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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.
Jewish philosophy stresses that free will is a product of the intrinsic human soul, using the word neshama (from the Hebrew root n.sh.m. or .נ.ש.מ meaning "breath"), but the ability to make a free choice is through Yechida (from Hebrew word "yachid", יחיד, singular), the part of the soul that is united with God, [citation needed] the only being that is not hindered by or dependent on ...
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. [ 39 ]
The problem of evil is acute for monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism that believe in a God who is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent; [84] [85] but the question of why evil exists has also been studied in religions that are non-theistic or polytheistic, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism.
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 ]
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]
A proposition first offered by Boethius [6] and later by Thomas Aquinas [note 1] and C. S. Lewis, suggests that God's perception of time is different, and that this is relevant to our understanding of our own free will. In his book Mere Christianity, Lewis argues that God is actually outside time and therefore does not "foresee" events, but ...
Judaism rejects the idea of original sin: it believes that humans enter the world pure, with the ability to choose either good or evil via their free will. [11] A person always has the power to avoid sin and its negative effects. [12] Due to free will, goodness is not impossible, only difficult at times.