Natural Evil Only evil when looked

at from a human perspective.

Moral Evil Mankind is free,

responsible for their actions and the consequent results.

Devised the classic formulation for the Problem of Evil. It became known as the ‘Inconsistent Triad.’

God

Evil Love

1. God is willing but not able to prevent evil? Then he is not omnipotent

2. God is able to prevent evil but not willing? Then God is not Omni Benevolent.

3. If God is both able and willing then why do we suffer?

Epicurus concluded that it is reasonable to suppose that due to the existence of evil, God is either not omnipotent or all loving or God does not exist.

Theos = God Dice = righteous

Theodicy literally means a justification of God.

Attempt to reconcile the goodness and omnipotence of God with the existence of evil.

Not God’s fault for evil: God made a perfect world because God is perfect.

God is not responsible for evil: we bring it on ourselves when we reject God using our free will.

Original rejection of God by rebellious angels (moral evil) who ‘fell’ or turned away from God (causing natural evil.)

Humans created in the likeness of God (Gen 1:27) but given free will

Evil was let into the world through the free choice of Adam and Eve who ate the apple of knowledge of good and evil.

Adam and Eve corrupted and destroyed God’s natural perfect order creating disharmony and resulting in natural evil.

Very simple: moral evil = natural evil

Seminally present in Adam and Eve Therefore we are all guilty for the

Fall We deserve punishment Natural evil is fitting punishment for

our original moral evil

God did not create evil. Evil is an absence of good (cannot

create an absence) Evil is a privation. This means that God cannot be blamed

for evil as evil is not a substance, it is an absence of good.

E.g. Blindness is an absence of sight.

Moral Evil = angels + humans freely choose to turn away from God.

Natural Evil: Result of human/angelic disobedience. Disharmony (destroying God’s perfect harmony) resulted from the eating of the apple (Fall) = natural evil.

So natural evil is a fitting punishment for moral sin, so God is justified in not intervening to stop it.

A perfectly created world shouldn't, logically, have gone wrong, but it has. If God created a perfect world then why evil? Cannot create something out of nothing.

Either:1.World was not perfect2.God enabled it to go wrong

Hell is part of creation so God must have had foreseen evil and the need for punishment.

Scientific Evolution theory

undermines how literally Genesis creation and the Fall stories can be taken. Also undermines how we are all seminally present in Adam/ Eve.

Moral How could a good God

let us suffer for what Adam and Eve did?

Hell is a difficult concept, if God created it he must have anticipated needing it – so why not change the plan?

Irenaeus: God did not create a perfect world.

We have been put on earth with freewill so we can become perfect, have to earn perfection – make us all ready for heaven.

It is necessary for people to be able to choose ‘right.’

We need to be able to choose, so we can strive towards perfection.

Because we have a choice between good and evil, there is the potential there to disobey.

This means that God cannot be held responsible for us disobeying and turning to evil.

World is a “Vale of soul making,” souls are made in this world.

Used Irenaeus’ Theodicy Hick’s theodicy= freewill is needed in

order to for beings to love GodLove cannot be forced, therefore God

has to give people free will.

Peter Vardy: illustration of the peasant girl – King falls in love with a peasant girl – could force her to marry him but for her to love him in return has to be earned.

God is good but allows evil to exist for our ultimate benefit. Does the suffering have to be so extreme? Is the evil suffered to much to pay for perfection?

D. Z. Philips: cannot argue that allowing people to suffer shows love for them.

Hume: “Could not our world be a little more hospitable and still teach us what we need to know? Could we not learn through pleasure as well as pain.”

Free will is the reason for problem of evil

Freewill is needed. Even if it results in moral evil. Need to accept free will is the reason for the

problem of evil not God.

Richard Swinburne: Total freewill is necessary. If God intervened in horrors, it would compromise free will like an overprotective parent.

Either were have complete free will to choose our actions or we live in a world where events are decided by God – like a toy world.

Process Theology: Whitehead/ Griffin.

God isn't omnipotent e.g. A mother giving birth, she does the 1st stage then things occur which she has no control over.

God makes the 1st move then we carry on from there. E.g. God pushes the first domino.

God created the world but now is independent, God no longer has total control, so God suffers with us.

In ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion,’ Hume:

1.God is not omnipotent or2.God is not all loving or3.Evil does not exist

Conclusion: too much evidence to deny that evil does not exist. God must be either impotent or malicious. Not the God if classical theism. Therefore God does not exist.

This led John Stuart Mill to say that “God of classic Theism doesn't exist.”

Dostoyevsky “The Brothers Karamazov” suffering of innocent children is to high a price to pay for the gift of freedom = cannot deal with the responsibility.

Bertrand Russell: the existence of evil is just a “brute fact” that has to be lived with. God is merely a smoke screen – a distraction, which clouds the issues of life.

This does not mean Russell accepts God’s existence – quite the contrary. Russekll just means that we USE God as an excuse.

Question is asking for: Evil vs. God. In other words: too much evil for God to exist. “random” means no explanation So this question is simply looking for: Too much evil for God to exist: Hume, J.S. Mill, weaknesses

of the theodicies (because theodicies trying to explain evil and God together so critics show flaws of this)

Proof that evil not random but result of Freewill: freewill defence (Swinburne), process theology, John Hick support of Irenaeus vs. Dostoyevsky to high a price for FW (still does not say not random though)

Or God used as an excuse for evil but it is still not random!