evil and suffering

• what is the logical problem of evil

  god is omnipotent

  gods omnibenevolent

  evil exist
• what is the evidential problem of evil

  • there is evil that is overwhelming in quantity and quality
  • evil that is pointless because it serves no useful purpose
• dostoyevsky’s example about moral evil


  in his novel: the brothers karamazov he writes about:

  a little girl who was abused by her parents and suffered throughout her upbringing, weeping to god to protect her cannot then be told that evil must be and is permitted that without it man couldn’t have existed, for he wouldn’t know good and evil
• Rowe’s example for pointless evil

  example of a fawn, if there was a forest fire and there was a fawn trapped inside, the fawn’s agony is pointless as no human being would ever know about it and no eventual good comes from it. doesn’t preserve human free will nor builds human character
• plantingas MSR1 quote

  gods creation of persons with morally significant free will is something of tremendous value. god could not eliminate much of the evil and suffering in this world without thereby eliminating the greater good of having created persons with free will with whom he could have relationships and who are able to love one another and do good deeds
• what is libertarianism

  the view that causal determinism is false, so humans have a degree of free will and so can be held morally responsible for their actions
• what is causal determinism


  the view that every event is determined by antecedent events and conditions and by the laws of nature so humans don’t have free wil
• why is Mackies FWD logically impossible

  it is contradictory to say that in a possible world humans are morally significant free will and that they can choose to do right or wrong and then say that they are causally determined so that they can only do good as that would mean that they no longer have free will

  the statement is then logically impossible.
• what is plantingas MSR2


  god allows natural evil to enter the world as a part of adam and eve’s punishment for their sin in the garden of eden
• why is MSR2 weak

  many philosophers who comment on this say that its ludicrous as its unscientific and relies on the mythological narrative of adam and eve
• why is MSR2 strong


  Plantinga a doesn’t have my to give the turn reason or even a convincing reason as to why god allows evil, he merely has to give a logically possible one to refute mackie