This essay examines a paper by Peter Van Inwagen, “The Argument from Evil”. Inwagen’s paper attempts to give a possible reason for why there is evil in this world. However, this essay will attempt to give reasons for why Inwagen’s reason for evil does not explain evil without compromising God’s essential quality of moral perfection.
Inwagen sets the basic format for the problem of evil as thus: God has “non-negotiable” properties of omnipotence and moral perfection, there is evil in this world, if an omnipotent and morally perfect being created this world there shouldn’t be evil in it, therefore, there is no God. (Reason and Responsibility, 108) Omnipotence meaning able to bring about anything that is not a contradiction and moral perfection meaning never – not even once- doing something that is morally unacceptable. (Reason and Responsibility, 108) Inwagen’s objective in the essay, The Argument from Evil, is to present a “defense” against the problem of evil. Inwagen’s defense is not trying to prove he knows the reason why evil exists; rather, only to show that there may be “a very real possibility” that God has a morally acceptable reason for allowing evil to exist. (Reason and Responsibility, 109) Inwagen’s reasoning behind this is as follows; from the premises of the problem of evil the conclusion, God does not exist, does not necessary follow because He may have a morally acceptable reason for allowing evil to exist. Inwagen makes a case for the above reasoning by using an analogy that shows human do not always act on their wants, that they are able to bring about, because they have reasons not to and this can be extrapolated to God. (Reason and Responsibility, 109) The next question then is: what this reason, or reasons, to ...
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...table to punish Hitler’s son for his father’s crimes? No it’s not morally acceptable because he was simply not responsible for them. Then, how can God inflict humans with evils today for what human ancestors did? There is no morally acceptable reason to do this. A person that commits a crime is punished not his friend or son who was not involved. This violates God’s quality of moral perfection. Inwagen’s reply to this is that humans are inflicted with evils because humans today are separated from God. However, even a person that is not separated from God and loves Him can experience great evil through no fault of his own, for instance cancer. A fairly easy investigation into this matter would likely reveal a person who loved God and still experienced a great evil. Therefore, Inwagen’s defense is not possible because it fails to account for God’s moral perfection.
The pervasive problem of evil in the world has pleagued the Christian faith that proclaim God as a good and perfect God. There has been a need for theist to address this issues as a disclaimer for those that use evil as an reason to disprove that God could be good, perfect or even exist. Therefore, theist theologians and philosophers have turned to theodicies to attempt to explain the problem of evil. Theodicy is an attempt to explain why God permits evil in the world. This essay will show the historical approach to theodicy, the opposition to said theodicies and why theodicies could still play an important role today.
The problem of evil is a big topic in today’s society and will continue to be for forever. The problem is that so many bad things happen in the world that Gods existence is debatable and if he is real, it is questionable that he is as powerful as the bible portrays him to be. In this case, we ask the question, how can such a good and powerful God not prevent evil in the world? The argument at hand is that if a perfect God exists, there would be no evil in the world and since evil exists, there is no God. In this paper, I will examine both sides to the problem. I will discuss views on why God is in existence and allows evil, as well as views on why God is not in existence based on the fact that there is evil in the world. After that I will take my stance on the issue and justify why I think that way.
An Analysis of Peter van Inwagen’s The Magnitude, Duration, and Distribution of Evil: a Theodicy
The Consequence Argument is an argument that concludes a hypothesis to be true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences. This is based on an appeal to emotion, or a manipulation of one’s emotion in order to win an argument, especially in the absence of factual evidence. There are two sides in the Consequence Argument, compatibilism and determinism. Free will is the ability to either perform or restrain from actions based upon one’s decision. In the free will debate, Peter van Inwagen, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, takes on a compatibilist view by establishing that freedom can be present or absent in situations for any reasons, and that if determinism is true than one’s
The problem of evil arguably the most personal and haunting question in apologetics. No heart is untouched by the sting of another’s words and the ultimate display of evil, death. For some, like Elie Wiesel in his autobiography Night, the full scope of human evil is unbearably clear as they are faced with the full measure of human evil. This reality of evil often leads to two responses: “since there is evil, there cannot be a god” or “if there is a god, he cannot be loving or powerful, or worse, he enjoys evil.” By exploring the nature of evil, developing loving, Christian responses, and historical evils like the persecution of the Jews, the problem of evil and the hope depicted in scripture comes into focus.
