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The problem of evil refers to the challenge of reconciling the existence of evil and suffering with our view of the world, especially but not exclusively, with belief in an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God who acts in the world. [3] [36] [39] [40] [41] The problem of evil may be described either experientially or theoretically. [3]
Epicurus was not an atheist, although he rejected the idea of a god concerned with human affairs; followers of Epicureanism denied the idea that there was no god. While the conception of a supreme, happy and blessed god was the most popular during his time, Epicurus rejected such a notion, as he considered it too heavy a burden for a god to have to worry about all the problems in the world.
Plantinga's argument is a defense against the logical problem of evil as formulated by the philosopher J. L. Mackie beginning in 1955. [2] [3] Mackie's formulation of the logical problem of evil argued that three attributes ascribed to God (omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence) are logically incompatible with the existence of evil.
When Bad Things Happen to Good People (ISBN 1-4000-3472-8) is a 1981 book by Harold Kushner, a Conservative rabbi.Kushner addresses in the book one of the principal problems of theodicy, the conundrum of why, if the universe was created and is governed by a God who is of a good and loving nature, there is nonetheless so much suffering and pain in it—essentially, the evidential problem of evil.
The Irenaean theodicy is a response to the evidential problem of evil which raises the problem that, if an omnipotent and omnibenevolent (all-powerful and perfectly loving) God exists, there should be no evil in the world. Evidence of evil in the world would make the existence of God improbable. [7]
Well, he conceives God in the creation of the world like a mathematician who is solving a minimum problem, or rather, in our modern phraseology, a problem in the calculus of variations – the question being to determine among an infinite number of possible worlds, that for which the sum of necessary evil is a minimum.
…it is possible that one thing in relation to another may be evil, and at the same time within the limits of its proper being it may not be evil. Then it is proved that there is no evil in existence; all that God created He created good. This evil is nothingness; so death is the absence of life. When man no longer receives life, he dies.
In 1955 he published "Evil and Omnipotence", which summarized his view that belief in the existence of evil and an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good god is "positively irrational". [ 18 ] Mackie's views on this logical problem of evil prompted Alvin Plantinga to respond with the " free-will defense ", which Mackie later responded in his ...