The presence of evil and suffering in the world is a major argument against the existence of God.
The problem of evil is a dilemma especially for those who uphold of the God of Classical Theism. For many people it is the horrendous depth of suffering and the extent of human selfishness and greed that makes the concept of a loving and powerful God unlikely. For religious people in general, the devastating effects of evil, asks the question why an all-powerful and all-loving God permit the creations created by God suffer, without any form of help and ending this evil.Evil is divided into two separate categories. There is moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil is when a person has the intentions to inflict pain and suffering on person, for example, the Holocaust in which six million people were killed.
Natural evil is suffering caused without the intentions by natural forces, for example, earthquakes.St.Augustine constructed the usual traditional response from a Christian perspective to the problem of evil. He has also composed the majority report of the Christian mind throughout the centuries as it includes both philosophical and theological strands.
His argument is mainly based upon the Bible, particularly the accounts of the Creation ad the Fall in Genesis.Augustine believed that God is perfect and that the world was made without any flaws. God cannot be blamed for creating evil, since evil is not a substance but a deprivation and it makes no sense to say that God created deprivation. Evil came from angels and human beings who choose deliberately not to obey God.
The possibility of evil in a created world is essential. God is perfect and the created things are susceptible. Everyone is guilty due to the seminally presence in Adam and this means that everyone requires to be punished. Natural evil is an appropriate punishment and it came about because the human action demolished the natural order. This means God is right for not interrupting and that God saves some through Christ to demonstrate that God is kind-hearted as well as just.
He made a reasonable statement that it is not possible for God to be responsible for evil since it is not a substance. He refers evil to what is lacking in a thing; it is a privation of good. If God did not create evil, Augustine traced its origin to those entities within the world that have free will, angels and human beings. These abused God's gifts and freedom and they chose to turn away from God and the ultimate good. He argued that the desire for power demonstrated too much for Adam and Eve, in which they were tempted to break God's command and to eat the forbidden fruit.
After explaining the origins of evil, he went on to show that all suffering is a fully deserved consequence if human sin. Natural evil originated from the loss of order within nature following the first sin. This had damaged the balance of the world. This had also caused the world to be distant from God and this led to moral evil to spread. Both forms of evil are seen as punishment. According to Augustine, all humans including innocent babies deserve to be punished since all humans were present in Adam.
This means that every generation was seminally present in Adam and they will be punished because they inherited his guilt.In general, the Augustinian theodicy is a soul-deciding theodicy. In contrat, the Irenaean theodicy is a soul-making theodicy. Irenaeus said that the idea of humans were not created perfect but are developing towards perfection.He believed that God's aim when creating the world was to make sure humans were flawless into God's likeness.
Human perfection could not be ready-made but it had to be developed thorough free choice since God gave humans free choice. This also meant that God gave humans the potential to disobey. There would be no such potential if there were not any evil. If humans were made ready perfect there would be no free will. This means that the natural order had to be created with the possibility of causing harm, humans to be imperfect and God to stand back from the creations. Humans disobeyed God, which caused suffering and God cannot remove evil to compromise the freedom of humans.
Evil and suffering will be overcome and everyone will be developed into God's likeness.Irenaeus said that God was somewhat responsible for evil. God's responsibility extended to create humans imperfect and made it their task to develop into perfection. Irenaeus said that humans were created in God's image and later that they would be developed into God's likeness.
Being in God's image is to have intelligence, morality and personality. Completion would be gained upon transformation into God's likeness. He argued that those who say that God should never allow evil to happen is to say God should take away humanity. If God was to intervene every time an evil act occurred, there would be in fact not any freedom to commit evil.John Hick took an Irenaeus stance.
He believed that ready-made goodness is not as valuable as goodness developed freely. For God gave humans the free choice, it gives humans the opportunity to develop this quality.An example from Peter Vardy, a king falls in love with a peasant girl, the king wins her love instead of using his power to force her to marry him.Three things are required for humans to develop into perfection: humans created imperfectly, humans distanced from God and natural world not perfect. According to Hick, humans had to created at a distance from God so that they could decide for themselves whether to follow God. Hick called this the epistemic distance.
If humans could not have the potential to disobey God then humans would not be free. If there was no presence of evil, humans would follow God's law and humans would be robots. Qualities such as courage, love and honour would not be meaningful.There have been some criticisms against the Augustinian theodicy, Irenaeus theodicy and also Hick.
Despite certain advantages, Augustine's theodicy has been criticised on the basis of logical error, scientific error and moral error. The logical problem was expressed by F.D.E.
Schleiermacher and he argued that there was a logical contradiction in holding that a perfectly created world has gone wrong, since this would mean that evil has been produce itself out of nothing, which is logically impossible. It does not matter if evil is a deprivation or not, it is still a feature of the world, as is the suffering that it produces. Evil in some way must be an attribute to God. Firstly, the world has not had a perfect beginning or it had been allowed for it to go wrong.Augustine's appeal to the free will defence poses a logical difficulty within the framework of his theodicy. It is difficult to see how in a perfect world where there was no knowledge of good or evil, there could be possibly be freedom to obey or disobey God, since good and evil would be unknown.
The fact that God's creatures chose to disobey God suggests that there was already knowledge present of evil, which could only come from God.The scientific error comes form the reliance on the Genesis Creation and Fall stories. As a result, most of the argument has been rested on ancient and scientific Judaeo-Christian theology.Augustine's concept that the world was perfect by God and then ruined by humans contradicts the evolution theory, which asserts that the universe has continually been developing from early stages of chaos. Vital evolution is the innate and selfish desire for survival.
Another problem in Augustine's concept, which concerns the assumption that each human being was seminally present in Adam. This theory is rejected on biological grounds, which means that people are not guilty at all.Irenaeus theodicy has allowed room for the modern concept of evolution and has attracted other criticisms. Irenaeus view that everyone will go to Heaven has attracted criticisms because it does not seem to be fair and this means God's justice calls into question. Religious people object to it because it contradicts religious texts including the Bible. It makes moral behaviour worthless if everyone is to be rewarded with Heaven.
People can accept from the counterfactual hypothesis that the process of soul making could not take place in a paradise. Does the world need to contain the extent and severity of suffering found in such events that has the killing of millions?Another problem is that love can never be expressed by allowing any amount of suffering no matter what the reason. D.Z. Phillips argued that it would never be justified to hurt someone in order to help them.
When considering the magnitude of the suffering in the world, the problem is more serious.Those people who already have faith in God, the responses will be different. Reference can be made to God's goodness to humanity, proved in gifts such as messengers or eternal life and the like. Some of the responses adjust the nature of God and the nature of evil. Attempts have been made to harmonise evil with the existence of God of Classical Theism. Each theodicy has its strengths and its weaknesses.
The problem of evil was a major argument against the existence of God. It depends upon the beliefs of the subject.
