The Problem of Evil

• Ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus, brought forth the Epicurus Trilemma which springs up the issue of a trend between God’s omnipotence, God’s omnibenevolence and whether this perceived God exists at all. This is thus an a priori argument as here, Epicurus spotlights the nature of God and evaluates what it means to be a God which contradicts the problem of evil.
• The Logical problem presented by Epicurus is further propounded by Hume in his dialogues concerning Natural Religion where he writes conversationally through the characters of Demea, who offers the view that evil helps us become more moral, Cleanthes who defends the goodness of God, and Philo who argues against the others. Philo posits that evil and suffering are incompatible with the existence of God. Hume took precaution to mask his true views on religion through writing in this dialectal manner.
• “God is either impotent or malicious” - Hume
• Through the development of Epicurus’ work, Hume proposed that the extent of suffering within the world is so overwhelming that it is only logical to claim that the existence of God with the omnibenevolent and omnipotent attributes mentioned within Christianity are simply assumptions.
• Mackie postulates that when one thinks about God of classical theism, one makes the assumption that God is omnibenevolent, omnipotent yet still exists. These, according to Mackie, are inconsistent  with each other, hence is referred to as the inconsistent triad.
• if God were truly omnibenevolent, he would not allow for the suffering of his creation…. And if God were truly omnipotent, he would have the power to eradicate suffering. Yet, Evil and suffering still occur. Ergo, Mackie states that the belief in an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God is “positively irrational”, as a “wholly good being would eliminate evil as far as it can be”.
• God is “positively irrational”, as a “wholly good being would eliminate evil as far as it can be”. -Mackie
• “Intense human and animal suffering as this occurs on a daily basis, is in great plentitude in our world, and is a clear case of evil. More precisely, it is a case of intrinsic evil: it is bad in and of itself even through it sometimes is part of, or leads to, some good state of affairs” - William Rowe
• Rowe exercises the idea that there is purposeless evil within the world in great numbers which causes the question of whether a God who is omnibenevolent truly exists. The evil present within the world is intense,purposeless and unnecessary.
• Moral evil = Evil that occurs as a direct result of human choice
• Natural evil = Evil that occurs naturally and not the result of human choice e.g earthquakes and other natural disasters
• The case of Bambi

  Lighting strikes a dead tree in a distant forest. This results in a forest fire in which a fawn is trapped, burned horribly in terrible agony. The fan lies there for several days before eventually dying.
• Bruce Russell’s The case of sue 

  Bruce Russell supported Rowe’s argument using an example of moral evil from  a story from an article which he had read on the train. He shares the story of a 5 year old girl who had been raped, severely beaten over most of her body and strangled to death by her mother’s boyfriend. Throughout the relationship the mother had been subject to violent domestic abuse. The incident took place on New Year’s Day, after the boyfriend had gone out and heavily consumed drugs and alcohol.
• “The whole earth..is cursed and polluted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want stimulate the strong and courageous: fear, anxiety, terror agitate the weak and the infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish to the newborn infant and to  its wretched parent: weakness, impotence, distress attend each stage of that life, and it is, at last, finished in agony and horror”. -Hume
• Hume takes note of the virtues of reality, he expresses the various times in which the world and people in it experience this magnitude of evil.
• “In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are nature’s everyday performances” - John Stuart Mill
• Genesis 1:31 - “God saw all that he had made and it was very good.”
• “The loss of good has received the name “evil"
• Evil is not a quality in its own right, it is the absence of good- privatio boni
• In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for whe a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present- namely, the diseases and wound- go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they all together cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance, but a defect in the fleshy substance.
• “The very reason why some things are inferior is that, although the parts may be imperfect, the whole picture is perfect”
• The principle of Plenitude

  The best type of world is one that contains every possible variety of creature.

  The angels were all created perfectly, part of the necessary variety of creation, some received less assistance from God in their attempts to be holy. “Lords of their own being’. 
• Cosmic consequences

  Brought the world from a place of harmony to disharmony . This sin was so catastrophic that it corrupted the natural world as well as the human soul.

  Sin is “seminally present in the loins of Adam”
• Sin is “seminally present in the loins of Adam”.
• Schleimacher argues that it is a logical contradiction for the perfect world to go wrong.
• “Let us make mankind in our image, according to our likeness”
• Irenaean theodicy

  “Let us make mankind in our image, according to our likeness”

  God created humans imperfect, in his image but not automatically in his likeness. God did this deliberately because he wanted humans to grow and develop in order to reach moral and spiritual perfection.

  In order to allow this moral and spiritual growth, God had to give humans free will so that they could freely decide. This means that God had to permit evil and suffering to take place
• “We glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, character and hope” (Romans 5:3)
• Reminiscent of the British poet John Keats, Hick postulates that whilst the world contains pain and suffering, this does not necessitate that it is a “value of tears” but rather a “place of soul making”.
• Epistemically distance: The view that humans do not have absolute knowledge of God and must seek him through faith.
• Hick argues that humans must suffer some suffering in their lives as without suffering and evil there would be no difficulty in following God’s law. 

  -The world is thus the perfect environment for soul-making whereby we become children of God. Thus, no amount of evil and suffering is pointless. They are designed to offer us an opportunity for spiritual and moral growth.
• Satan: “Does Job fear God for nothing?” (Job 1:9)
• • Universal SalvationHick argues that all people will be saved from sin and be reunited with God in the Afterlife.
• Hick does not believe that the process towards growing into the likeness of God will be completed by all people in this  life, citing those that are unable to morally and spiritually develop as a result of suffering as ‘victims in the system’.
• Hick then presents the concept of universal salvation whereby he posits that this  development will continue after death which is another essential feature of his theodicy and can be used to justify both the  omnibenevolence and justice of God who is allowing further opportunities to all people to become children of God and eventually  inherit eternal life. 
• Hume argue that if God is omnibenevolent why is it not a possibility to morally develop through pleasurable things like reading rather than from suffering. 

  Moral character can be developed through pleasure as well as through pain, so perhaps we do not need the amount of suffering in order to learn.
• Swinburne

  Many of the moral virtues we admire are only possible in an imperfect society

  E.g Charity comes from Poverty,  Courage comes from fear, Sympathy comes from Suffering

  “Although a good God regrets our suffering, his greatest concern is surely that each of us shall show patience, sympathy and generosity.”

  “The less God allows men to bring about large horrors, the less freedom and responsibility he gives them”.

  A world where God limits our power to do evil is a toy world where our choices do not matter and our actions are meaningless. 
• “The less God allows men to bring about large horrors, the less freedom and responsibility he gives them” - Swinburne
• “Although a good God regrets our suffering, his greatest concern is surely that each of us shall show patience, sympathy and generosity.” - Swinburne
• CS Lewis

  Free Will is a higher order good in that it is good in itself, but, it also makes other good things possible

  It is better to have a universe with free will than a universe with “innocent automata”