Problem Of Evil And The Free Will Defense

The beauty of the problem of evil is its simplicity. David Hume displays the problem well by questioning the existence of God and evil. For, if both God and evil exist, God must either be “willing to prevent evil, but not able” or “able, but not willing”. Hume shows that there seems to be a problem with God and evil coexisting. For, with an all good entity

When I think of the concept of “evil,” I think of The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. In The Consolation of Philosophy, Lady Philosophy stated:

Evil in this context is regarding to all suffering, pain and horror. Evil can be categorized as natural evil and moral evil. Natural evil is that which occurs by natural means e.g. earthquakes, tsunamis etc. Moral evil is that which is imposed on humans by humans e.g.

There is a lot of evil in the world, and much of it happens unexplainably. In the history of life on Earth bad things have happened and evil has caused problems. In relation to some world

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,

Determinism says that past events and laws of nature determine every fact of the future, meaning if evil exists, then God there’s the possibility God does not have the power to control evil. If this is true, then God can still exist as an all knowing, all powerful, all good being because he can do nothing to change the determined path of the universe, meaning evil can be viewed as a separate power that can’t control its own path, it just exists. I believe that free will and determinism can exist in the universe simultaneously (compatibilism), so the evils that humans create are of voluntary choice because that was what determinism planned for that person. The reasoning behind my belief that determinism and free will can exist in the same realm is I side with the voluntary choice option of free will. Voluntary choice states that you act freely if and only if you act voluntarily, without coercion or constraint. This allows determinism to coincide with voluntary choice; if the laws of nature fully determine every fact of the future, then the choices we make are choices we freely made. God knew that humans would be able to create evil because he gave us free will, but he can’t do anything about it because of determinism and the laws of nature, suggesting that humankind wouldn’t “exist” if evil didn’t exist,

The first fallacious solution is that “Good cannot exist without evil.” The idea behind this solution is that evil is a necessary counterpart of good. Without evil, there could be no good in the world. Therefore, God could not have created the world without any evil in it because there would be no good. By saying that God cannot create good without creating evil at the same time contradicts premise one (that God is omnipotent) and premise five (that there are limits to what an omnipotent thing can do). Mackie rejects this

In Richard Swinburne’s Natural Evil, he argues that the free will defense accounts for the existence of evil. Following Swinburne’s example, I will argue that the Problem of Evil does not give us good reason to believe that an omnipotent, benevolent deity does not exist. To do so, I will first summarize Epicurus’ original question of the problem of evil. Then, I will defend my claim by proposing the free will defense. Furthermore, I will discuss how the concepts of benevolence and omnipotence are inconsistent with the definition of God according to the free will defense. Lastly, I will address and respond to a possible objection to my argument.

In this paper, I would like to explore several responses to this argument, the nature of evil, and to explain why some evils might be a necessity.

The two solutions to what we call the problem of evil are: the free will defense and the Supralapsarian theodicy. The free will defense argues that evil and God are not incompatible because God didn’t create evil. According to this defense, human beings create evil with the free will that God given them. Since free will must be totally free, God cannot guide us to do what is good only since he wants his creatures to have complete freedom over their lives and what they do. So, by proving that God and evil can coexist logically, the free will defense is a path out of the problem of evil.

Understanding evil and how it works is very important and is all over the world and can never be truly explained from one point of view. “Padrica Cain Hill, former bank teller, Washington mother and wife, dresses her three children one morning, makes breakfast for them, smokes some crack cocaine and lets the kids watch cartoons. Then with a clothesline she strangles eight-year-old Kristine and four-year-old Eric Jr. She tries to strangle two-year-old Jennifer, but leaves the girl still breathing softly on the floor. When the police come, Padrica Hill says she loves her children. Why did she kill them? ‘I don’t know,’ she answers in apparently genuine bewilderment. ‘I hadn’t planned on it’.”(Morrow) Morrow gives numerous examples that are both vague and real life events that define evil and how it brings out the good which makes you think that evil isn’t as bad as it seems. “Does the good become meaningless in a world without evil?”(Morrow) Evil is just a matter of perspective and can take any

To understand evil we must first understand the concept that good and evil are term or words referring to what one given individuals believes to be the right and wrong thing to do. Good, many times

In order to fully understand the argument, we need to go over what evil and the free will defense are. The definition of the word evil is: morally wrong deeds or actions, misfortune or suffering. For example, Joseph Stalin was a man who committed the worse of all evils. He was the reason for the execution in millions of humans. This is called moral evil.

“If God is omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (all knowing), and perfectly good, then there can be no evil because being all powerful, He could do something about any existing evil; being all knowing, He would know about any existing evil and being perfectly good, He would want to eliminate any existing evil. But there is no evil, therefore God is either not all powerful (He can’t do anything about the evil), not all knowing (He

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