Epicurus's Theodicy Of St. Irenaeus

Natural evil is encompassing reality of pain, suffering, death caused by natural forces/natural disasters (Ford 72). God gives humans freedom and doesn't want to manipulate them like robots and even when the freedom is misused, God offers ways to cope with it such as forgiveness, reconciliation, patience and healing (Ford 73). Sadly, this world has too many accidents and natural disasters that are unavoidable, but through despair and hard times God is always there to offer His love. Although humans suffer from sin and death, God does not allowed it to have the last word by offering faith, hope and love (Ford 73). Wherever there is evil, there will be goodness

Before we can dive into the problem of evil, we must define a term. Whenever the word “God” is used in this paper, it is referring to the classical theistic conception of God. In this view of God, God is that, “than which nothing greater can be conceived” in your mind. Any attributes or qualities that make a being great, God has to the maximum. This means that, among many other qualities, God is benevolent(all good), omnipotent(all powerful), and omniscient(all knowing). Furthermore, God is the creator of the universe and is personally connected to the human race.

In the course of this essay I will argue that evil is not compatible with the existence of god. This means that evil and God cannot coexist because if god were present, the existence of evil would contradict all that god is believed to be. Abrahamic religions insist that God both created the world and that he preserves and maintains it. Christianity claims that God is all knowing and is boundless in his abilities. Religions claim that God is benevolent, and only wants the best for humanity and the universe, as his creations. If all of the above statements be true, then it is hard to understand why god would allow evil to thrive right from the beginning of time.

Evil can be categorized into two forms, moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil is brought about by bad choices that stem from our free will. Natural evil is bad things that happen to people, whether they deserve them or not. The problem with evil is,

When we are discussing the problem of evil, we are specifically discussing a God that is omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good. A God that is perfectly good would not allow suffering to exist, and any minute amount of suffering that exists disproves God’s existence. Unless, the suffering is justified with an adequate reason. However, even then there seems to be large amounts of evil in the world that seems unnecessary for any good reason. By evil and suffering I mean death, pain, and disease. I will be using these terms interchangeably. In the problem of evil, many arguments are placed in order to find a justification for the evil that exists. However,

An argument against the existence of God is based on the presence of evil in the world. This deductively valid argument is divided into two categories; human action and natural evil (Sober, 2005, p. 120). Human action discusses how experiences makes us better people, while natural evil are tragic events that are not under the control of humans. Each category is used as evidence to refute God as an all-powerful omniscient, omnibenevolent, or omnipotent being. In order to understand the strengths of this argument, it is important for an overall assessment of how the presence of evil questions if a Supreme Being actually exists, by arguing why a being of all-good would allow evil, importance of evil in a good world, and questioning God’s intervention in evil.

For atheists, apologetics, and non-believers, a big topic of contention is the existence of evil in a world with God. This is known as the problem with evil. How does a God that is all knowing, all powerful, and perfectly good allow such atrocities to occur under his watch? It is this question that so many people have discussed. The argument centers on God being omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good (Mackie, 1955 p. 200). Omnipotent is to be all powerful. Omniscient is to be all knowing and to be perfectly good means that God would prevent a morally bad event from ever happening (Swinburne, 1998 p. 13). In the problem of evil, God’s powers are taken at face value, and applied to God’s inaction to evil on earth. People who argue against the topic of evil typically make generalizations on the attributes that God

Evil can take different forms in different context. How evil is responded to depend on which form it takes. God responds to evil by overcoming it, and turning it into something virtuous. Why or when he chooses to overcome it, is something that is unknown. Humans can be agents or victims of evil. They can be the reason evil takes place, or they can affected by someone else’s evil. Evil done by humans is not malicious, but it has a negative effect on humanity. The world is a victim because it’s inability to choose between right and wrong, good and evil. The world is a victim of humankind’s evil actions. Evil is responded to in different ways, because evil has not one definite shape, but an infinite amount.

How could an all powerful, and morally perfect God, allow evil to exist? I argue that from a logical perspective, a PKM God and evil cannot coexist. I will also refute against claims that evil may be present for good intents, as well as giving examples of the harm it causes in real world circumstances, and how a powerful, knowing, and morally perfect God would not allow such evils to exist.

One of the heaviest arguments against God’s existence is the problem of evil. The traditional conception of God is as omnipresent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. If this is true then God either can’t do anything about it, doesn’t know about it or doesn’t care about it. This then implies that God is either not all powerful as he can’t prevent the suffering, not all-knowing as he doesn’t know about the suffering, or not all good if he doesn’t care about the suffering. This challenges the concept of God being the greatest being in the universe. However, there are many different responses to the concept of evil, they may not be all satisfactory but they cast doubt on this argument. One of the responses challenging the problem of evil is that God did not create the evil in the world. A lot of the evil in the world only occurs

Furthermore, this understanding of evil as something negative means that it is not created by God nor was it willed (similar to Aquinas's view of evil as a privation). There has been refutations raised toward the Christian position concerning moral evil in that God should have created good people who are guaranteed to act rightly. In his response, Hick argues, "The idea of a person who can be infallibly guaranteed always to act rightly is self-contradictory" (8). It is contradictory because to be a person is to be a "finite center of freedom", which involves being free to act rightly as well as to act wrongly.

The problem of evil has existed for a long time and many philosophers including Michael Murray have gone to great lengths to explain the phenomenon. I believe evil pre-existed God's order and the nature of God is to create good out of evil. Evil is a necessary catalyst for good, and souls born in to weak bodies serve just as great of a life purpose, that molds the world towards kindness, as the souls born into strong bodies. Many times, the strong learn lessons of mercy and kindness from the weak; but all creatures big and strong are the catalysis for their own suffering. The decisions people and animals make impacted the world both positively and negatively; as is the nature of free will.

William Rowe defines gratuitous evil as an instance of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.(Rowe 335) In a world with so much evil it raises the questions If God is all powerful, all knowing and all good, how can he allow bad things to happen to good people? Can God even exist in a world with so such gratuitous evil? These are questions that has afflicted humanity for a very long time and has been the question to engross theologians for centuries. The existence of evil has been the most influential and powerful reason to disprove the existence of God. It is believed among many theist that God is the creator and caretaker

This paper examines St. Augustine’s view on evil. St. Augustine believed that God made a perfect world, but that God's creatures turned away from God of their own free will and that is how evil originated in the world. Augustine assumes that evil cannot be properly said to exist at all, he argues that the evil, together with that suffering which is created as punishment for sin, originates in the free nature of the will of all creatures. According to Augustine, God has allowed evil to exist in the world because it does not conflict with his righteousness. He did not create evil but is also not a victim of it. He simply allows it to exist.

The problem of evil is as ancient as humanity itself. Since the dawn of man, thinkers, philosophers, religionists and practically every human being who have suffered at the hands of evil have pondered this enigma, either as a logical-intellectual-philosophical or emotional-religious-existential problem. The preponderance of evil as a reality in human existence, and