Rowe and Swinburne
In Rowe's treatment of the problem of evil in the world he uses a rationally probabilistic argument to prove that there is no omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. He uses massive evidence to show that it is more probable than improbable that the God of Christianity and Judaism does not exist. For his evidence he uses the prevalence of massive, unnecessary, and intense human and animal suffering that occurs daily. Such suffering is clearly evil, but if it does lead to some greater good, then we might just say that the suffering is justified. Even so, Rowe, taking the immense human and animal suffering as a clear instance of evil, can make a rationally probabilistic argument for atheism. First he writes that, "There are instances of intense suffering which and omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse (Snyder 2)." That is to say that with the amount of intense suffering in the world daily, each instance of suffering could not be so intimately connected to some greater good that the God of Christianity could not have obtained it without allowing such suffering. I cannot imagine the roundabout goodness that
" To justify this claim, Swinburne writes that there must be some greater good which is brought about by allowing evil, and in this existence, could not be brought about in any superior way. Surviving in our world today we delay pleasure, and endure pain to reach goals. Like a medical student working long unruly hours in an internship (obvious pain) to gain a degree and position at a hospital in order to make money, which will make his life easier in the long haul (pleasure). Now this is a decent argument, but I do believe that in the scope of things, Richard Swinburne wholly treats Rowe's argument for Atheism, and defeats it. " Although we can know it as true, seeing as thought we do not know God, it is much more probable. The removal of any evil or possible evil in the world takes away one more actual good, and in reducing the severity of evil in the world you must conversely be removing the level of goodness that can be achieved. " Then he goes on and rejects Rowe's second premise: ". He states that evil is the frustration of desires, and the older and more sophisticated we get, the harder it is to fulfill desires. A lot of the intense human and animal suffering that occurs in our world daily seems pointless and is seems highly unlikely that all cases of intense suffering occurring every single day in our world are intricately tied to the occurrence of a greater good or prevention of a related evil. He is saying that this is the best of all possible worlds were there is such good out there that it is wholly worth such frequent and atrocious evil in the world. " This is all to say that if there was and omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being, that could prevent such atrocities, then, based on its nature, it would. comes from an animal being tortuously killed by a freak incident in the middle of the woods somewhere in Laos, Thailand, that is just unthinkable, especially considering the quantity of evil in world. Even more unlikely, pending evil does allow for more necessary good, is that an omniscient, omnipotent, wholly good being "could not could not have achieved at least some of those goods (or prevented some of those evils) without permitting the instances of intense suffering that are supposedly related to them (Snyder 5). It must be obvious then, that it is better for one to live a life and endure considerable pain for the possibility of greater goodness, than it would be to live a fleeting inefficacious life, where you existence is trivial at best.
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Acceptance Essays
