This turns out to be a logical contradiction, as stated previously, evil does exist in this world in many different forms, so this being of which no greater can be conceived must not exist. Epicurus’ questions or paradox, as it has come to be known, goes as follows, “If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to? Then he is not omnipotent. If He is able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
An omnipotent God would be able to prevent evil if he wanted to. A God both omnipotent and omnibenevolent would both want to and be able to prevent evil. P2 states that evil and suffering do exist, making it apparent that an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good Gods existence would be almost impossible. If a tri-omni god existed, then evil would not be able to exist The biggest weakness of the argument will be P1 that if an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good God exists, then evil and suffering would not exist. If God is all knowing and all powerful and all good, therefore god would not want us to suffer and not put evil on earth.
Evil as Disproof of a Perfect God Proving the existence of God is a tricky matter. The fact that no definitive empirical evidence for God exists is not the proof of non-existence. In other words the “absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence”, (Carl Sagan). To refute the existence of a theistic God, one would have to provide some sort of proof against the notion. Theologians have long struggled over the philosophical problem of evil.
For our purposes, theism will be defined as belief in the existence of God, as defined above. Atheism, then, is the “critique and denial of the major claims of all varieties of theism” (Nagel 168). These two views provide metaphysical arguments concerning the nature of man and God. A third commonly held belief about the existence of God is known as agnosticism. Agnosticism is the purely epistemological stance that sufficient evidence does not exist for or against theism therefore the best stance on the argument is no stance at all.
B. Swinburne claims that if there is a God, the occurrence of evils is to be expected. C. If the theist cannot explain why the co-existence of God and Evil is possible, then his belief in God is not rational. II. Moral Evil: Any evil doing that does harms to others and is done by humans with intents. A.
He is malevolent. Is God both able and willing? Then whence commeth the evil. If he is neither able nor willing then why call him god?” This is called the inconsistent triad; if God has all these Omni qualities then why does evil still remain on earth? Augustine’s soul deciding theodicy was the demonstration that God is not responsible for the existence of evil.
The first premise states that “If there is evil, God either isn’t willing or isn’t able to prevent it.” The idea of a God who is neither willing nor able to do something is almost immediately equating to no God. Without even delving further into the argument, we can already see where these premises are leading. The second premise states that “If God is all powerful, he can prevent it” and the third states that “If God is perfectly good, God will prevent it if God can.” There is no denying that the Judeo-Christian possibly Islamic God is supposed to be both all powerful and perfectly good (as stated in the fourth premise of the argument). However, Laurence also mentions that perhaps it just does not make sense for there to be a world without evil, bringing to light the validity of the second and third premises. He speaks of how a world with humans is better than a world without, and because of this it is just does not make sense to have a world without evil.
If God breaks this, then he is not being omnibenevolent (all good), which is another of his attributes. However lust is far from morally right, so God cannot experience it. Leading on from that, since God is confined to being morally perfect, he has no choice whether he is or not, he can’t be omnipotent. Another aspect of this argument is can God fear? We are either scared of the unknown (e.g death) or something more powerful than ourselves (e.g lions).
This is called the inconsistent triad. David Hume thus believed that God is either not omnipotent, or not omnibenevolent or evil does not exist. According to Mackie, each of these possibilities answers the problem of evil but none of them are orthodox. Since we have sufficient direct experience to support the existence of evil, if God exists he is either an impotent God or a malicious God — not the God of classical theism. Hume and Mackie conclude that God therefore does not exist.
McCloskey is reminding atheists the ways theists argue for their belief in God. He is reminding atheists the reasons they believe that there is no God. He feels atheism is superior to theism; however; I find that his opinions only strengthen my belief that there is a God. Proof, as he states, carries no weight for a theist. He is half correct in his statement as a theist does not believe in the proofs individually, but finds enough evidence in them to form the belief that God does exist; He is the creator of the universe, and He is morally perfect.