Philosophy of religion

Why is there evil in the world created by a God who is moral, all powerful and perfect?

God is moral, all powerful and perfect. He is also which none greater can be conceived. Any attribute of God is overwhelmingly superior to anything we can fathom. So when we try to measure and configure god’s motives, we are really setting ourselves in a maze. One argument is that, due to mankind's limited knowledge, humans cannot expect to understand God or God's ultimate plan. When a parent takes an infant to the doctor for a regular vaccination to prevent some childhood disease, it's because the parent cares for and loves that child. The young child, however, will almost always see things very differently. It is argued that just as an infant cannot possibly understand the motives of its parent while it is still only a child, people cannot comprehend God's will in their current physical and earthly state. Now why is there evil in the world if God is so supreme. Augustine had his view on why evil exist if god is so good. Augustine based his theodicy on his reading of key Biblical passages: Genesis 3 and Romans 5:12-20 Genesis 3 is the story of Adam and Eve and their ‘”fall” in the Garden of Eden. In it the snake convinces the woman to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The woman picks the fruit, and passes some to Adam. Because of their disobedience God has them evicted from the garden. In Romans 5 Paul describes the Christian belief that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross cancels out the disobedience of Adam and Eve. In his self-sacrifice Jesus has made available the gift of righteousness. Augustine said God is perfect. The world he created reflects that perfection. Humans were created with free will. Sin and death entered the world through Adam and Eve, and their disobedience. Adam and Eve’s disobedience brought about ‘disharmony’ in both humanity and Creation. The whole of humanity experiences this disharmony because we were all ‘seminally’ present in the loins of Adam. Natural evil is consequence of this disharmony of nature brought about by the Fall. God is justified in not intervening because the suffering is a consequence of human action. Central to Augustine’s theory is that of ‘privation’ evil is not a substance it is a deprivation i.e. an absence of something. Augustine uses the analogy of blindness – blindness is not an entity but the absence of sight. For Augustine, evil came about as a direct result of the misuse of free will. All suffering is therefore a consequence of this abuse of free will. This includes natural evil as well as moral evil. Natural evil has come about through an imbalance in nature brought about by the Fall. God’s love for the world is demonstrated through the reconciliation made possible through Jesus Christ. If you view evil as the way David Hume views evil then you believe that since there is evil in the world by evidence then there must not be a God otherwise he would rid the world of the evil and not make people suffer and since he does not then there is no God. To present the problem of evil you must first know that evil exists. David Hume’s view on the problem of this is to be understood is in the form of undeserved suffering, perpetrated by man and nature, unchallenged victimization of weak by strong, pestilence, war, famine, and other horrors. In the face of this, God is limited in power, goodness, or knowledge or he does not exist at all; that is, either he is incapable or unwilling to remove evil, or he is unaware of its existence or of solutions to it. But either way viewed, whether Augustine or Hume, God’s plan is not even accessible to our minds.

What do various religious traditions say about the concept of the soul?
(Buddhist, Hinduism, Christianity)

The Buddha teaches that what we call ego, self, soul, personality, etc., are merely conventional terms that do not refer to any real, independent entity. According to Buddhism there is no reason to believe that there is an eternal soul that comes from heaven or that is created by itself and that will transmigrate or proceed straight away either to heaven or hell after death. Buddhists cannot accept that there is anything either in this world or any other world that is eternal or unchangeable. We only cling to ourselves and hope to find something immortal. We are like children who wish to clasp a rainbow. To children, a rainbow is something vivid and real; but the grown-ups know that it is merely an illusion caused by certain rays of light and drops of water. The light is only a series of waves or undulations that have no more reality than the rainbow itself. Now, Hinduism says that the soul is what they call Atman. Some Christians regard the soul as the immortal essence of a human – the seat or locus of human will, understanding, and personality. The origin of the soul has provided a sometimes vexing question in Christianity; the major theories put forward include soul creationism, traducianism and pre-existence. According to creationism, each individual soul is created directly by God, either at the moment of conception or some later time (identical twins arise several cell divisions after conception, but no creationist would deny that they have whole souls). According to traducianism, the soul comes from the parents by natural generation. According to the preexistence theory, the soul exists before the moment of conception.

Arguments for existence of god, provide that the argument is Aposterori? The Cosmological Argument attempts to prove that God exists by showing that there cannot be an infinite number of regressions of causes to things that exist. It states that there must be a final uncaused-cause of all things. This uncaused-cause is asserted to be God. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) had a version of the Cosmological Argument called the Argument from Motion. He stated that things in motion could not have brought themselves into motion but must be caused to move. There cannot be an infinite regression of movers. Therefore, there must be an Unmoved Mover. This Unmoved Mover is God. The strengths of the Cosmological Argument lie in both its simplicity and easily comprehensible concept that there cannot be an infinite number of causes to an event. Some arguments for God's existence require more thought and training in terms and concepts, but this argument is basic and simple. Also, it is perfectly logical to assert that objects do not bring themselves into existence and must, therefore, have causes. One of the weaknesses of the argument is that if all things need a cause to exist, then God Himself must also, by definition, need a cause to exist. But this only pushes causation back and implies that there must be an infinite number of causes, which cannot be. Also, by definition, God is uncaused.