Religious studies:Problem of evil

• Arguably things go wrong because of human free will, however, which takes nothing away from God’s omni-qualities but does make intervention make sense to fix the mistakes of humans, not the mistakes of God.
• The biggest mistake humans made was the fall. God has not corrected that mistake because we do not still live in the garden of Eden. So, it looks like God does not fix our mistakes.
• Wiles’ view is unbiblical. The Bible contains miracle stories. The central event of the New Testament, the resurrection of Jesus, was a miracle. It seems contradictory for a Christian not to believe in miracles.
• Wiles argued that the bible is to be interpreted metaphorically. The bible stories where God or Jesus did miracles like healing sick people were just meant to tell us about God’s loving and powerful nature – not factual descriptions of events which occurred.
• Peter Vardy criticises Wiles for judging what an omnibenevolent God would and wouldn’t do, but such judgements are beyond human ability. How do we know there wasn’t some reason God allowed the Holocaust or Hiroshima to occur? Isn’t Wiles claiming to know more than a human can?
• What is the point of Prayer if God actually can’t answer prayers which request intervention?
• Wiles responds that Prayer is about helping a person understand the will of God.
• Polkinghorne argues however that this doesn’t really fit with what Christians experience when they pray to God – they really do feel like they are making requests
• Wiles claims that “The world as a whole is a single act of God”. Since God created this world and all of its features, including its natural laws