God and Evil
The Problem of Evil, and Free Will as the Primary SourceSome people view the problem of evil as the most serious challenge to the Christian tradition. "How can God exist when there is evil in the world?" This question arises due to the nature of God. God is understood to be benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent. If God is all-knowing, all powerful and all good he would know that some evil would occur, he would have the power to prevent it and the desire to do so as well. Consequently, there should be no evil. When one observes society, numerous examples of moral evil abound. How can God allow this?Even more pressing is the question of: "Why doesn't God intervene to stop all the evil and injustice?" Because God does not appear to be doing anything about the problem of evil, many people have simply ceased to believe He exists, while others feel He cannot have all three characteristics previously ascribed to Him. There are other kinds of evils as well, such as earthquake, fire, and flood. For the purposes of this paper, however, I will focus on moral evils, the evil which one person does to another. Despite these arguments, there is a God who created the world, who is loving, all-powerful, and who knows what He is doing, but the
Philosophers have many opposing arguments with which to counter this assumption. If it is man's free will that accounts for moral evil then God cannot be blamed for it. However, if God created humans to always make this choice, they would no longer be free in relation to Him. But, if we are created in God's image, our ideas and standards of what is good or bad and right or wrong must be very similar to His. The fact that the janitor "cannot" both sweep the room and not sweep the room does not mean he is physically incapable of doing it or that he is limited in the way he would be if he had no arms. A second difficulty in claiming moral evil is due to free will is the very definition of free will. His boss can tell him that he needs to do his job and sweep the room. Human behavior must be unpredictable. The man asks the girlfriend to marry him and she consents because she loves him. Some may argue that we are not always conscious of all the influences upon us all the time, and that if we only knew this or that unconscious motivation then our behavior would be explainable by cause and free will would be eliminat!ed. One could argue that He simply refrains from controlling human behavior because an evil act is not really wrong and that there is more value in the ability to choose than in the wrongness of the act, however this is in direct opposition to what theists say about sin. If God can make rules that He is bound by, He cannot be all-powerful. Now, consider a man and his girlfriend. What is wrong with always choosing the goo d even if God is the source of our choosing?" The answer to this may not at first be easy to understand, but when applied to human r!elationships it begins to become clearer. She may tell her son that she wants his room to be kept clean every night before he goes to bed.
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