A second and stronger objection to Mackie’s version of the problem of evil is explained to us using the terms 1st and 2nd order goods and evils. 1st order goods/evils are purely physical. Examples are pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. It is claimed by many theists that 1st order evils such as pain and suffering are necessary for 2nd order goods like courage and charity. However there exists what Mackie calls a “fatal objection” to this claim and that is that along with 2nd order goods there must also exist 2nd order evil...
...mpossibility for an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God to exist in a universe where evil exists. The qualities in question are categorical, omnipotence, omniscience and being perfectly good, and the only way to account for the existence of evil is to limit in some way one of the categorical characteristics. What this does is change the quality of omnipotence to the lesser quality of extremely powerful. And in admitting any restrictions to any of the classical attributes of God is to admit that the logical impossibility is in fact valid. What a person needs to do is examine the problem objectively first, and only after reaching their objective conclusion can they then apply it to their religious beliefs.
“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world” (Lewis, 1994, p. 91). Throughout history man has had to struggle with the problem of evil. It is one of the greatest problems of the world. Unquestionably, there is no greater challenge to man’s faith then the existence of evil and a suffering world. The problem can be stated simply: If God is an all-knowing and all-loving God, how can He allow evil? If God is so good, how can He allow such bad things to happen?Why does He allow bad things to happen to good people? These are fundamental questions that many Christians and non-Christians set out to answer.
In, “The Problem of Evil,” Eleonore Stump holds the belief that the existence of evil in our world does not automatically disprove God’s existence. The belief that God cannot live alongside evil is considered to be the Evidential Problem of evil and this is what Stump is arguing against in her paper. Stump argues, the ability to fix our defective free will makes Union with God possible, which overwrites all the un-absorbable evils in the world, showing both God and un-absorbable evils can coexist. In this paper I hope to show that God can exist, but also show that human free will is limited.
Moral evil was an issue that weighed heavily on the minds of the people of the Medieval period. Philosophers and poets alike attempted to address and understand the problem of moral evil, scrutinizing the roots of evil and the effects of evil on the body and, more importantly, on the soul. Of the philosophers that the period produced the views of St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Boethius on the problem of evil are perhaps the most notable. From the literary side of the spectrum, the problem of evil is addressed heavily in Beowulf.
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.
Claudia Card begins by questioning the difference between wrong and evil. How do we know when something crosses the line between being just wrong, to being an evil act? How does hatred and motive play a part in this? How can people psychologically maintain a sense of who they are when they have been the victims of evil? Card attempts to explain these fundamental questions using her theory of evil; the Atrocity Paradigm (Card, pg.3).
Karma comes in two ways, good karma or bad karma. However Miss Strangeworth got the worst kind ever, revenge karma. In the short story, The Possibility of Evil by Shirley Jackson, it is clear that judging others can result to bad karma, because she judges her town, and consequences return the favor. She is shallow and has too much power, however it starts with judgement. The Possibility of Evil takes us through a journey of a selfish woman and her consequences.
This essay is a conclusive look at the problems and contradictions underlying a belief in God and the observable traits of the world. This problem is traditionally labelled The Problem of Evil. This essay will be an analysis into the Problem of Evil and a counter rebuttal to objections levied against the Problem of Evil. This analysis will be on the nature of god and the world of evil, the world as a mixed creation, ‘sorting’ into heaven and hell objection, God’s ‘mysterious ways’ objection, the inscrutability of god objection, values presupposing pain objection, inherent contradictions in ‘God’s freewill’ and finally non-human
In the beginning, God created the world. He created the earth, air, stars, trees and mortal animals, heaven above, the angels, every spiritual being. God looked at these things and said that they were good. However, if all that God created was good, from where does un-good come? How did evil creep into the universal picture? In Book VII of his Confessions, St. Augustine reflects on the existence of evil and the theological problem it poses. For evil to exist, the Creator God must have granted it existence. This fundamentally contradicts the Christian confession that God is Good. Logically, this leads one to conclude evil does not exist in a created sense. Augustine arrives at the conclusion that evil itself is not a formal thing, but the result of corruption away from the Supreme Good. (Augustine, Confessions 7.12.1.) This shift in understanding offers a solution to the problem of evil, but is not fully defended within Augustine’s text. This essay will illustrate how Augustine’s solution might stand up to other arguments within the context of Christian theology.