Problem of Evil (Philosophy) Flashcards
What is Natural Evil?
Evil which results from workings of the natural world eg. earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions etc. This is the evil which most suggests that God must be evil, too
What is moral evil?
Caused by human action, eg. murder and torture. Many examples of mass human evil through history
How did Epicurus formulate the problem of evil?
- Is God willing but not able to prevent evil? Then he’s not omnipotent.
- Is God able to prevent evil but not willing? Then he’s not omnibenevolent.
- If God is both able and willing, why does evil exist?
- If God is neither able nor willing, how is he God?
Who reformulated Epicurus’ argument and how?
- JL Mackie
- Inconsistent triad
- Says that the God of classical theism can’t exist if evil exists
- God is either not omnipotent, omnibenevolent or evil doesn’t exist, but we know evil exists, so it must be one of the other two.
- This is the logical problem of evil
What sort of argument is the problem of evil?
- A priori (sometimes developed into a posterior by referencing our experiences of evil)
- Deductive (if the premises that evil and God can’t coexist are true then its conclusion must be true)
What is the evidential problem of evil?
- Inductive argument
- Put forward by Hume
- Regards evil as evidence against God’s existence which implies evil makes belief in God unjustified
What a posteriori information is put forward by Hume for the evidential problem of evil?
- Animal suffering. Why can’t nature be created to mean that animals feel less pain?
- Creatures have a limited ability to ensure survival/happiness
- Why is nature sometimes so extreme?
- Why doesn’t God prevent natural disasters?
What is a Hume quote about God’s existence?
‘I conclude that however consistent the world may be… with the idea of such a God, it can never provide us with an inference to his existence.’
What is original sin and what is a quote to support this?
- Adam and Eve disobeying God resulted in all of humanity being corrupted, meaning people want to sin
- He thinks we were all ‘seminally present in the loins of Adam’ which is what makes us equally culpable for the Fall and why we all inherited original sin
What did Augustine believe about evil, what quote supports this and what analogy supports this?
- Believed evil doesn’t exist. It’s a privation of good.
- ‘All evil is either sin or a punishment for sin’
- It’s like darkness being an absence of light. Evil is the absence of goodness
What happened with Augustine and his pear?
- Shows how humans have a natural disposition to sin
- Describes him once stealing from a pear tree despite not even wanting the pears
- ‘Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden’
What are Augustine’s main ideas in his theodicy?
- Humans are to blame for evil
- Every bit of evil that happens either happens because of us or because we deserve it to happen
- God created the world flawlessly. We were the ones who ruined it.
- Human free will caused the sin of Adam. God gave us free will and we misused it.
What is a criticism of Augustine’s literal interpretation of Genesis?
Evolution proved the idea that we’re all seminally present in God to be wrong. We didn’t just appear out of nowhere, but we evolved over many generations.
Where did Augustine believe evil first originated?
- With angels rebelling against God
- This is where Lucifer originated. He was an angel who was banished from paradise for disobeying God
- Evil was then properly introduced into the world by Adam and Eve eating the apple from the tree of knowledge
What is a criticism for God punishing us?
It could be seen as fundamentally unfair to be punishing humans to such an extent as God is. Surely an omnibenevolent God couldn’t bare the suffering of his creation
