Agenda

 

The Problem of Evil

An argument against the existence of God?

 

Assumptions:

 

1. The Creator is

 

Omnibenevolence

Omnipotence

Omniscience

 

2. The world is imperfect

 

 

 

 

 

Some alleged proofs of the existence of God

 

ontological argument

teleological argument

there couldn't possibly be a Universe unless Something beyond the Universe brought it into being

the Universe wouldn't stay in existence unless something beyond it was sustaining it in existence

we wouldn't have the idea of God unless there really were a God

from miracles

 

 

'The problem of evil' as an argument that God could not have created a world in which bad things happen

 

Premise 1: God is perfectly good

 

 

Gods are not always thought of as good.

 

 

 

 

A perfectly good, all powerful, omniscient God could not have produced an imperfect world.

 

If the world is imperfect, the Christian God does not exist.

 

But the world is imperfect.

 

Therefore God, as conceived by Christianity, does not exist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single is the race, single

Of men and of gods;

From a single mother we both draw breath.

But a difference of power in everything

Keeps us apart

 

Pindar

 

" A people gets the gods which it deserves. The wayward and inscutable demons who pester man [sic] are born of nameless terrors and inhibiting ignorance; the grinning, gloating ogres of the Aztecs mirrored a race brutalised by incessant war and fearful of unknown privations; before the Romans were moved by Greek influences to abandon their stubborn rusticity, their gods were prosaic, functional, and sanitory; the passion of the Jews for legalistic discipline in all departments of life and their exclusive nationalism found an appropriate champion in Jehovah."

C.M.Bowra, The Greek Experience, New York and Washington, 1969, Praeger, p.42.

 

Premise 2: God is omnipotent

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is there any way out?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Premise 3: God knows everything

 

 

 

 

Flaws in the argument ?

 

Attempts to resolve 'the problem of evil'

 

 

 

 

Leibniz

 

The Free-will argument

Does omniscience inlude knowledge of the future?

(And why free-will?)

 

 

 

 

 

Against the free will argument: some bad things that happen don't appear to be the fault of human beings

 

 

 

Can you think of an account which would blame eg all disease on the misuse of human free-will?

 

 

 

Against the free will argument

 

We are just seeing a bit of the picture

 

1. apparently bad things will be revealed as good

 

or

 

 

2. Bad things will seem justified

 

Is invoking a wider context a solution?


 

Attempts to resolve the 'problem of evil'

 

3. The Universe is better with some bad things in it than it could be if there were no bad things.

 

 

The argument is about a concept, not about God

 

 

A contradiction to say that a being who is

 

wholly good

all-powerful

all-knowing

 

created an imperfect world.