I believe that the existence of a supremely perfect deity, or God, is incompatible with natural and moral evil. The belief in a higher being, having control over one’s life is not believable. The belief that ‘this being’ is only good, and only does good yet there is still poverty, crime, rape and murders that occur every day is just contradicting in itself. A valid example that was used in class was the little girl from Minnesota dying of cancer and her mother not taking her to the doctor because she believes God will heal her. Having faith, means believing in something that couldn’t possibly be true. But, I’ve yet to see a headline in the news saying “Girl Cured of Cancer by God’s Hand”. Mackie addresses fallacious ‘solutions’ to the problem …show more content…
This sets a limit to what God can do. Say God cannot create ‘good’ without simultaneously creating evil, this means God is not omniscient or there are limits on what God can do. B) Evil is necessary as a means to good. This over laps with Hick and Iranians, it is their intention to have strict moral virtues like compassion, charity, courage, perseverance. First, you need to have problems in which these virtues are a moral response. If God wants a world with justice and courage he has to introduce the world to evil in order to get those things. This means God is bound by causal law, in which case means God not omniscient. C) The universe is better with some evil in it than it could be if there were no evil. Physical evils have a place and goods and values have a response to those physical evils. First order goods or values, as in, happiness, pleasure, comfort, can be affected by first order evils, as in pain and suffering which the primary cause of these are physical evils. This is a solution by saying if these exist, then second order goods like, compassion and heroism, lead to second order evils which will respond to the dangers like …show more content…
To the Catholic Church, Christ always does what is right. Mary would be a second example because she lived in a world without sin. Based on any religion, there is a ‘free being’ who always does what is right. Yet, even perfect beings have temptations. When Christ was fasting and praying in the desert and the devil comes to him and offers to turn rocks into bread, Christ denies. All should deny the temptations of evil, because evil does not prevail- GOOD does. Then, the counter question, Is it possible to create free beings who necessarily do what is right? Apparently not, if the beings are acting freely then their actions cannot not be necessitated, if it’s not necessitated it cannot be free. You cannot go wrong if the action is necessitated, in which it all contradicts itself. The way out of the paradox is not to say yes or no but to simply state that it is improper. Also, do not get trapped by the paradox, the solution is omniscience wisdom and infinite and finite beings. If you’re creating a world of freedom then you’re creating possible wrong doing, if you’re creating free people you’re creating grounds for evils. Unfortunately, in this world, evil exists. The best possible world would be free of all