Essays on Problem of Evil

Introduction

Initially, the problem of evil was tied to the syllogism that everything was created by God and since evil is a thing, therefore evil was also created by God. However, this approach to the problem of evil was devastating to Christians core belief of God being an omnibenevolent God. St. Augustine, therefore, sought to provide a solution to the problem and formulated an approach that prompted two syllogisms which stated that, according to the bible, all of Gods creation are good. Evil cannot be considered as good. Therefore, evil is not a part of God’s creation. The second ...

I. INTRODUCTION The current use of the North-South divide in demarcating global Christian religion is not new. It originated as an economic and political convention to distinguish the First World and the Second World in the North and the Third World in the South. Thus, the churches in the North include the churches in North America, Western Europe, and the developed part of East Asia; while the churches in the South comprise the churches in Africa, South America, and the rest of Asia, including the Middle East. However, the demarcation line can arbitrary depending on the institution that creates ...

Response Paper

Response Paper The presence and existence of God is seen in our daily lives through the practices and the relevant undertaking that we pass through without knowledge of how successfully they pass. To be aware of God, however, implies that one is certain of the belief in His dominical that surrounds every human being, and in everything that is in the universe. McCloskey in his article, “On Being Atheist” attempts to provide proof that the existence of God is not true; with various claims why atheism is a much easier concept to understand compared to theism (McCloskey, 1968). However, ...

Humankind considers religious studies to be the most disputable field of science and / or view of life. Such approach based on division of people into those who perceive religious corns of world construction, and those who do not believe in God, known also as “atheists”. An issue under discussion is the problem of evil or so-called theodicy problem in the world. The main idea of above-mentioned problem is that if God is perfectly good and all-knowing Creator then why there are so many troubles all over the world. This is the way why existence of God called into ...

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Introduction The evil-God challenge is an offshoot of the unending debate over the existence of God on the basis of the problem of evil. In this current presentation, Law simply improved the discourse by enhancing its sophistication through his theory of reverse theodicy and theory of symmetrical logic. However, the persistence of this discourse without conclusive resolution flows from several flaws that will be discussed in adequate detail in Critique section of this paper. The critique will be grounded upon the accepted definitions of ‘evil’ and ‘God’ from the religious tradition of Catholicism, ...

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Gods or goddesses and their activities have been portrayed in numerous scriptures for centuries. In many of such narrations, Gods reflected the traits of human beings as well, and for which they could generally be termed as myths. Myths try to resolve mysteries, like how the universe was formed or how a particular place got its significance and explain the relevance of practicing certain customs and traditions. However, no interpretations have been clearly flawless to answer the puzzle of sufferings and evil when they attempted to define God. The topic has been a bone of ...

Freewill defense is a prominent position against the question of moral evil, which tries challenge the existence of God due to evil happenings in the world. In response to these questions, theistic viewpoints use free will as a tool to defend the authority of God (Campbell 13). The proponents here say that evil exist due to free will endowed to the human person by God. The human person abuses the freedom that God gave to do evil. For theistic argument to defend their position successfully, they should prove the authority of God does not instigate moral evil. The moral ...

1. Briefly explain St. Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God. Explain one problem that this argument faces.

St Anselm’s ontological argument is an attempt at proving the existence of god through a purely. Anselm gets into the idea of the definition of God. In that definition he believes that God, he believes the definition of God is that nothing greater can be conceived. He believes that the greatest being conceivable must exist because otherwise it is not the greatest being conceived since existence is greater than non-existence. Anselm uses this line of thought to “prove” the existence of God.

There are a number of problems with this argument. Because if one believes that the ontological argument ...

Introduction

Throughout the historical background of humankind, numerous scholars, researchers, and theologians have pondered the idea of evil, the presence of God, and even if God exists, whether He posses supreme and illustrative powers of unending goodness. After the first individual looked up to the sky and mulled over the origination of natural occurrences or the reasons why unpleasant things occur to good individuals, mankind has gotten affianced in a constant discussion over problem of evil and its connection to God's presence and whether He epitomizes unfathomable worthiness or tempered retaliation (Ryan). Various researchers and logicians have contended that the vicinity ...

