God in the Gaps

This world is subject to great acts of goodness and also great acts of evil. These acts have extreme range on both sides, demonstrated in kindly helping your neighbor to build a fence and conversely, descending all the way to the holocaust. As it seems, both sides act on their own volition. Evil and good can also happen in seemingly non-directed ways, as in finding a giant sack of money on the ground or having your town destroyed by a tornado. The state of the world is that there are acts of good and evil, for whatever reason they happen.

The problem of evil arises in the belief, or to go further, the possibility of an O3 god. That is, a god that is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. The defined omniscient god inherently knows all of the goings on in the universe, the omnipotent god has the implicit power to change any thing in the universe and the omnibenevolent god has an intrinsic, ultimate intention to do good for humanity in any situation.

The conflict arises as such: How can an O3 god, one who has the knowledge, power and intention to seek the best interests of humanity allow suffering on the scale that we’ve known for all of human existence? How can an this O3 god exist in the wake of terrible human atrocities and planet caused natural disasters that claim so many lives? How can all the evil in the world be reconciled with a god that is defined to stand for all that is good, just and loving? Can an O3 god even be possible?

The great Gottfried Leibniz, part time inventor of calculus, part time developer of western philosophy, published an essay on this topic attempting to rectify the apparent contradiction. This theodicy (a term that Leibniz coined, essentially meaning an apology for god. Having need ...

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...anity to it’s pinnacle. The death and disease is part of the plan, but we’ll never know about it. I cannot accept this, as true benevolence and senseless death contradict each other. I also cannot place faith in something that we have no knowledge of and never will. Thus I do not conclude that an O3 god is logical.

Works Cited

Leibniz, Gottfried. God, Evil and the Best of All Possible Worlds. Introduction to Philosophy, Classical and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Perry, Bratman, Fischer. P. 94-5. Oxford University Press. New York, New York, 2010.

Perry, John. Dialogue on Good, Evil, and the Existence of God. Philosophy, Classical and Contemporary Readings. Ed. Perry, Bratman, Fischer. P. 96-119. Oxford University Press. New York, New York, 2010.

God on Trial. Dir. Andy de Emmony. Per. Antony Sher, Rupert Graves, Jack Shepherd. Hat Trick Productions, 2008.