Soul-building evils are meant to force human beings to live through adversity and in turn strengthen our characters (Sober, pg. 111). Another criticism that exists to this second premise is called defense, which attempts to explain how evil can exist logically, given the existence of God (an all-PKG God) (“The Problem of Evil”). However, defense does not presuppose the existence of God or the existence of evil. If God and evil can
David Hume's Argument from Evil The problem of evil is the problem of reconciling the existence of the evil in the world with the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good God. The argument from evil is the atheistic argument that the existence of such evil cannot be reconciled with, and so disproves, the existence of such a God. The argument from evil for the non-existence of God can be broken down to the moral evil vs. natural evil and that evil in the world is necessary. God is seen as all knowing, benevolent, and all-powerful. However, if he were to be all three of these things, then why does he allow evil to occur?
Meaning that since good and evil are opposites, since god created good he would have to have created evil. Another response to this is that some theist think something’s cant exist unless their opposites exist so that being thought leads them to believe that since there is good there must be evil. Which I don’t think is true because some things exist because their opposites don’t like having peace. You cant have peace if there’s war. Since peace and war are opposites and one can only exist when the other doesn’t makes some theist response not very accurate.
The second is that God is omnipotent but not wholly good and allows evil to happen or even promotes it, which would also nullify the status of God. The third is that God is neither omnipotent nor wholly good where that being should never have had the title of God in the first place. The way Mackie has presented his argument against the existence of God relies heavily on the logic of the incompatible triad premise which creates quite an interesting situation for the theist to explain since the triad is a solid paradox. Mackie discusses the arguments made by theists to defend that God and Evil are not mutually exclusive, and why the arguments don’t adequately address the issue of the incomplete triad. The first premise is that God
But on the other hand, if God does not agree with certain actions or circumstances, then it is wrong because God says that it is wrong. Whatever God wants to command becomes a standard of moral rights. So if God commanded someone to rape another person, the Divine Command theory proves that rape would be moral because doing the right thing is the same as doing what God commands. It is impossible to imagine God commanding to do such a wrong act. The Divine Command Theory is solely based upon what God commands.
Augustine defends the god of theism by rejecting the existence of evil as a force or power opposed to god as it would reject the premise that god is omnipotent. Below are the ways in which he justifies moral and natural evil, which respectively mean evil caused by human acts, and evil events caused by the processes of nature. To justify evil, he solves the problem by defining evil as a ‘privation’ – which means when something is ‘evil’, it is not defined to contain bad qualities but is seen to be falling short of perfection, or what it is expected to be. Take a rapist as an example. Adopting Augustine’s idea of ‘evil’, we are to say that he is not living up to standards expected of human beings.
Moral evil is an act of mankind such as murder; natural evil would be something that is not caused by any specific agent but has victims such as would be produced by earthquakes. [1] Because of evil in the world, many argue against there being a creator God by attempting to show that the co-existence of evil and such a deity is unlikely or impossible. The attempts to justify the ways of God to man by proving that God can and does co-exist with evil, are known as theodicies and provide various responses to the problem of evil. Leibniz’s theodicy states that God did not choose the best in creating the world, but then God would be lacking in power, knowledge and goodness. Augustinian theodicy argues that God created the world and it was perfect, without any evil or suffering until man’s fall and Irenaean theodicy states God is partially responsible for evil and suffering as a process of soul building.
Explain the term evil (30m) There are 2 different types of evil moral (caused by human beings) and natural (caused by nature). There is a logical problem of evil which is called the inconsistent triad; this is the argument that God cannot possess all the Omni characteristics with the existence of evil. This is a logical inconsistency. The existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of God; it is logically incoherent to accept that both exist together. God being omnipotent means that he can do anything which means he could have created a world free from evil.
Flaws Within the Flawless As an inherently flawed element, human nature will continuously battle with right and wrong, and failure will persist without guidance. Dostoevski highlights this conclusion in his work The Grand Inquisitor. According to the Grand Inquisitor, the most important aspects of our human nature are the inability to handle freedom and a yearning for a miraculous being. In his approach to governing these aspects, the argument he defends that Christ’s rejection of the temptations has permanently hindered human nature may appear true. However, the Grand Inquisitor’s rejection that the nature of man has potential to change when we accept Christ as our savior highlights the weak link in his argument.
In this essay I will be explaining the problem of evil, the types of evil, Irenaeus’ idea on immature beings and Augustine’s theodicy of free will. Augustine in his ‘confessions’ defined the problem of evil. ‘Either God cannot abolish evil, or he will not; if he cannot then he is not all-powerful; if he will not then he is not all good’. His assumption is that a good God would eliminate evil as far as it is possible, because if he is omnipotent then all evil should be eliminated, but evil exists so why does God allow it? David hum in ‘Dialogues concerning Natural Religion’ argues that either God is not omnipotent, or God is not omnibenevolent, or evil does not exist.