Atheism: The Problem Of Evil

Many of us question why we live in a universe full of sin and evil? We question if our god is good why is our natural world filled with suffering, violence and destruction? This is where the theodicy problem comes into play, Theodicy is an attempt to explain why a good god would have created evil and suffering. Atheists don’t believe in God for this matter, since evil exists they assume God must not. I believe that we were all blessed with the ability to choose and we can still make our own choices. What God did was he created mankind with free will, it can't be logical for a man to remain sin free when they are making their own choices. So we can make our choices moral, immoral, or amoral. Immoral acts result in evil, if God intervened it

On the topic of the existence of God, Ernest Nagel and Richard Swinburne have construct arguments that challenge one another. In Nagel’s article, “Does God Exist?” he argues that if God is all-powerful, omniscient, and benevolent; he would know when evil occurs and has the power to prevent it. Because evil occurs, God does not exist. This is the problem of evil. Challenging Nagel, the article by Swinburne, “Why God Allows Evil,” argues that God has the right to allow moral and natural evils to occur because those evils reap greater goods that make the lives of human-beings meaningful. He extends his argument to the idea that God seeks to provide human beings with goods such as freewill and responsibility of not only ourselves, but of the world and others. While Nagel utilizes the problem of evil as an objection to the existence of God, Swinburne employs it to show that God allows evil to occur to provide human beings with goods that go beyond moments of pleasure and joys of happiness.

If god was all good, all powerful and all knowing, he would not allow the existence of evil.

There are counter-arguments to refute this logical problem evil. Although some of them can suggest logical possibility of theism, they would not be convincing enough. Facing tremendous evil typically Holocaust, it is not easy to accept a reasoning why God lets evil exist even if which is logical.

The atheists question the existence of God; they claim that since there is a moral contradiction about a morally perfect God, God must not be a morally perfect God nor omnipotent or omniscient (Beebe, n.d). The atheists tried to prove the non-existence of God by pointing out this logical inconsistencies: If God is omnipotent, he would prevent all suffering; if God omniscient, he would know how to eliminate suffering; and if God is all-loving and morally perfect, he would never let suffering exist in the world (Beebe, n.d). However, theists have invalidated the atheist claims by pointing out that God might have morally sufficient reason for allowing evil.

The "greater good" style of theodicy hinges, to a large extent, upon our sense of God's omniscience. If our intellectual capacity is infinitely less than that of God and the comparison of anything finite, such as human intelligence, to something infinite like the omniscience of God then it stands to reason that the existence of evil may be part of some larger scheme which eludes our understanding. Any Christian theodicy

Christians believe in a God who is Omni benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent. Since there is evil in the world atheist believe one or all of the following: God is not good and therefore responsible for the evil in the world, he is not omniscient and did not know what would happen, he is not omnipotent and couldn’t prevent evil, or he does not exist. This research paper will discuss the three arguments for the existence of God: The Cosmological Argument, The Syllogism Argument, and The Moral argument.

God cannot determine the outcome of our free choice. So either there is no omniscient god or we are created without free will and therefore are forced/unable to avoid doing evil. Again this shows that god is not benevolent, nor omniscient, therefore he is non-existent. Theists may argue the following reason for god to have granted humans free will. It is possible that god raised homo sapiens to rationality giving the gift of abstract thought, language and disinterested love. And so it is arguable that god gave us free will to allow for love, as free will is necessary for love. Although this may be one of many reasons that god granted us free will, it is one that we may understand. Free will is necessary for both erotic and platonic love. One may argue that evil is only trumped by love. And that the existence of evil, although in its masses is worth it for the sake of

Evil cannot be disproven and it is beneficial to existence overall. Atheists and Christians alike may be troubled is the question of why evil exist? Why does God let evil exist? If he is all-powerful and good why would he do that? The idea of a forgiving omnipotent God allowing the presence of moral evil seems conflicting. We are created in his image, if God is good why do we tend to sin? To understand this it is important to know the distinctions between the two primary categories of evil. Theologians and Philosophers such as Aquinas or Nietzsche recognize that with

The more we learn, the more choices we realize that we have and we can choose any of these different choices thus giving us free will. The free will defense states that free will is the cause of evil. By giving man free will they aren’t restricted and therefore evil is inevitable in the world. For god to give man free will but prevent evil would be a contradiction within itself as free will is the freedom of choice but preventing evil would be taking away a choice. God gives us free will, because free will is inherently good therefore free will entails the possibility of doing what is contrary to God's will (this is what we know as evil). Thus, evil exists, because of man's actions, rather than because of God. This gives sufficient evidence to prove that god can be omni-benevolent as free will is an inherently good trait, however this does only explain moral evil and leaves natural evils unexplained. If god continuously rescued people from natural evils, then humanity would rely on him instead of themselves in case of emergency therefore becoming a very dependent species and losing free will. Furthermore, one can question how good free will

As an imperfect human, we will not be able to understand God’s purpose to certain things that happen and should find no surprise as to why bad things happen to good people and the existence of evil. Keywords: Problem of evil, God, suffering, free will, nature of evil, natural evil   The Religious Quest Response Paper There are

The problem of evil is the argument that if God is omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), and benevolent. This implies that if God exists then he knows how to, wants to, and can prevent all suffering. If such a God existed, though, then he would prevent all types of evil. Although evil in all forms is an everyday part of the world around us; it has not been prevented. Therefore, God does not exist. More precisely if God exists then he is all-knowing, almighty, and perfectly good, if God were these then the world would not contain evil. There is evil in the world both moral and natural, so God does not exist. If God does exist, then there would be no evil. The existence of evil makes Gods existence rationally impossible.

Evil cannot be justified within a theistic framework. Five ideas attempts to argue the existence of evil coincide within a theistic framework. However, all five ideas are flawed and cannot justify how evil can exist within a theistic framework. Counter argument against the five ideas will be discussed below.

This argument presents a contradiction by supposing that worldly evil and an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good God could not exist simultaneously. This brings forth a distressing decision: one is forced to either abandon any belief in God’s existence in favour of what they know to be a valid argument, or abandon a valid argument in favour of theistic beliefs. Thus the contradiction presents itself. In this paper I shall reject the argument from evil while attempting to outline a possible solution to the contradiction it presents. I shall stress, however, that I am merely supposing a possible solution to this logical contradiction, not arguing for the truthfulness of such a solution; an absence of contradiction does not imply truthfulness. With that being said, let us continue.

The idea by atheists claiming that since evil exists God does not exist is impossible. This is because they know the meaning of the word God and since it means “perfect”, the idea of his non-existence will imply his imperfection thus making this idea absurd. God’s non-existence is obviously false just like the idea of having a five-sided rectangle. The confusion with atheists is thinking that God does not exist, which would make us able to imagine him being better than he actually is; making us imagine him existing and we would clearly like a God who exists rather than the one who does