THE

PROBLEM
OF EVIL
LEARNING  To restate the problem of evil vis-
OUTCOME à-vis the attributes of God
  OMNIPOTENCE

– All powerful
THE  OMNISCIENCE
ATTRIBUTES
OF GOD – All knowing
 OMNIBENEVOLENCE

– All loving
THE
PROBLE
M OF
EVIL
“The ultimate goal
must definitely be
the removal of the
Jews altogether.” –
A. Hitler
God is omniscient,
omnipotent, and
omnibenevolent
THE PROBLEM
OF EVIL
Is God willing to
prevent evil, but not
able? Then he is
impotent. Is he able,
but not willing? Then
he is malevolent. Is he
both able and willing?
Why then is there
evil?
 II. THEISTIC
RESPONSE
 Gottfried Leibniz: Best Possible World
Argument

A perfect God has the power to create any possible

world; being perfect, god would create the very best
possible world; no creaturely reality can be totally
perfect but must contain some evil; so, god created a
world possessing the optimum balance of good and evil.

Since some goods are made possibly only by the

presence of evil, God had to weigh the total value of all
possible worlds and create the one in which the evils
contributed to that world’s being the very best one.
 JOHN HICK: SOUL-
BUILDING THEODICY
A special kind of environment is critical to
the whole soul making process. an
environment conducive to spiritual and
moral growth must be one in which there
are real challenges, real opportunities for the
display of moral virtue, and real possibilities
of expressing faith in god.

A major component of this environment will

be a community of moral agents interacting
in special ways and even a natural order of
impersonal objects that operate
independently of our wills. obviously , in
such condition there is the genuine risk of
evil – of failure and ruin, suffering and
injustice.
  ST. AGUSTINE

 Augustine argues that natural evil is

a result of the moral evil of human
beings. He claims that the choice of
Adam and Eve to disobey God led
to ‘The Fall’. The Fall was a
FREE metaphysical change, altering
nature, human beings, and the
WILL relationship between them: there is
enmity between human beings and
DEFENSE animals, giving birth causes pain,
we must work hard to survive
(Genesis 3:15-19). Nature and
human nature are ‘out of sorts’. So
all evil, natural evil as well as moral
evil, was caused by human free
choice.
I. ATHEISTIC RESPONSE

1. J.L Mackie: The Incompatibility Argument

 The theist affirms that an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good

god exists; on the other hand, he affirms that evil exists in the world.
 These two statements are inconsistent with each other. This means
that they both cannot be true.
 Since no person is rationally entitled to believe an inconsistent set of
statements, then it is not rational to believe both.
 (remember your logic: either P or ~P.)
 Wesley Salmon: The Evidential
Problem

Evil is an evidence against God. It

cannot be explained on a theistic
account of the world. The evil with
which we are all acquainted is not
what one would expect if an
omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly
good God created and superintends
the world.

Some cases of evil are so extreme

that we cannot even sensibly
imagine what sort of justification
they could ever have.
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AND
THE CHALLENGE OF
OCCAM’S RAZOR
  Possible explanation (PE) 1:
EXAMPLE: “I was not enough for her; I
might not have given her
WHY DID enough time that she
deserved; and perhaps, God
YOUR has better plans for the both
GIRLFRIEN of us. He would send us the
best person for us.”
D/BOYFRIE
ND BREAK  PE 2: “We ran out of loving
UP WITH desire for each other. Career
chase has taken its toll on us.
YOU? Life is like that—breaking up
  is an everyday affair.”
OCCAM’S
RULE #1

Given two theories with

same explanatory power,
the theory that posits
fewer irreducibly distinct
kind of things is
preferable.
  PE1: According to John Hick’s “soul-
building theodicy”, evil happens because
God is teaching us how to grow morally
IF GOD IS and spiritually. The famine in Yemen
OMNIPOTENT, teaches the global community to be more
caring for each other; that politics should
OMNISCIENT, serve the people. Evil has a purpose
OMNIBENEVOLE therefore in the eyes of God; it is for the
NT, WHY DOES growth of the individual and community.
HE ALLOW EVIL,
LIKE THIS  PE2: The famine in Yemen was a result of
UNIMAGINABLE civil war in 2016. It continues until today
FAMINE IN because of continued political crisis in the
YEMEN? region, the blockade of food and medicine
no thanks to Saudi Arabia, and today, made
worse by the ongoing Covid19 pandemic.
OCCAM’S
RAZOR
 pluralitas non est
ponenda sine
necessitate
“plurality should not
be posited without
necessity.”
 Other things being equal, if T1 is more
ontologically parsimonious than T2 then it is
rational to prefer T1 to T2.
PROBLEM OF EVIL AND
OCCAM’S RAZOR
 THEISTIC REPONSE
 John Hick’s Soul Building
Theodicy
 Leibniz’s Best of All Possible
World Theory
 Augustine’s Free Will Defense
 ATHEISTIC RESPONSE
 Salmon’s Evidential Problem of
Evil
 J.L. Mackie’s Incompatibility
Argument