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Religious responses to the problem of evil are concerned with reconciling the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God. [1] [2] The problem of evil is acute for monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism whose religion is based on such a God.
These two biblical uses of the word evil parallel the Oxford English Dictionary 's definitions of the word as (a) "morally evil" and (b) "discomfort, pain, or trouble." [13] The Bible sometimes portrays God as inflicting evil in the generic sense. [14] In other cases, the word evil refers to suffering. Suffering results from either (a) "'moral ...
This still leaves the question of why God set out those people's lives (or the negative choice of deeds) which result in Hell, and why God made it possible to become evil. In Islamic thought, evil is considered to be movement away from good, and God created this possibility so that humans are able to recognize good. [ 43 ]
Evil, according to Clement, does not exist as a positive, but exists as a negative or as a "lack of good". [58] Clement's idea was criticised for its inability to explain suffering in the world, if evil did not exist. He was also pressed by Gnostics scholars with the question as to why God did not create creatures that "did not lack the good".
Such sins are described as removal from God's presence. The devil's sin does not give evil a positive value, since evil is, according to Augustinian theodicy, merely a byproduct of creation. The spirits have all been created in the love of God, but the devil valued himself more, thereby abandoning his position for a lower good.
A defence attempts to demonstrate that the occurrence of evil does not contradict God's existence, but it does not propose that rational beings are able to understand why God permits evil. A theodicy shows that it is reasonable to believe in God despite evidence of evil in the world and offers a framework which can account for why evil exists. [8]
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The logical argument from evil asserts that a God with the attributes (1–3), must know about all evil, would be capable of preventing it, and as morally perfect would be motivated to do so. [4] The argument from evil concludes that the existence of the orthodox Christian God is, therefore, incompatible with the existence of evil and can be ...