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Mackie's Argument Against The Existence Of God

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The problem of evil or problem of suffering is an argument against the existence of God. It claims that the existence of evil, such as pain and death, is incompatible with the existence of an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God. The first statement of this problem is presented by the greek philosopher Epicurus. He basically says that “if God is willing to prevent evil but not able then he is not omnipotent if he is able to prevent it but not willing then he is not omnibenevolent. If he is both, able and willing then where does evil come from, and if he is neither able nor willing then why call him God”. J.L Mackie, an Australian Philosopher addressed this problem as well. Mackie presents three propositions: God is omnibenevolent, …show more content…

St Augustine of Hippo created the Augustinian theodicy in which he says that God created a perfect world free of all types of evil. He says that God gave us free will, therefore when Adam and Eve sinned for the first time, they destroyed the state of perfection and created a lack of good within themselves. St Augustine describes God as a loving and just father, and states that by allowing his children to suffer the punishment for sin, God is being just. But God is also loving and through the death of Jesus he grants us all a place in heaven. I have several problems with this theodicy. The first one is the fact that how could a perfect world go wrong. If God created a perfect world, why was there a snake telling Eve to eat from the tree, which God told her not to do. Furthermore, why did she choose to eat it? How could a perfect being choose to do the wrong thing? It is a contradiction to say that God created a perfect world and it went wrong. Either it wasn’t perfect to begin with or it was enabled to go wrong from the beginning therefore not being perfect. This, of course, goes back to the problems of evil presented to us by Epicurus and J.L Mackie. Maybe God doesn’t have the power to create a perfect world where evil is nonexistent or maybe he just wanted to see humans suffer and he is not omnibenevolent after …show more content…

This argument can, in fact, be challenged. The free will defense claims that when God was creating the universe he was faced with two choices: free will, with pain and suffering or maximum pleasure at all times but no free will. J.L Mackie says there was another choice; he says that if God created humans that have free will and can make the right choice at least once then he could’ve created humans with free will and also able to make the right choice every time. Due to this evidence it makes it impossible to solve the problem of evil while maintaining God’s goodness and omnipotence. There hasn't been one theodicy yet (at least not open to public knowledge) where this has been

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