Evil And Omnipotence By J. L Mackie Summary

J.L Mackie’s IV. - Evil and Omnipotence presents us with the problem of believing in a God who is both Omnipotent as well as wholly good. The conflict presents that if God is both omnipotent and wholly good, then how can evil still exist? If being good means eliminating evil and omnipotent as having no limits as to what it can do, then being a good omnipotent God cannot exist in this world. The problem with evil is that evil cannot coexist if we have an omnipotent wholly good God. The author firstly begins by referencing the Pope who argues that disorder is harmony not understood and that partial evil can do good. This demonstrates the half-hearted solutions that only partial answer the proposed problem. The author refers to these solutions

They are counterparts. The author then disagrees by saying that if God was truly omnipotent, they could eliminate the need to have a contrast. To further support this claim, Mackie looked at two other counterparts; greatness and smallness. He said that these two counterparts can still exist without the other. Even if good requires evil to exist, we would just be unaware of the existence of good, or if evil exists it would only exist to the extent of a counterpart of good. In the next argument Mackie presents us with, he explains the need to have evil to give the opportunity of heroism, benevolence, and sympathy to exist. For example if good is overcoming evil, then how could someone overcome something that does not exist? How can a superhero be a superhero without a villain? They cannot. Mackie then distinguishes between first and second order good and evil. First order evil is pain and misery in contrast to first order good, which is composed of pleasure and happiness. The second order is “the heightening of happiness by the contrast with misery” (page 206). By separating the concept of good into categories, we can have the three constituent propositions however, it fails to address the conflict presented by having more