The Problem of Evil Flashcards
Is Evil a theoretical problem?
- Reality of pain is always suffered on an individual level
- Millions die in African famine, million individual agonies and the grief of those who live to mourn them
What is Moral Evil?
- Evil that comes from human choices
- Why does God permit humans to act the way that they do?
What is Non-Moral Evil?
- Evil that follows from natural sources, e.g natural sources, such as famine, drought, hurricanes, earthquakes and much illness
Can you separate the two types of evil?
- Not always easy to
- If you live in an earthquake zone voluntarily there is an element of moral evil I have brought upon myself
- If you are poor and had no choice then you didn’t really CHOOSE to live there
Who posed the inconsistent triad and what was it?
- Posed by Epicurious, David Hume would return to it
- If God were all powerful, he would be able to abolish evil
- If God were all-loving, then he would wish to abolish evil
- Evil exists
Therefore God is not all-powerful, not all-loving, or both
Is the Inconsistent Triad an objection to God?
- Not an objection to God, not an objection to a deist creator
- Aristotles self-regarding God is indifferent to human suffering
Why would a Deist creator not be an explanation for the inconsistent triad?
- One could imagine a God who injected pain and anguish to amuse himself and to see these little people panic
- However the God of Abraham is a God who is bound to his creation, he loves and cares for it
What is an objection to the inconsistent triad that Abrahamic Religions would condemn?
- Christ of Church Scientist argues for the illusory nature of evil
- Not considered a Christian Church and not accepted to the World Council of Churches
How does the Bible present evil?
- Old Testament is filled with famines, massacres, murders, all kinds of evil, natural and human
- If the suffering of Christ was illusory his death would offer no redemption
- New Testament shows his death in bloody and real terms
- Crucifixion was used by Romans because it was evil, hideous and terrifying
What can be said to be a trivial response to the problem of evil?
- You need evil to appreciate the good
- There are real victims to this evil
- To say Jews and Gypsies suffered for a good they could not experience says nothing about their suffering
- D.Z Phillips said this type of response has added to the evil in the world, it displays callousness to the suffering of others
What would Häns Kung say in relation to Jesus?
- God suffered on the cross so that he could look suffering humanity in the face
- Does not explain Epicurious question of why God allows evil in the first place
What was the Manichees doctrine? (St Augustine was one when he grew up)
- Perversion of Platonism, Plato believed the material was inferior to the spiritual but material is good if it contributed to the Realm of the Forms
- Manichees believed matter and spirit had two different origins, coming from two different Gods
- Task of believer was to liberate the good spirit from wicked matter, in practice led to suicide
- The most extreme heresy to make up Gnosticism
What was the main idea behind Gnosticism?
- Physical matter is evil
- If God is good, he cannot be responsible for matter
- If Jesus was truly the Son of God, he could not have a material body
Quote St Augustine on the universe being Good
“God saw everything that he made… it was very good”
What is Augustines view on everything being good? (Quote)
- He says everything is good but in its own way, a stone is not good in the same way a cat is good, a stone is a building material and a cat is a pet
- Creation of such a variety of things entails the creation of beings more or less good in different ways
- Evil must be the going wrong of something that was made good
“but they remain good”
