The Problem of Evil is a problematic debate amongst skeptics and Christians. This essay will construct my personal views of the inconsistency between the three tenets that intelligent and rational Christians affirm. The focus of this essay is to address the contradiction between the three tenets of the Christian faith and to discuss the consequent remarks in regards to labeling God as all good and all powerful. Based on my personal belief, I find it difficult to accept all three tenets considering that the third tenant challenges the other two tenets of God’s power and love. If God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then why does he allow real suffering to exist within the world of humanity?
Based on my personal reflection, I believe that God shouldn’t be categorized as both an all-powerful and an all-loving God, since he allows moral and natural evil to occur within the world. Wouldn’t an all-loving and all-powerful God want to see humans happy and allow empathy in the world? In the book of Genesis, God is considered as the sole creator of everything involved in the universe. Considering that he is the sole creator, we would intent that all things he brought would be based on soulful and good intentions. But considering that there are evil things in the world, then wouldn’t he also be the sole creator to blame for evils existence?
When discussing God’s capability of allowing evil to exists, one must be aware that there are two types of evil; moral evil and natural evil. Since we are discussing evil, we must take into account the several types of evil that exist in our world. Both moral and natural evil exist in the world.
If God is all loving and all powerful, why does he allow moral evils, such as humans committing evil act...
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...of evil in which we are and aren’t held accountable for. It is God who is accountable for our actions for he is the one who granted us with the power.
With that being said, I argue that there is an inconsistency between the three tenets that intelligence and rational Christians affirm. Based on my belief, we cannot label God as all-powerful and loving considering that he has allowed the existence of evil not only to be welcomed into society but also to let it continue. The third tenet of suffering contradicts the first two tenets of Gods love and omnipotence. If God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then why does he continue to allow suffering to exist within the world of humanity? The best way to answer this question according to Thomas Aquinas would be ““Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God.” (Summa Theologiae, Questions on God)
It is perhaps the most difficult intellectual challenge to a Christian how God and evil can both exist. Many of the greatest minds of the Christian church and intellects such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas spent their entire lives trying to solve this problem, and were unsuccessful (Erickson, 2009, p.439). However, this dilemma is not only an intellectual challenge, but it is emotional. Man feels it, lives it. Failing to identify the religious form of the problem of evil will appear insensitive; failure to address the theological form will seem intellectually insulting. This conundrum will never be completely met during our earthly life, but there are many biblical and philosophical resources that help mitigate it.
"Did God decide what goodness is? If so, then "good" is more or less the arbitrary decision of a frightening being to which we cannot relate, and that being could just as easily have made murder and stealing the ultimate moral actions without any contradictions. On the other hand, if God did not decide what goodness is, he cannot truly be omnipo...
Throughout the world, most people believe in some type of god or gods, and the majority of them understand God as all-good, all-knowing (omniscient), and all-powerful (omnipotent). However, there is a major objection to the latter belief: the “problem of evil” (P.O.E.) argument. According to this theory, God’s existence is unlikely, if not illogical, because a good, omniscient, and omnipotent being would not allow unnecessary suffering, of which there are enormous amounts.
The problem of evil is inescapable in this fallen world. From worldwide terror like the Holocaust to individual evils like abuse, evil touches every life. However, evil is not a creation of God, nor was it in His perfect will. As Aleksandr
In a world of chaos, he who lives, lives by his own laws and values. Who is to say that the death of millions is any worse or better, for that matter, than injuring a cockroach. And in the case of an existing power in the form of God, who is presumed to be all which is good, presiding and ruling an organized universe, why then does evil exist? The prosaic response of “without evil, there is no good” no longer holds any validity in this argument as the admitted goal of good is to reach an existence without evil. So even if a God does exist, I think it is fair, at this point, to say that he is the embodiment of both good and evil. And if humoring those who would answer the previous question with the response that there can be no good without evil, then can we assume that evil is simply a subsection of a defined good? Or perhaps even a good thing? If it is essential, those who chose the side of evil are simply abiding by good values. In the case of a world ruled by Chaos, evil is a non-existent word or value, rather. The system upon which a person’s actions are judged also disappears leaving nothing but an instinct for natural survival as basic and primary as the life within the forests which we tear down to build our houses.
