Problem of Evil:

Question 1

What is the problem of evil?

Answer 1

A theory which questions whether God is truly omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient.

Question 2

Epicurus raised the first question of the problem of evil: The Epicurean Paradox:

Answer 2

• ‘Is God willing, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing, then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing, then why call him God?’

Question 3

J.L Mackie:

Answer 3

Mackie had aimed to resolve the Epicurean paradox with the inconsistent triad. The inconsistent triad has three statements, but only one speaks false.

Question 4

J.L Mackie Inconsistent Triad statements:

Answer 4

1. God is omnibenevolent.
2. God is omnipotent.
3. Evil exists.
   Mackie concluded that God mustn’t be omnipotent as evil still exists.

Question 5

Both J.L Mackie and Epicurus have rasied:

Answer 5

A deductive argument which speaks on the logics that God’s existence is incompatible with evil.

Question 6

William Rowe raises the evidential problem of evil:

Answer 6

• Rowe raised an inductive argument.
• Accepts idea that there is some kind of evil in this world results in the ‘greater God’.
• Gives an example of a fawn, trapped in a forest fire who is burned and lies in terrible agony for several days before actually dying.

Question 7

There are two forms of evil in evidential problem of evil:

Answer 7

• Moral evil = Evil caused by humans.

- Natural evil = Evil caused by natural events; hurricanes, earthquakes and more.

Question 8

Richard Dawkins:

Answer 8

Supports the evidential problem of evil because animals are constantly suffering.

Question 9

John Stuart Mill:

Answer 9

Argues that natural evil doesn’t prove the existence of God.

Question 10

Steven Fry:

Answer 10

• Strongly dislikes God.
• Believes God is to blame for evil. Believes the world would be better without the idea of God.
• Gives an example of blinded children and creatures dying. Questions why God would allow this if he were all-loving, all-powerful and all- knowing.

Question 11

Abrahamic response to the problem of evil:

Answer 11

• The bible presents evil as brutally real.
• The old testament shows his death would offer no redemption. Whereas the new testament shows his death in bloody and real terms.
• If we need black to see white, darkness to see light. Then we would need evil to see goodness.

Question 12

Augustine Defends the problem of evil:

Answer 12

• Believes that the universe was a creation of a good God for a good purpose.
• Concluded that all evil things were originally good and so did come from God.
• Natural evil is caused by human freewill.
• God can allow evil to continue because he didn’t create it.

Question 13

Objections to Augustine:

Answer 13

• His argument relies on the reading of the scripture.
• Lacks empirical evidence.
• If the creation was truly made to be perfect, there wouldn’t be wrong.
• Augustine was very inconsistent with his freewill defence.

Question 14

Irenaeus theodicy:

Answer 14

• Believes that what happened to Adam and Eve is a prime example of what happens all the time; humans disobeying God.
• The existence of evil and suffering are tools that God uses to help us learn what is right and wrong.
• Irenaeus believes that humans were made not to be perfect.
• In order for your soul to be made (soul-making) we need to live in an imperfect world.

Question 15

Hick’s development of the Irenaeus theodicy:

Answer 15

• Takes the basic ideas of soul-making, and spells its implications.
• God wants a genuine relationship with us; one that was freely chosen.
• God created an epistemic distance, a gap in knowledge between ourselves and God, this allows us to come to our own rational conclusions.

Question 16

Hick: Instrumental Good:

Answer 16

• Somethings goodness may depend on its purpose.
• The idea of living in a perfect would sounds good, however it wouldn’t help us for our soul-making development with our sense of nature.
• Hick argues that the world is instrumentally good, when something is good for something.

Question 17

Hick: Freedom and Knowledge:

Answer 17

• If no harm came from any of my actions, then God would continuously need to intervene.
• To keep this continual change, God would need to act to every moment to change the world. Nature would have no regularity, there would be no possibility for science. Science constructs its theories on regularity in things.
• No science = no explanation for anything.

Question 18

Hick: Universal Salvation:

Answer 18

• Hick argued for universal salvation and Irenaeus argued against.
• For Hick hell is part of the problem of evil. Hell does no good, except to cause pain and punishment.
• Hicks view of hell is essentially purgatory.

Question 19

St Thomas Aquinas:

Answer 19

Rejects the idea that hell is a place of torture, the pain of permanent separation from God would remain without hope and redemption.

Question 20

Soul-making Theodicy: Richard Swinburne:

Answer 20

Swinburne argues that without the presence of evil, we wouldn’t have admired the moral attributes that are only possible in an imperfect world. Such as pain and compassion, generosity and poverty and selfishness and corruption. In an imperfect world there’s a balance between the good and evil.

Question 21

Soul-making Theodicy: D.Z Phillips:

Answer 21

• Humans share the inability to understand the divine and a strong sense of both the tragedy and the wonder of human existsence.
• Protests against tidy moral assumptions - utilitarianism, Kantianism and situation ethics.
• Gives variety for character development:
  1. evil is logically necessary, 2. things are not as bad as they seem, 3. evil acts as a spur to greater effort and to be better people, 4. suffering is never more than we can bear, 5. all will be redeemed after death.

Question 22

STRENGTHS:

Answer 22

• God chooses not to intervene with human freewill.
• Humans need evil and suffering to see the good.
• The idea that evil exists due to human freewill fits perfectly with the concept that humans also live in an imperfect world where freewill is expressed thoroughly.
• If humans lived in a perfect world, then that would mean everything is given to them, meaning heaven and hell would lose its worth, and human freewill would too because everything will be too perfect according to the good.

Question 23

WEAKNESS:

Answer 23

• If God were omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient, then why would he allow evil and suffering to exist.
• The fact that the problem of evil is a balance of good and evil. Evil originating from Satan and good originating from God, suggests that it is a battle of power between God and Satan leading humans to be the victim of this battle.