Moral Evil vs. Natural Evil Essay

“The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n…Here we may reign secure, and in my choice to reign is worth ambition “ (Paradise lost.120-21). This explaining humans can't be naturally born to act evil but it can

One of the oldest dilemmas in philosophy is also one of the greatest threats to Christian theology. The problem of evil simultaneously perplexes the world’s greatest minds and yet remains palpably close to the hearts of the most common people. If God is good, then why is there evil? The following essay describes the problem of evil in relation to God, examines Christian responses to the problem, and concludes the existence of God and the existence of evil are fully compatible.

John Hick discusses in his essay The Problem of Evil, the objections to the belief in the existence of God is the presence of evil in the world. He begins by posing the traditional challenge to theism in the form of the dilemma: That if God was perfectly loving, he must wish to abolish evil, and being all powerful, is able to perfectly do so as he will its. He then proceeds to present some views regarding this issue, giving insights from three point of views, that of contemporary Christian Science, the Boston Personalist school, and the theologian Augustine. The first opinion takes evil as an illusion, as a construct of the human mind. The second confers upon God finity, God as a struggling ruler,

The problem of evil as suffering is a problem of what to do with the obstacle for the believer but also an obstacle to unbeliever to converge because they do not think it harmonising. In contradiction to compatibility, an atheist often suggested that the present of evil entails the absence of God. Atheist argued, if God exists, then as an omnipotent, he is able to prevent the evil occurrence. For omniscient, it implies under any circumstances evil will occur if he does not act. Then, being perfectly good, he will prevent its occurrence and so evil will not exist. Based on this above proclamation, the existence of God does not compatible with the evil of whatever kind. However, theists response to this logical problem of evil by an atheist is that necessarily perfectly good being, foreseeing the occurrence of evil and able to prevent it, will prevent evil. The essay will first, define what evil is according to Swinburne as one of the philosopher of religion, Second, Swinburne four categories of evil will be discussed (Physical evil, mental evil, state evil, moral evil). Third, Phillip logical and existential problem evil will be discussed through. How will all these above assertions be a problem to those that and does not believe in God.

In the world of the living, evil is not inherent and can change or influence a person’s aspect of the world based on the community they are in. Evil is the force of things that are morally wrong and the matter of suffering, wrongdoing and misfortune (Merriam Webster). Evil is not inherent because an evil community can change or influence a person’s way of thinking, can consume people the more they are relinquished to it, and can mold a person when a person has power or feel a certain way. Furthermore, evil can be claim as not inherent from reading about Josef Mengele, Stanley Milgram, and the Stanford Prison Experiment. I will persuade my point that evil is not inherent from the sources that depicts the claim of evil.

To begin, I will discuss what I believe evil to be. Conceptually speaking, there are two forms of evil, natural and moral. Natural evil consists of phenomena which occur due to natural sources within creation. This form of evil includes weather disasters, cosmic barriers such as asteroids or collapsing stars, planetary movements such as earthquakes and volcanoes, animal instincts such as viral outbreaks or bear attacks (i.e. anything that drives self-preservation in the animal world), and so on. Conceptually, natural evils are not affected by human involvement. In other words, these phenomena would occur regardless if humanity existed in creation or not. Once an otherwise naturally occurring phenomenon happens as a result of human behavior, i.e. global warming, it no longer fits this form of evil, conceptually speaking.

Why do bad things happen to good people? If we have a God that is all powerful and has the ability to affect the world for the better, why does he allow evil to exist? This problem has been termed Theodicy. People for centuries have been trying to answer this question or at least to justify to existence of God when evil is allowed to prosper. A person could say that if God cannot remove the evil, then he is not omnipotent. You could also say that if God could remove the evil, but chooses not to, then he is not all good. Maybe God can remove the evil; however, he allows mankind to have free will in making the choice whether to do good or not. This may help to understand why people are allowed to do bad things, but

Nelson Pike shows that St. Thomas Aquinas presents three possible solutions to the problem regarding the incoherence between God’s inability to sin and His omnipotence, or ability to do anything. Only the third solution will be discussed in this paper. St. Thomas’ goal is to prove that God can coherently be both omnipotent and impeccable. In this instance, impeccable means perfectly good and lacking evil. At this point, it may be helpful to specify how the terms “good” and “evil’ will be used moving forward. In his discussion, Pike defines “evil” as “Any situation which is such that if one were to (knowingly) bring it about (though it is avoidable), that individual would be morally reprehensible” (212). This definition should suit our purposes,

In this universe, the creation can be freely chosen. By their degenerate nature, mankind chose to be far from God. Therefore, moral evil is everywhere, but all these are not contradictory to God's love and omnipotence. On the contrary, because of his lover's nature, he wanted man to live, be free and independent in his own style. The good news is that God is in charge of everything. He supervises the good and the evil movement and prevails. He uses such evil to bring about his good intentions and molds his purpose for

The problem with imperfection and evil in the world claims (McCloskey) is that it goes against the divine design or purpose in the world, the limitations in the cosmological argument and that there must be a first cause. McClosley’s point is that because of the imperfect state in which the world is in that there is no such being who would allow the evil and imperfections that are plaguing the universe and that this is the evidence that a divine being does not exist or at least a reasonable explanation as to why evil is allowed to happen. One question that has come up is that,” is there a logical reason as to why God has allowed evil and suffering among his people and what is the purpose of it? McCloskey wants proof that God does or does not

Two types of evil exist in our world today. Natural evil occurs when earthquakes, hurricanes,

The creation of the idea of ‘responsible evil’ discussed in the first of essay of GM appears therefore to be at the origin of Christian concepts and values of ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘evil’ that are still dominant in mentalities to date. In fact, although its consequences affect the slave morality as a whole, it seems that the creation of ‘responsible evil’ is most of all the one of priests . This supports the idea that the successful creation of ‘responsible evil’ has resulted in a spread of Christian influence and authority that still exists in modern societies. What is more, this slave’s invention is at the origin of the concepts of ‘guilt’, ‘bad conscience’, ‘mercy’, and of a God “that commands them [the slaves] to do and be what their weakness requires them to do and be” . In this way, with

St. Augustine through his philosophical journey is trying to find where evil comes from. From his notion God gave humans a unique characteristic called reason. Reason is what brings human closer to God. God has reason and intellect and animals don’t. Then evil cannot be connected to God, it must come from somewhere else.

Evil is not inherent to human nature nor is it caused by environment, evil is what we perceive as morally wrong from our standpoint, for example if in a universe far away domesticating animals is unthinkable, than our planet and it’s people would be considered evil. As mentioned before evil’s definition can change greatly between people, although the general consensus is that it is an act that is considered morally wrong from a majority standpoint. If a person commits actions that from their perspective are for the greater good, they would not be considered evil because there “Moral Compass” is telling them that their actions, no matter how much they go against society's norms are good.

Throughout mankind's existence, people have struggled with good and evil. The struggle began with the fall of man in Genesis 2. St. Augustine addresses this issue in his book, “The Confessions of St. Augustine.” In this book, He discusses God character, man’s free will, the causes of evil, and the struggle between how can a loving God allow evil to exist in the world.