Does the Problem of Evil Prove That God Doesn't Exist

878 Words4 Pages
In the world evil happens almost every day, from earthquakes to murder. People go through suffering and pain every day. A lot of people believe that there is a god but how could there be a god when there is so much evil in this world. If god was there he would be omniscient (all knowing), omnipotent (all powerful) and Omni-be¬nevolent (all good) , and morally perfect, which would mean that there should not be any evil, but the problem is that there is evil in this world. Does the problem of evil prove that god doesn’t exist? No solution has been put forward that has been able to prove why god created evil when he wants to get rid of evil and he has the power to do so, therefore god doesn’t exist. Philosophers and believers have spent many years trying to come up with a solution to the problem of evil- they call these solutions theodicies . The first theodicy to the problem of evil is the free will defence. Philosophers state that most of the evil in this world is because of our own choice and isn’t god’s fault. While making the world, God faced a choice: he could create people with a choice like us, or he could create robots, without the ability to make choices of their own. God chose to create people with their own choices, and he made the right choice. However the outcome for this is the abuse of freedom that we see around us. The people with a choice sometimes choose to abuse their freedom, to do wrong. The wrong that we do, though, the suffering that we cause, great though it may be, is a price worth paying for something that is valuable: genuine freedom. The free-will defense is only a partial success. It is correct to say that it is better that the world contains people with freedom than that it contains only robots without any freedom, and I believe that much of the evil that we see around us is a consequence of the abuse of this freedom. However, not all
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