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
Moral Relativism&Plato’s Euthyphro The idea that the truth is relative is that what is true for me is true for me and what is true for you is true for you. For instance person one believes in the existence of god. Person two believes there is no god at all. If the truth were relative that would mean Person one’s reality is that god exisitses and person two’s reality is that god does not exist. Both of them would be right because the truth is relative to what they believe.
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.
Rationality, Sensibility and Ethics Immanuel Kant begins this excerpt from Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals with the claim that nothing can be qualified as good except a good will. He supports this claim by giving examples of things we consider good, such as talents of the mind and qualities of temperament, which are not in and of themselves good because someone of bad will can utilize these qualities for bad things. There are qualities and traits which can be esteemed for their ability to service and facilitate a good will, but this does not allow us to label them as good in themselves. Kant states that, “a good will is good not because of what it performs or effects…but simply by virtue of the volition” (P.1). The conscious decision is good in itself because the decision was not inclined by any desire but the duty to do what is intrinsically good.
Although, if God had not commanded that adultery is wrong, or if he commanded us to commit adultery, then it would be the morally correct thing to do. Therefore, X is morally right if and only if God says so and just because God says so” (Furman). Now that we understand what the Divine Command Theory is, let us examine the arguments that are given to prove it false. The first argument against the Divine Command Theory is the “Right Becomes Wrong Argument.” The argument is as follows: If the Divine Command Theory is true, then if God said rape is morally permissible, then rape would be morally permissible. But, rape is objectively wrong.
The Theodicy of Irenaeus has many weaknesses. For example, the Theodicy states that God deliberately created an imperfect world where evil exists to achieve a higher goal (a world where humans can morally develop), however if it is not acceptable to do something bad to achieve something good, then why is it acceptable for God to do this? Another point to consider is that not all suffering leads to moral growth. Some people do not develop as a result of suffering, but instead morally degrade. This contradicts Irenaeus’ Theodicy because it states that moral development is achieved through the experience of pain and suffering.
Then Socrates states that the matter is finding who the wrongdoer is rather than how he must be punished. Ruthermore, the two agree that what gods hate is unpious and what they love is pious. Again, Socrates turns the discussion around and claims (statement on page 14,
So Socrates comes up with an idea that by asking Euthypro what is nature of holy and unholy. Euthypro keeps giving him answers, but it is more like examples of the holy but he does not explain clearly the whole meaning of holy. Socrates asked “isn’t the holy is the same in every action? And isn’t the unholy are the exact opposite of the holy” (Page 7 6d-10d). This quotes Socrates is asking Euthypro if the holy is the same action from one thing to another or it is might be holy at one time but it could be unholy in another time.
He said morality was innate; a part of us (a priori), and it was our moral duty to carry it out for good, which must lead to God. Accordingly Kant says good actions should be universalisable and free, so basically when making our ethical decisions we should ask ourselves a simple question "What if everybody did that?" if the answer is no, then the categorical imperative tells us that the action is wrong. So if I cheated on my AS-level exam to pass and be successful in the future, this would be my maxim, however I would not want others to do the same and therefore this action would be wrong according to Kant’s Categorical Imperative. My cheating pre-supposes that most people do not cheat even though they have the same reasons to cheat as I have.
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.