In analyzing Hick’s argument, there were some weaknesses as well and strengths of the logic in his argument. The weaknesses that I found were in how he related the freedom of humans and soul-making to God. He says in his last premise that I mentioned in the summary that much of the suffering humans feel is caused from their own decisions. How then does this relate to the relationship we cultivate with God? One could answer that in this suffering we draw closer to the theistic God but if that were God’s intention wouldn’t that be taking away some of humans free will. If he planned for the evil to cause to draw to him he is in a sense forcing that outcome so that draw from free will. Another flaw I found in the logistics of his argument was that he said that suffering is caused from human’s own decisions. But …show more content…
If this is true then this is something that should have been addressed because I find that it can cause his premise to not be completely true. Some strengths I found Hick’s argument was the sequential lay out of his premises. He first shows the meaning of evil he is addressing, he then shows how this lack of good, how he explains evil, relates to our ability to choose freely and how that then leads us to face the consequences of our actions. With these laid out he then points to the conclusion on why God exists. In analyzing Rowe’s argument, I found that he too had strengths and weaknesses in the logic of his argument. His weakness I found in his second premise that says that “an omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or
Within William Rowe’s Chapter two of “The Cosmological Argument”, Rowe reconstructs Samuel Clark's Cosmological Argument by making explicit the way in which the Principle of Sufficient Reason, or PSR, operates in the argument as well as providing contradictions of two important criticisms from Rowe’s argument.
Haught says that the future is endless and that it is in place to liberate us from the confinement of the past. He argues that God is inseparable from the future, especially if one is a Christian. He goes on the speak about freedom. To Haught, freedom cannot be controlled by man. That freedom, at it’s purest definition, is something that we can’t grasp, but instead something that grasps us. As a Christian, one could think of this as freedom through Christ. We did not reach for that freedom, but instead that freedom has encompassed us.
...erfect goodness and is morally good all the time. Paley's supreme being is never attributed with being a good or bad, loving or hateful, individual. A second important characteristic of God is that he is omniscient; he knows everything about anything there is to know; although Paley's supreme being is intelligent enough to engender the first creation, it does not imply that he knows about all the subsequent creations which rose from that first creation. Thirdly, God is considered to be all-powerful or omnipotent while the supreme being possesses the power to create the first creation. Lastly, God is an eternal being whose existence defies space and time. At the start of Paley's a posteriori argument, it was concluded that while anything that shows evidence of creation has a creator, such creator exists or has existed at one point in time but is by no means eternal.
8- McDermid, Douglas. "God's Existence." PHIL 1000H-B Lecture 9. Trent University, Peterborough. 21 Nov. 2013. Lecture.
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 a deductive a priori argument who’s goal is to prove the non-existence of God. In addition to Mackie’s three main premises he also introduces some “quasi-logical” rules that give further evidence to his argument. First he presumes that a good thing will eliminate evil to the extent that it can and second, that omnipotence has no limits. From these two “additional premises,” it can be concluded that a completely good and omnipotent being will eliminate all possible evil. After establishing these added premises Mackie continues with his piece to list and negate several theistic responses to the argument.
Hickock had more than an intention to murder the entire Clutter family out of his love of
Lorena Hickok was an American journalist who had a very close relationship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1933, Hickok went on a two-month tour of the American South, where she was horrified by the poverty, lack of nutrition, and lack of education that she encountered.
There is evil. 3. So, God does not exist”. Since there is evil, then that means God does not exist. So there is no loving and powerful God. However, if there is a God then he is not all loving and powerful. Daniel Howard-Snyder states in his article “God, Evil, And Suffering,”: “We would have to say God lacks power and knowledge to such an extent that He can 't prevent evil. And there lies the trouble. For how could God have enough power and knowledge to create and sustain the physical universe if He can 't even prevent evil? How could He be the providential governor of the world if He is unable to do what even we frequently do, namely prevent evil?” (5). This statement argues that God is not all powerful because he is unable to prevent evil in the world. Daniel Howard-Snyder then argues that: “Would a perfectly good being always prevent evil as far as he can? Suppose he had a reason to permit evil, a reason that was compatible with his never doing wrong and his being perfect in love, what I 'll call a justifying reason. For example, suppose that if he prevented evil completely, then we would miss out on a greater good, a good whose goodness was so great that it far surpassed the badness of evil. In that case, he might not prevent evil as far as he can, for he would have a justifying reason to permit it” (5). Even if God had a reason to allow evil, he who is all loving and powerful would want the least amount of people to suffer and feel pain. Since God knows
If God did not exist, he would not be the greatest being imaginable. He is the greatest thing imaginable. Therefore, he does exist. From this argument, God’s existence is viewed. as necessary (Ayer. A. J. 1973).
God is someone who encompasses all good things which means he must be a good God, and a good God would not want evil in our world. Humans having free will is a claim brought up by Stump to show Plantinga’s “Free will defense,” to possibly answer the problem of evil. Plantinga believes the response to the logical problem of evil is, the possibility of having free will and using it for good rather than evil, is a value that has the potential to outweigh all the evil in the world. Stump revises this claim because it leaves the existence of evil mysterious and does not fulfill the entirety of the response to the evidential problem of
In ‘Why it is Better Never to Come into Existence’ (Benatar, 1997), David Benatar argues that by bringing a person into existence, one harms him, and thus to bring anyone into existence is wrong. This notion is based upon a subtle distinction between weighing up pain and pleasure within an already existing being’s life, and weighing up pain and pleasure for a non-being.
In this passage, Mark Twain uses Huck to show his objection to the blind faith that civilized society places towards religion. I’m guessing Mark Twain wasn’t a very religious man. This whole book is on the different downfalls of society, and I guess Mark Twain considers religion to be one of those. I do agree with him on this count. Although I’m Christian, I do agree with the various slight comments he makes throughout the book to show how people fell it’s ok to do whatever as long as they can justify it by the bible or something.
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.
The question of whether existing can be judged as a benefit or a harm, or if this judgment can even be made, has been addressed in the writings of David Benatar and Derek Parfit. In his paper Why it is Better to Never Have Come into Existence, Benatar progresses the view that it is always a harm to have been brought into existence. Parfit, however, takes a different position on this question, arguing that a person can be benefitted from being brought into existence in his paper Whether Causing Someone to Exist Can Benefit This Person. For the purpose of this paper, I will begin by offering a brief summary of each author’s main claim, and then provide a critique of their arguments. I then will then offer an objection from the point of view of