Marilyn Mccoord Adams Concept Of Evil

Exploring the existence of God or even the possibility of the existence of God, upon the basis of evil is the focal point of this paper. Such evils that will question the probability of God’s existence will be centered on gratuitous and horrendous evils. In this essay, the concept of evil and the existence of God will be explored through Marilyn McCord-Adam’s (1989) discussion of horrendous evils, Stephen Wykstra (1986) and Alvin Plantinga’s (1977) defense of skeptical theism and critique of William Rowe, as well as through Rowe’s (1979) argument against the ability for evil (including gratuitous) to exist alongside an omniscient omnipotent wholly good God. I do not defend nor discredit either theory, for both contain critical errors that

Outbalancing, a satisfactory approach, is a method that Rowe would argue must be achieved for a tri-omni God to exist. Outbalancing evil is a strategy that shows amount of disvalue does not outweigh against the generic and global goods (Adams, 1989). The second strategy is not addressed in Rowe’s exploration of evil. McCord Adams’ defense for the necessity of evil is that God uses evil for the goodness of those who experience such intense suffering. To “defeat” evil, the strategy must show how each instance of evil has become “meaningful” to those involved in the evil (Adams, 1989). Thus, while the intense suffering of the evil could be outbalanced, for it to truly be beneficial to the good of the person and for the sake of good versus evil, it must be defeated. The latter is more demanding because such horrors that come from these evils must each have individual meaning that can be appreciated by those that the horrors have been experienced

The skeptical theist, much like Alvin Plantinga (1977) and Stephen Wykstra (1986), would assert that God is better expressed through Judeo-Christian defining factors of the characteristics of God. These philosophers argue that God has judgments that we as His children will never be able to comprehend. Thus, we cannot argue that evils that exist are not always gratuitous by our reasoning as our reasoning is already limited within the context of limited cognitive abilities versus God’s own power. Much like McCord Adam’s (1989) defense, Wykstra (1986) suggests that humans are both tools of transcending evil and being a part of God’s illustration of His divine characteristics as well as illustrating the superiority of God’s judgment against humanistic reasoning. Both McCord Adams (1989) and Wykstra (1986) take on the concept of God being a parental figure that children may not understand the reasoning of His actions but nonetheless must transcend from the events that they endure in order to defeat evil and accomplish the intentions of