P extract 1 - Mackie

• Mackie says "good is opposed to evil in such a way that a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can"
• Mackie says "there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do"
• "the propositions that a good omnipotent thing exists, and that evil exists, are incompatible" (Mackie)

  --> quote about inconsistent triad, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God can't exist while evil exists
• Mackie says that the argument that good can't exist without evil "sets a limit to what God can do... and this means that either God is not omnipotent or that there are some limits to what an omnipotent thing can do"
• "the rule that good cannot exist without evil would not state a logical necessity... God might have made everything good, though we should not have noticed it if he had" (Mackie)

  --> quote against belief that good couldn't exist without evil, God could have made everything good
• "first order evil" is "pain and misery" (Mackie)
• "first order good" is "pleasure and happiness" (Mackie)
• "second order evil" is "states in which good (1) is decreasing and evil (1) is increasing" (Mackie)
• "evil (2) will, by analogy, be [...] the kind which God, if he were wholly good and omnipotent would eliminate. And yet evil (2) plainly exists" (Mackie)
• "But even if evil (2) could be explained... there would be third order evils contrasting with this third order good... infinite regress" (Mackie)

  --> quote about infinite regress of different evils and goods
• "if God has made men such that in their free choices they sometimes prefer what is good and sometimes what is evil, why could he not have made men such that they always freely choose the good?" (Mackie) --> against the free will defence
• "if freedom is randomness, how can it be a characteristic of will? ... What value or merit would there be in free choices if these were random actions which were not determined by the nature of the agent?" (Mackie)

  --> free will not random and so God still to blame for letting us chose evil
• "If there were a corresponding requirement for evil as a counterpart to good, a minute dose of evil would presumably do. But theists are not usually willing to say, in all contexts, that all the evil that occurs is a minute and necessary dose" (Mackie)

  --> a small amount of suffering would do, but there is far too much irl