Evil Vs Original Sin

Hawthorne’ view is the middle ground between the two extreme views of the Transcendentalists and the Puritans. Puritans believe that everyone is born sinful and cannot live a moral life without God’s interventions. Puritans are the people who believe that anything bad that happened to them is God’s punishment against them. On the other hand, Transcendentalists believe that everyone is born divine who is corrupted by society’s structures. As for Hawthorne and the Romantics, everyone is born good and is corrupted by society’s structures.

Why does an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God allow natural and moral evil to happen without any restrictions? John Hick, a proponent of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s theodicy defense, answered: “in order that human beings, as free responsible agents, may use this world as a place of “soul making,” which involves the spiritual perfection of our character and persons” (Pojman 74). According to Hick, creation has not been finished its work, it is still undergoing a process, that is, the lives of individual human beings. Hick believed that God is omnibenevolent because he is allowing us to learn how to be perfect on our own.

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.

The answer of Jesus brought about hope not only for that man, but also for all generation to come. At the moment that man confessed his sins, saying, “we are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve”, and recognized Jesus as the lamb of God without sin, saying, “but this man has done nothing wrong”, followed by the recognition of his everlasting reign, when he said “when you come

I am arguing that the Logical Problem of Evil (LPE) is not a successful argument to reject the existence of God. This is due to the LPE arguing with an inaccurate definition for the word “good”. With the correct definition of “good,” I will show that an all-good and all-powerful God can logically exist simultaneously with evil. A response for my objection could be the Furthermore, if we allow the inadequate use of the word “evil”, the LPE still does not constitute the immediate rejection of the existence of God due to the concept of free will. A response to this objection is that individual humans are not free and are therefore not morally responsible for their actions. However, I will show that this response fails to disprove the existence of God.

Ask a person from any culture around the planet and they will say that evil has always plagued humanity. However, when different people are asked to identify the source of evil found in their culture, the answers will differ from one another, maybe even drastically. This is most likely due to the varied experiences of their culture and faith traditions among other factors. Due to my lack of knowledge about other various perspectives of evil found around the world, I strive to articulate solely from my own Christian perspective.

Many questions arise when attempts are made to explain the problem of evil and why it exists in our world when God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. The subject of evil and why it exists is a difficult topic to find an exact answer to, especially when evil is presented in the form of nature. Natural evil and moral evil are two different types of evil that take form and cause suffering to humans. Natural evil is “events and maladies in nature that bring suffering upon mankind and nature.” Natural evil can be difficult to explain because it does not seem likely that a tornado or hurricane is the result of a human acting in sinful ways. Moral evil has to do with the bad things people do to cause suffering. According to Reese, moral evil is “by the choice of human free will, an individual breaks a moral, ethical standard and causes suffering upon self, others or nature.” Many ways used to describe the problem of evil are in the form of a theodicy. A theodicy is an “attempt to offer different answers to the problem of evil.” Two of the theodicies discussed in this paper will be the Augustinian Theodicy and the Iranaean Theodicy. Both theodicies direct their explanations toward moral evil than natural evil. First, the Augustinian theodicy and the pros and cons associated with its attempt to explain the problem of evil will be discussed.

Jesus Christ, God incarnate came to earth to save everyone from eternal damnation in hell. As humans, with Adam and Eve as our representatives in the Garden of Eden, they broke God’s one commandment, therefore allowing sin to come into the world. Because of this fall, we all deserve damnation, and because of the sin nature inside of us, everyone deserves to die and be eternally punished. However, because of the loving and gracious nature of God, He sent his only son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross to be our representative for sin. When he took the cross, not only did he bear the physical pain of the lashes, the dehydration, and the cross itself, but he also drank God’s cup of wrath for us. Everyone on earth deserves to be on that cross, but Jesus, through his great love for us, paid the ultimate price of his own life to save us.

Why does evil exist on earth? This is a central point on the issue of the problem of evil. Atheists and theists attempt to account for this question in their own philosophical perspectives. Epicurus’ paradox of evil raises a dilemma for the traditional Judeo-Christian view of God and evil. This tradition affirmed the following three propositions: “God is all-powerful (including omniscient), God is perfectly good, and evil exists” (Pojman 69). The paradox of evil diminishes God’s Omni-qualities, that is, it is inconsistent with the traditional theistic view of God.

For evil to possess possibility, which is a positive existence in the context of theodicy, it has to manifest separately to God. God's essence, found in his centrum is a united manifestation of his ground and existence, light or dark. God's centrum is entirely indestructible and cannot be separated from his being. As human beings are created in the image of God, they possess all that God does but they cannot be analogous to God. Schelling wrote that the unity that is inseparable in God is separable in the human being. In man therefore, there is the possibility of good and evil, whereas in God there is not (82). Man is able to manifest unlimited possibility because built-in to their design is the light and also the dark, both order and chaos.

In our world, Evil is a problem that is present everywhere. So many people have been affected by evil in this world and it can be a very sensitive subject. There are a lot of people that believe that God created evil but he did not create it, he tolerates it to be a part of our existence. Evil exists because people let it exist. God just allows it to be in our world. Good and evil is something that has been a big discussion over time and how it was even made. I will be discussing why evil exists, why evil can be a good thing, some solutions to evil, and why it is a problem for the traditional conception of God.

Why? is a common response to most suffering, pain, loss, and problem caused by evil. An important human aspect is that upon suffering humans always demand a response which perfectly answers this major problem of evil. However, one needs to understand that God chose not to give an answer to every question one may have. All this been said, Specific Evil as the Result of Specific Sins, God as the Victim of Evil, and The Life Hereafter are extremely important themes to answer not in a perfect way the problem of: Why God allows evil to exist in the world?

Every has the free will to do good also the free will to commit evil. Everyone has thoughts constantly flowing through their minds whether it's a good thought or a bad one that has the intent to harm someone. Most know what's right and will always keep bad thoughts suppressed but some people just cannot help themselves.

The nature of evil is a crucial yet difficult to understand concept. The conundrum of how good people can turn bad is one of the most prominent questions in today’s society. However, the word good is to be used lightly as following John Locke’s theory of Tabula Rasa; people aren’t born inherently good or evil thus their morality comes from experience and perception. The privileged like to think that they are all good people and there is a distinct line that separates them from everyone else. However it is not nearly so black and white. Almost everyone is neither wholly good nor evil but rather a product of their circumstance. Who is to say a privileged, successful student wouldn’t flourish in a life of crime they been born into it? I will

Uncontestably, Augustine is the most prominent and influential church father, for the Western Church. As the last of the ancient Christian writers, his theology not only formulated medieval scholarship; conversely, Augustine considerably impacted the theology of the Protestant Reformation. Regarding original sin and hamartiology, Augustine is the fountainhead, for both Protestant and Roman Catholic’s; however, he was not the originator of the doctrine. Depicting humankind’s solidarity with Adam preceded the teaching of Augustine, but none discussed humanity’s willful complicity in Adam’s sin as vividly and thoroughly. Imperative to understanding the doctrine of original sin is establishing the distinction between evil and sin, being