Determinism can be defined as the philosophical proposal that every incident, choice and act is causally ascertained by an uninterrupted chain of earlier incidences, and further that the chain of circumstances that led to the event will not lead to any other event. The theories of determinism all along the history of philosophy have come from at times motives that are similar. Certain forms of Determinism can actually be tested empirically also. The converse of Determinism is said to be free will. Essentially, Philosophy is the manner in which some people think about a few distinct questions. The most ...

The problem of evil is a central point of interest in theology. It is a philosophically a problem of interest especially in religions with an omnipotent and omniscient deity like. The problem of evil has produced paradoxes such as the Epicurean paradox. The story of Job in the Torah presents an interesting perspective of evil that is not to be seen anywhere. Job can be thought of like a pawn on a cosmic chess board. In what appears to be an annual assembly, God and the Devil are having a rather casual conversation. God enquiries of Satan’s recent activities, whereupon Satan replies that he ...

An Objection to Augustine’s Response to the Problem of Evil in On the Free Choice of the Will

A contemporary Catholic apologist sums up the problem of evil nicely: “If God is so good, why is his world so bad?” (Kreeft 54). In this paper, Augustine’s response to the problem of evil will be analyzed and found to be lacking as an adequate resolution to the problem. The paper that follows is a reflection based on the readings from From Plato to Derrida, paying special attention to Augustine’s texts on evil. Augustine tries to attack what we mean when we say “evil,” but his argument insufficiently glosses over the larger issue of human suffering, and what ...

Essay Chapter 1

Question 3: What is "knowledge"? Why is it useful? Is it ever possible to have knowledge? Is it ever possible to know that you have knowledge? Why, or why not? The ability to familiarize, analyze, and understand something or someone is known as knowledge (Knowledge par. 1). Some of the things include information skills facts and skills. One learns most of these through education and a few from personal experience. Knowledge is essential in one’s day-to-day life. Having the general knowledge of the current matters gives one an edge in the society. People, especially in the workplace, ...

In our lives we are haunted by several questions that we face concerning the problem of evil. For instance, why does Allah (god) who is all-knowing and all-powerful allow evil to exist in the world? Does god do something about evil? However, we assume that existence that the existence of evil disproves the existence of Allah. In my view I believe that Allah is a god of justice. Therefore this problem of evil in Islamic seems to be complex questions. In the book of Zabur “Evils have encompassed me without number” (Psalm "Zabur” 40:12, RSV) As we argue Zarathustra ...

Religious studies

What is the problem of evil? Theodicy (the problem of evil) continues to raise jitters among individuals. This is because it tries to proof and support the presence, love and the reality that lies in evil without ant contradiction. The irony is that for one to believe in the problem of evil, he must sacrifice either the presence or the love of God. This leads to a dilemma that cannot be solved. If an individual sacrifices God’s omnipotence or love, this will mean that the Supreme Being will not prevent or overcome evil by any deeds. Theodicy will ...

Life concerns: why is evil happening to good people? What is the meaning of life if good people are rewarded with evil? What’s the essence of living a righteous life when we end up with evil? Existence of evil is an absurd fact. It is contradicting that God exists and lets his people suffer. Evil is anything that is morally objected or undesired and is considered to bring harm or bad feelings among people. Evil ranges from natural calamities to diseases. Logically, evil is supposed to happen to bad people according to Paterson (1998). The fact that bad ...

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The problem of evil is when people are trying to analyze evil and its source and how we can be able to prevent evil from happening in our society. It is an age old problem that has tried to be solved by even our fore fathers and yet it has not been answered. Moral evil is also known as human evil and is suffering that is as a result of human beings behaving in ways that are not morally acceptable to the society. This includes killing, stealing, rape, robbery and cheating. On the other hand natural evil are negatives ...

Many people have taken existence of evil and suffering as an ultimate doubt to the existence of God (Oppy & Scott, 4). Oppy and Scott (5) indicates that, it is communicated in terms of repudiation of God’s existence. According to Oppy and Scott (6) sometimes it is communicated in terms of s refutation of the existence of God. In other cases, it is argued as an emotional rejection of a God who let such evil and suffering to people. Oppy and Scott (6) indicates that for many years, many people have tried to rebut the existence of God owing existence ...

