Problem of evil

• The logical problem of evil 

  Inconsistent triad 

  • If god is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, how can evil exist 
  • God either isn't powerful enough to stop evil or doesn't want to 
  • God doesn't exist 
• The problem of evil 

  • Uses the existence of evil in the world to argue that god doesn't exist 
  • Moral evil – committed by humans, e.g. murder 
  • Natural evil – suffering from natural processes, earthquake. 
• Mackie's response 

  • He questions why can we have good without evil 
  • If we lived in a red world we wouldn't have a word for red, but everything would still be red we just wouldn't know 
• Reply 2: the world is better with some evil than none at all 

  • First order goods – pleasure 
  • Second order good – courage  
  • Some evil is necessary for certain types of good 
  • Second order goods maximise first order goods 
  • Without first order evils second order goods couldn't exist 
• Mackie's response 

  • Its logically possible to have a world with free will and no second order evils 
  • So why wouldn't an omnipotent and omniscient gid create this, second order evils aren't necessary 
• Prob; free will defence 

  • Its logically possible that god would allow second order evils for a greater good. 
  • morally significant action- either morally good or morally bad 
  • significantly free – being able to do or not do morally significant actions 
  • A being created by God to only do morally good actions would not be significantly free 
  • the only way God could eliminate evil would be to eliminate significantly free beings 
  • a world that contains significantly free beings is more good than a world that does not contain significantly free beings 
• The evidential problem of evil  

  • can allow that God’s existence is possible. 
  • the amount and distribution of evil in the world is good evidence that God doesn’t exist. 
  • e.g. innocent people throughout history killed for no good reason 
  • if God did exist, there would be less evil and it would be less to those undeserving of it. 
• Prob; free will  

  • God could have made a world with less evil, but this would mean less free will. 
  • having free will creates more good than the evil it also creates. 
• John hick soul making theodicy 

  • humans are unfinished beings.  
  • Soul making - our purpose in life is to develop personally, ethically and spiritually 
  • we couldn’t learn virtues such as forgiveness if people never treated us wrongly. 
  • virtues acquired through hard work and discipline 
• why god allows animals to suffer 

  • God wanted to create epistemic distance between himself and humanity 
  • If God just proved he existed, we wouldn’t be free to develop a relationship with him. 
• Why God allows such terrible evils 

  • it’s not possible for God to just get rid of terrible evil and leave only ordinary evil 
  • terrible evils are only terrible in contrast to ordinary evils 
  • If God kept getting rid of terrible evils then he would have to keep reducing free 
• Why God allows such pointless evils 

  • if every time we saw someone suffering we knew it wasn't pointless then we would never be able to develop deep sympathy. 
  • without unfair and pointless evil, we would never be able to develop virtues such as hope and faith