As you are walking home from College, you take a detour and walk along a canal. To your horror, you see a 5-year-old child fall in and start to drown. What would you do? a.Jump in, swim over and pull them out b.Call 999 on your phone c.Find something to throw in that they can grab onto d.Shout for help from others e.Hold one end of a large stick, and they grab the other end

You had free will to choose your actions All the actions you could choose were good Isn’t it possible that God could have made us always choose good, but still have free will?

The Problem of Evil Solutions and Replies

Omniscience Omnipotence Omnibenevolence Eternal / Everlasting Transcendence / Immanence Immutability Moral & Natural evil Cosmological Arguments Ontological Arguments Paradox of the Stone Euthyphro dilemma Teleological Arguments Cognitivism Non-cognitivism Verification / falsification Uses of religious language Religious Language God’s attributes Arguments for God’s existence Problem of evil

Mackie outlines the problem of evil like this: 1.God is omnipotent 2.God is wholly good 3.Evil exists To make things absolutely clear, he adds: 4.A good being eliminates evil as much as it can 5.There are no limits to what an omnipotent being can do Believing all these propositions amounts to a contradiction, yet theists must believe all three to be true.

Plantinga amends premise 4, since a God could be omnibenevolent and omnipotent, but unaware of the evils going on (he’s not omniscient). 1.God is omnipotent 2.God is wholly good 3.Evil exists 4a. A good being eliminates every evil that it knows about, and can eliminate 5.There are no limits to what an omnipotent being can do

This argument does not aim to show that theists hold contradictory beliefs; simply that based on the evidence, the existence of God seems unlikely. Given all the evil in the world, which of the following hypotheses seems more likely? H1.There is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God who created the world H2.There is no such God

You have 3 minutes to review your notes on the problem of evil, before doing a practice question Outline the problem of evil (5 marks) 7 minutes

It should make mention of both the logical and evidential POE. Can be laid out at an inconsistent triad but will need some commentary Ideally, a series of premises and a conclusion (standard form) should be used for the logical POE in particular Answers that only cover one POE, maximum 3 marks

A theodicy is an explanation or justification of God’s actions. i.e. an attempt to explain why an all-powerful, all-good God would create a world with evil in it, and/or why he allows evil to persist.

Mackie considers a series of common responses to the logical problem of evil which, he argues, do not solve the problem: –Good can’t exist without evil –The world is better with some evil in it than it could be if there were no evil –Evil is due to human free will TASK: read p47-48 of your booklets and summarise these responses, and problems with them 20 minutes

We might not know what evil was, but good could still exist Evil is just the absence of good Why does God allow so much evil – why not just a bit? Good can’t exist without evil Suffering = 1 st order evil; cruelty = 2 nd order evil We haven’t shown why our world is better with 2 nd order evils The world is better with some evil in it than it could be if there were no evil 1 st and 2 nd orders Return to starter question: can’t we have free will but all be nice? Its possible to be free to choose good (2 nd order goods) and still be free Evil is due to human free will