Why Descartes provided the theory of nature of human error

The aim of the Descartes fourth meditation is to deal with a problem that arises within him because of his conception of God as perfect and hence as all-good. The problem is how to explain why a perfect, all-good God allows error. There is no explicit reference to what is usually called the “problem of evil” in the society-how God tolerates evil and allows people to damn themselves-it is obvious that the problem of evil that Descartes addresses is of major concern to the any given society. According to Descartes, many people believe that making mistakes is just of their ...

This paper delves into the problem of evil with a critical analysis and evaluation of how it is purported to undermine the traditional distinctiveness of God. In fulfilling the requirements of the paper, I account for how the existence of evil undercuts the traditional distinctiveness of God like omnibenevolence, omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence. The issue of evil has been a contentious one for philosophers and theists since the concept of God was regarded as an object of academic discourse. In analyzing the matters raised, the paper will borrow from Hume’s famous quote, is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not ...

Leibniz believes that the earth is the best world that mankind could live in. In contrary to the natural sense that the world contains the evil acts and the righteous acts, Leibniz argues that the creator of the world is perfect. Because God is perfect, what He creates must also be as good as possible. Leibniz draws his arguments from the attributes of God as being omniscient and omnipotent. From this view, God has the ability to whatever He likes or wishes and He also knows all things. Because of these attributes of God, His actions are always perfect ( ...

1. Davis claims that: evil is existent, God is omnipotent and that God is perfectly acceptable. He refuses to consider any other claims that suggest otherwise (Page 69). 2. Davis argues that God’s two main aims in creating the universe are that He first of all wanted to create the best universe he could. This was aimed at bringing a balance of morality and natural goodness over the moral and natural evil. Secondly, He wanted to create a world dominated by human beings who are rational agents that would love and obey Him. (Page 70). 3. In his ...

Introduction. Traditional theism proposes certain hypotheses about the nature of God that are bound to be questionable under different logical and thinking approaches. The problem of evil and the problem of free-will are the two mutually inseparable, yet distinctly evocative challenges that traditional theists need to overcome in order to sustain their belief system. Molinism, the term coined to represent the views of Luis de Molina (1535-1600) and the ideas derived from his views, offers by way of explanation, God’s omniscience and omni-benevolence that support theistic ideology in some aspects and weaken it in others. Molinism depicts God’ ...

1. Aquinas claims that he has five arguments that God exists. Do you think that he really has five different arguments? The first argument has to do with motion and movers, and the second argument has to do with cause and effect. Are they distinct arguments or just variations of the same argument?

There are examples of cause and effect that do not involve motion, so they are distinct.

2. Assume that Aquinas is right and there must be a prime mover or a first cause. Why must this first cause be God? That is, God is traditionally defined as a being that is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnivenevolent. Does Aquinas provide any reasons for thinking that the prime ...

Two main problems of evil tend to bother atheists and unhappy individuals. First, the evidential problem of gratuitous evil causes atheists to contend that theists must make sense of their belief in light of the facts of evil. This is fitting since atheists deny the existence of a god, and the theists, not only argue for a god, but they also believe this is the omnipotent, omnipresent God Almighty. Second, the existential problem of evil appears to questioned mainly by those who are simply not happy that they exist at all. Happy people do not have a contention against the existence of ...

I am writing to you as the last generation that I will see in my lifetime. When the Atlantic slave trade came to an end, many of us thought that this signalled the end of slavery. However, it appears that equally evil acts are still going on. Modern-day slavery encompasses a range of violations of human rights. It contains the “practices of child labour, bonded labour, serfdom, servile marriage, trafficking in persons (especially women and children), and the exploitation of domestic and migrant labour” (Forms). You are young and may not have yet fully decided your views on life, death ...

IN RELATION TO

THE SLAVE TRADE AND THE HOLOCAUST

John Hick’s views on theodicy are similar to the original 'Irenaean theodicy' (Iranaean). Hick is in agreement with Irenaeus that God created mankind with the capacity for spiritual growth. Nonetheless, Hick then views the course of 'soul making' as a reaction to the evil contained in the world (Iranaean). This means, therefore, that if there were no cancer, or any evil actions, then human beings would not have a way of developing spiritually. Ultimately, Hick claims that the suffering is necessary in order for humanity to reach ultimate perfection that God had planned for us. Hick argues ...