Evil

• Evil


  Natural suffering and moral evil
• Solutions to the problem of evil for the atheist

  • Epicurus' argument
  • Nietzsche's argument
  • Stephen Fry's argument
• Mackie's inconsistent triad


  • 1) God is omnipotent
  • 2) God is omnibenevolent
  • 3) Evil exists
• Mackie argued the existence of evil disproved the existence of God
• Rowe argued the existence of evil lowers the possibility that the God of theism exists
• Rubenstein argued the suffering of the Holocaust called into question the Jewish concept of God
• Solutions to the problem of evil for the religious believer

  • Suffering exists due to the work of Satan
  • Suffering is punishment from God for human abuse of free will
  • Suffering can lead to positive outcomes
• Genesis 3:1-6: 'Eve's temptation by the serpent'
• Genesis 3:16-18: 'God's punishment of Adam and Eve'
• Some Christians today believe suffering is a punishment from God, like the Westboro Baptist Church
• In Romans 5:3-5, Paul writes that suffering produces perseverance, character and hope
• Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt
• The view that suffering is a punishment from God is still held by some Christians today including the Westboro Baptist Church
• Suffering


  Can lead to positive outcomes
• Paul: 'Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope'
• Some Christians believe that they are called to suffer just as Jesus suffered
• Jesus' suffering to atone for sin followed by his resurrection shows that suffering in the short term can bring greater benefits in the long term
• Suffering


  Is part of God's plan which humans will never understand
• Job was a good and devout man with seven sons and three daughters, and he was the richest man in the east
• Satan told God that Job would not have the same amount of faith if he wasn't so fortunate. God allowed Satan to test Job's faith
• Satan took everything from Job – his wife, children, wealth and health. Yet Job's faith remained strong and he was willing to accept his fate
• Job: 'I was born with nothing, and I will die with nothing. The Lord gave and now he has taken away. May his name be praised!'
• In the end, Job's unwavering faith was rewarded, and God restores his family, property and health
• Many religious believers today accept that they will never understand the purpose of evil and suffering, they simply put their trust in God
• Suffering


  Is a test to prove that faith is genuine
• God asked Abraham to kill his son Isaac to test that his faith in him was genuine
• 1Peter1:6-7: 'Though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed'
• Free Will Defence Argument

  God created humans with free will or the ability to make their own choices. This was necessary otherwise the earth would be full of humans who behave as God wanted but they would have no autonomy. However, as humans are morally imperfect, they sometimes use free will to choose evil causing suffering.
• God is omnipotent and could prevent the pain and suffering caused by human abuse of free will. However, to do this he would have to remove free will.
• It is argued that God believed that it is better to allow freedom and the terrible consequences than to take away freedom and have humans no better than programmed robots.
• CS Lewis: 'Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.'
• Theodicy


  The attempt to justify God's existence despite the presence of evil in the world
• Augustinian theodicy


  A soul deciding theodicy based on the work of St Augustine
• God is NOT responsible for the existence of evil and did not create it. God is totally good and at each stage of creation, God saw that what he created was 'good'
• Evil only exists because something 'good' went wrong therefore evil is a privation or a corruption of good
• The Fall as outlined in Genesis 3 is the perfect example of how everything God created was 'good' yet how human abuse of free will leads to sin and its consequences
• Augustinian theodicy


  People's use of free will, will decide their fate
• The Augustinian theodicy only explains moral evil. It does not explain natural suffering
• Schleiermacher was critical of Augustine's theodicy because he argued, how can a perfectly created world go so wrong so quickly?
• The Augustinian theodicy relies very heavily on The Fall from Genesis 3 which was not an actual event in human history