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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.
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". [61] 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".
Christian Universalism teaches that an eternal Hell does not exist and is a later creation of the church with no biblical support. Reasoning by Christian Universalists includes that an eternal Hell is against the nature, character and attributes of a loving God, human nature, sin's nature of destruction rather than perpetual misery, the nature ...
Christian scholars have offered three main theodicies of why a good God might need to allow evil in the world. These are based on the free will of humankind, [ 103 ] a self-limiting God, [ 104 ] and the observation that suffering has "soul-making" value. [ 105 ]
The completely wicked, who have transformed into pure evil without a chance at repenting, are considered dead wild beasts; when they die, they go to the lowest level of the next world, where they are made nonexistent. They cannot correct their sins in this world or the next, and do not repent, even at the 'gates of hell', as it were.
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]
Judaism affirms that people are born with both a yetzer ha-tov (יצר הטוב), an inclination or impulse to do good, and with a yetzer hara (יצר הרע), an inclination or impulse to do evil. These phrases reflect the concept that "within each person, there are opposing natures continually in conflict" and are referenced many times in the ...