yetzer ha ra
The inclination or urge do evil actions
What is goodness
- Highest form of love, beauty or perfection.
- For a person to be good that means they have to be like God.
How do Christians know God is good?
- The Genesis creation story states that God’s creation is good – “and it was good.”
2.“God created all things, not to increase his glory, but assure it and communicate it “– St bonaventure - The world shows Christians that God is good because we have everything we need and God has carefully thought it out. Everything was made good to show us that he is good.
God as perfect goodness? Sowa
1.“Give thanks to Lord, for he is good, his love and endures forever” palms 107:1
- And Jesus said to him, “why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” mark 10:18
How is God goodness shown in our world?
- Food to sustain.
- Gift of life.
- The sacrifice of charity.
- The beauty of the created world.
- The feeling of love.
- The promise of eternal life.
Atheist views on the origin of sin, inconsistent triad
David Hume, presented something known as the inconsistent triad to explain the problems of evil.
He argues all three things cannot be true at the same time: evil exists, God is omnipotent, God is omnibenevolent
Atheist, John Mackie
Evil is necessary as an opposite of good – Mackie says even if this was the case we don’t need that much suffering
Evil helps us to become better people – people do not experience equivalent amount of suffering and some suffering makes people worse than better
Evil is a consequence of free will – why could God not make free human beings who always wanted to choose what is good instead of evil?
Story of job and teaching behind it
Job is a good honest person who has been rewarded in life, certain and suggested God the job is only good because he has been blessed. So God makes job suffer even after suffering so long job now questions God to why he would do this. this shows that humans cannot understand why God does stuff so maybe we suffer for a reason but we can’t understand it just like job.
How does God explain jobs suffering to job?
God show his job that he is omniscient, the God does things job would never understand
