People wonder how an Omniscient God could allow such evil to take place in the world. When natural disasters strike and kill thousands of people and leave many more homeless, or when the dreaded cancer envelopes the nurturing mother of three kids and leaves the family grief stricken and in shambles; how could you muster up the faith to believe, No, there is a God. This has been at the root of all debates whether God exists or not. Atheists always pull this out of their sleeves when getting in heated arguments with theists about the existence of a God. “If He’s so Omnibenevolent, if He loves you so much, why does he make bad things happen?” The problem has been part of a lifelong argument. The problem of evil has left many theists running around like chickens with their heads cut off. It’s distressing for them to admit that either God allows evil or that He does not have all the Omnis. Evil exists, no doubt about it. The problem for a theist is, how do you prove the existence of an Omniscient God when such torment occurs in the world. How do you get them to see that it is a good thing? Can you? …show more content…
God is supposed to possess all the Omnis. And obviously he would not allow such evil and be Omnibenevolent. There goes one of the Omnis. Shouldn’t God be all powerful, therefore shouldn’t He be able to do away with evil? Well it’s here, it’s a problem, so maybe He can’t get rid of it. That would mean He’s not all powerful. God is already missing two Omnis as a result of evil. It is evident why an atheist would believe no God could exist despite the problem of evil. However, what if there is a reason beyond out comprehension as to why these bad things
Seems like each day we turn on our televisions, open up our Internet browsers or turn on our smartphones we’re confronted with some disturbing news of people doing unimaginable acts to each other, to animals, to our planet or horrible things happening to people all across the globe. At some point, possibly even to the non-believers, the questions of a higher power and its existence comes into question as we debate on how or why if God is All Powerful, All Knowing, and All Good, how can He allow such atrocities to befallen mankind and the world?
It is logical to argue that, by nature, an omnipotent and omnibenevelont god, would be able to and would want to eradicate all evil completely. Once one concludes that there is observable evil in the world,
In “Colleges Turn ‘Fake News’ Epidemic into a Teachable Moment” (Washington Post, April 6, 2017), Kitson Jazynka highlights professors from across the United States that have implemented different strategies for teaching students to find and address fake news. Jazynka first writes of professor Beth Jannery at George Mason University and how her students have had personal experience with fake news and how they handled the situation. In one case, the student decided to research the topic herself and find the truth. Jazynka advises that the professors cited in her article are teaching students to “detect bias, missing points of view, misleading slants and economic influences” to ensure they have a complete understanding of the articles and their
Throughout history, the Problem of Evil has always been a topic of debate between many philosophers. Some philosophers find it impossible for the existence of an all-knowing God and the existence of evil at the same time. Other theists have been able to defend how the two are compatible. J.L. Mackie, a former Philosophy professor at Oxford, attempted to prove the theists’ arguments of the co-existence of God and evil to be invalid. Mackie presents many counterarguments for the Problem of Evil.
This then begs the question; what are the reasons that God believes that the existence of evil is necessary? There are two ways of approaching an argument for the belief that God has his reasons to allow evil. These two ways are a theodicy and a defense. In his book, Inwagen says “The difference between a theodicy and a defense is simply that a theodicy is put forward as true, while nothing more is claimed of a defense than that it represents a real possibility” (31). Theodicy takes into account the evidence of evil and shows that it is still reasonable to believe in a God despite the existence of evil. Overall, a theodicy is a justification for God. A defense, on the other hand, offers a logical explanation for the existence of evil. A defense may say that there are reasons that God allows evil to persist, but, humans may never know these reasons. There is one well known and most rational defense. This is called the free-will defense. The free-will defense says that God made the world and included rational beings. He gave them the power of free-will. This meant that humans held the ability to make their own decisions and to have their own desires freely without any barriers. God decided that overall, free-will was a great enough good and that the existence of it outweighed the existence of the evil that results from the abuse of
Following this line of thought, the next logical step for our human minds to pursue would seem to be that in order for God to experience Himself as the all-consuming good, there had to be something called the all-consuming evil. This is a flawed argument for there is only one deity we recognize as God. God is all there was, all there is, and all there ever will be. The existence of evil cannot be used as a pathetic excuse for God to be able to justify His existence.