This is an important point, because if our understanding of God is that He is purely good, then why would so many of this heinous events occur. “Theist reply that because God is necessarily good, He would never do anything morally reprehensible Himself nor command us to preform heinous acts.” (Anderson, 2007). However, God is seen punishing not only those who are considered to be evil, but also those who are innocent, He causes floods, plagues and death to many people because of one person’s act, or if He was angry. This is completely opposite to our understanding of God loving us all and to our most important idea that God is perfectly good. Even if these acts were seen as punishing those who are considered evil, then God would have not done any act that would harm someone, nor would He permit us to do so. The bible is filled with these inaccuracies, is God loving of all, or just the few that follow Him, it states different allowances in stories (Infidels.org, 2016). It is my understanding that these stories are proof that God is not purely good, which itself is an argument for Him not to exist or that the stories themselves or false. Murder was perfectly fine for the soldiers of the First Crusade, who slaughtered every man, woman, and child, however it is written in the bible that murder is prohibited, it is a sin. Many other events like this occurred. When we look
For the author the goodness of God remains despite the reality and face of evil in the world because evil is the result of man’s weakness, of man using his free will to veer away from the laws and opt to live in sin. God in all his power shows the utmost respect on man’s freedom by not imposing his will on men but by respecting his choice – to be good or to be evil.
In order to explain man’s path from the one to the other, he sets up a system of dichotomies that originate from Adam’s fall and are hinged upon the role of the will in earthly life. At the top, God is the source of the “supreme good,” and evil is its opposite (XII, 3). Up to this point, he is in agreement with the ancients, but he diverges again when he equates the good with nature, and evil with a defect of nature—an absence of the good (XII, 3). In this we have the first division of what “supremely is” between nature and vice, with nature arising ...
A foundational belief in Christianity is the idea that God is perfectly good. God is unable to do anything evil and all his actions are motives are completely pure. This principle, however, leads to many questions concerning the apparent suffering and wrong-doing that is prevalent in the world that this perfect being created. Where did evil come from? Also, how can evil exist when the only eternal entity is the perfect, sinless, ultimately good God? This question with the principle of God's sovereignty leads to even more difficult problems, including human responsibility and free will. These problems are not limited to our setting, as church fathers and Christian philosophers are the ones who proposed some of the solutions people believe today. As Christianity begins to spread and establish itself across Europe in the centuries after Jesus' resurrection, Augustine and Boethius provide answers, although wordy and complex, to this problem of evil and exactly how humans are responsible in the midst of God's sovereignty and Providence.
The problem of reconciling an omnipotent, perfectly just, perfectly benevolent god with a world full of evil and suffering has plagued believers since the beginning of religious thought. Atheists often site this paradox in order to demonstrate that such a god cannot exist and, therefore, that theism is an invalid position. Theodicy is a branch of philosophy that seeks to defend religion by reconciling the supposed existence of an omnipotent, perfectly just God with the presence of evil and suffering in the world. In fact, the word “theodicy” consists of the Greek words “theos,” or God, and “dike,” or justice (Knox 1981, 1). Thus, theodicy seeks to find a sense of divine justice in a world filled with suffering.
God is the source of evil. He created natural evil, and gave humans the ability to do moral evil by giving them a free will. However, had he not given people free will, then their actions would not be good or evil; nor could God reward or punish man for his actions since they had no choice in what to do. Therefore, by giving humans choice and free will, God allowed humanity to decide whether to reward themselves with temporary physical goods, and suffer in the long run from unhappiness, or forsake bodily pleasures for eternal happiness.
If evil cannot be accounted for, then belief in the traditional Western concept of God is absurd” (Weisberger 166). At the end of the day, everyone can come up with all these numerous counter arguments and responses to the Problem of Evil but no one can be entirely responsible or accountable for the evil and suffering in a world where there is the existence of a “omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent God.” Does the argument of the Problem of Evil or even the counter arguments help the evil and suffering of innocent human beings across this world? No. However, the Problem of Evil is most successful in recognizing the evil and suffering of the world but not presenting a God that is said to be wholly good and perfect to be blamed and as a valid excuse for the deaths and evil wrongdoings of this world.
In works based on the Christian religion God is often portrayed as all-knowing and all-powerful. This is how God is portrayed
more than evil is capable of what seems to be good. More often in the story, God
Our free will that God gave us leads to sin since humans are not fully pure. Sin then leads to evil. I believe that God allows evil to exist. He can handle evil, it’s below him. If God is capable of mediating as I trust, then He must not for reasons. First, it would curtail our free will if He intervened. If he destroyed evil now, then there would be no more goodness since one can’t exist without the other. Second, we wouldn’t learn from our mistakes; we learn from suffering and hardships. Perseverance makes us stronger, not