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The World Is A Philosophical Phenomenon

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The presence of evil in the world is a philosophical phenomenon whose purpose has always been in question. One may wonder why one breaks a leg, loses a loved one, or is forced to endure a famine if there truly is a God that is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent; the answer to why bad things happen to ordinary, everyday individuals is rooted deep within the question of why such a God would allow the presence of evil at all. The problem of evil is the atheistic, a posteriori, contingent, and synthetic argument against the existence of God. A plethora of philosophers throughout history have addressed the issues of evil and have called the existence of God and His characteristics into question. Though there are many different …show more content…

Job’s patience and commitment to God did not prevent his afflictions; however, God could have prevented Job’s suffering simply by not agreeing to make the deal with Satan. Two variations on the problem of evil arise: the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil. Each one serves to answer a separate question; the logical variation serves to prove that the existence of a God is impossible and inconsistent with the presence of evil, while the evidential variation aims at not so much proving that the existence of God and evil is impossible, but simply improbable. Philosophers throughout history created theodicies and posed explanations in ways that may have been formulated according to particular historical eras and beliefs.
Epicurus, a Greek Philosopher who lived between 341 B.C.E. and 271-270 B.C.E., questioned the godly characteristics while considering the existence of evil (O’Keefe). Epicurus presented the inconsistency of God’s characteristics and the presense of evil within his work accurately:

“ ‘God … either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot. Or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, then he is weak—and thus does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to then he is spiteful—which is equally foreign to god’s nature. If he neither wants to nor can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do

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