Now that’s all well and good, except for the fact that the logical problem of evil spends so much time focused on the omnipotent and the omnibenevolent aspects of God that is all together neglects the fact that God is also omniscient. He knows everything, past, present, and future. Therefore, it is only logical to assume that God also knows the best way to achieve the greatest good, which as established is the singular goal of an omnibenevolent being. If such knowledge is true, as it must be according to the laws of Omni-three, then it is possible that God has determined that the greatest good can only come by human-choice, also known as freewill, not by His force. In a bit, I will attempt to explain just
The argument for the existence of God has been a debate for many centuries. God, in terms of philosophy, must be a supernatural being that: is all-knowing, is all-powerful, and is all-good. Theists believe God exists based on these terms; atheists on the other hand don’t believe in God. Atheists believe that if there is evil present in the universe, then there is no possible way God can exist if he is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. Evil is defined in three different categories: human evil (evil we humans cause), natural evil (not in our control, of the Earth), and sufferings of the heart (not necessarily human/natural evil). The argument for the problem of evil is that God doesn’t exist because evil exists. In
One day a dog ran in a dump and found a dead raccoon. He ran back home, hid it in his bed. Three days pass and the whole house smells like dead animals. Jeff let the dog out to go to the bathroom. The dog ran down the road and found that dump. He found a cat. He ran it down the interstate. They were jumping on the hoods of the cars. The dog finely gave up and went
God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, which makes us wonder what kind of morally sufficient reason justifies God to allow evil. We know that evil exists in our world, but so does God, so would God be the source of evil as well as good? We have established that God is the omnipotent and benevolent free creator of the world, but suffering and evil exist. Is God unable to prevent evil? If so, he would not be omnipotent. Is He able to prevent the evil in our world but unwilling? If this were then case then he wouldn’t be benevolent. A Persian thinker, Mani, suggested that the answer to this question was a kind of duality between the good and evil. This pluralistic view of the good and evil in our world would suggest that God is
This is considered a theodicy problem, and there are hundreds of different definitions, thoughts, and responses to this question. Our world has suffered great tragedies, just a few are the mass shootings at schools of children, the 9/11 attack on our nation, the multiple World Wars over the centuries. One of the problems that is argues over why God would allow these things to happen and lives be taken in such horrendous ways. That’s where the theodicy problem starts which defines as “a defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil” (Webster, 1828).
William Rowe defines gratuitous evil as an instance of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.(Rowe 335) In a world with so much evil it raises the questions If God is all powerful, all knowing and all good, how can he allow bad things to happen to good people? Can God even exist in a world with so such gratuitous evil? These are questions that has afflicted humanity for a very long time and has been the question to engross theologians for centuries. The existence of evil has been the most influential and powerful reason to disprove the existence of God. It is believed among many theist that God is the creator and caretaker
The theological problem of evil is a problem that many philosophers have tried to solve. The problem is stated as, "if one believes that god is omnipotent and wholly good, why does evil still exist?" In this writing I will discuss the solutions/propositions of John L. Mackie in his work, "Evil and Omnipotence." I will do this in order to illustrate the concept of free will for understanding or resolving the problem, and to reveal how and why Mackie arrives at his conclusions.
In the construction of the Large Hardon Collider, physicists seek and hope to unlock the mysteries of the universe by analyzing the attributes of the most miniscule particles known to man. In the same way, theologians have argued back and forth over the course of human history with regards to the divine attributes of God, seeking and hoping to unlock the mysteries of the metaphysical universe. Although these many attributes, for example omnipresence, could be debated and dissected ad nauseum, it is within the scope of this research paper to focus but on one of them. Of these many divine attributes of God, nothing strikes me as more intriguing than that of God’s omnipotence. It is intriguing to me because the exploration of
Many believed Ancient Athens brought a time of its prime for the development of literary art and its culture. Specifically, Ancient Athenian Dramatics took the lead in this role for their epic themes of the inner-conflicting struggles of humanity and the never-ending, twisting fates delivered by the rein of the gods. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature proclaims the artists intention in a similar manner: “By serving the gods, displaying the strange and surprising ways that divine forces operate on human lives” (Puchner et all 608). One way of delivering the intensity of their storytelling, Dramatics acknowledged the altering sensitivities in the human experience and, also, brought light to the extremities of human behavior and its reacting emotions. Some of the most famous epic tragedies today, like the famous, Sophocles’ story, Oedipus The King and Homer’s Iliad Book XXIV, display main characters in the focus of extreme emotional personalities with twisted fates and over-the-top reactions of anger and pride. Accordingly I believe that the writers’ intention in using main characters of deep, embedded anger and extreme pride was to open a curiosity in divine fate, exploration of self-acceptance, and also the balance of humanity.