Location
VDA 240
Start Date
14-12-2022 12:20 PM
End Date
14-12-2022 12:25 PM
Description
The problem of evil questions how God and evil can both exist. This is first challenged through the logical problem of evil, dealing with the general incoherence of God and evil existing. If God is a perfectly good being and has infinite power, there should be no reason for evil to exist. Some may use free will as a defense, but an omnipotent God makes free will unlikely to begin with and could also make people freely choose good decisions. The evidential problem of evil uses unjustified evils to disprove God’s existence. While horrific evils and disasters make it seem like God could not exist, the nature of God’s omnipotence means that evil could exist with a justification that humans simply could never understand. Therefore, we cannot conclude that evil does or does not exist or that evils are or are not unjustified, meaning that the logical conclusion from both parts of the problem of evil is agnosticism. The goal of my research is to further study this topic through previous works and current experts to ultimately write a paper providing an answer to this question.
Evil and Explanations: A look at the problem of evil
VDA 240
The problem of evil questions how God and evil can both exist. This is first challenged through the logical problem of evil, dealing with the general incoherence of God and evil existing. If God is a perfectly good being and has infinite power, there should be no reason for evil to exist. Some may use free will as a defense, but an omnipotent God makes free will unlikely to begin with and could also make people freely choose good decisions. The evidential problem of evil uses unjustified evils to disprove God’s existence. While horrific evils and disasters make it seem like God could not exist, the nature of God’s omnipotence means that evil could exist with a justification that humans simply could never understand. Therefore, we cannot conclude that evil does or does not exist or that evils are or are not unjustified, meaning that the logical conclusion from both parts of the problem of evil is agnosticism. The goal of my research is to further study this topic through previous works and current experts to ultimately write a paper providing an answer to this question.
