If we take a look at this world, there are many goodness and evilness that occurs. Although, some evilness is not intentional, it is just a part of our life cycle that evil happens in our lives, world and everything around us. What is the problem of evil? The Problem of Evil is the problem of reconciling the existence of the evilness in the world with the existence of a perfect God who’s omniscient (all-knowing) and omnipotent (all-powerful). 1 The fact that the problem of Evil actually exists makes people believe that there is no such existence of a perfect God. This argument goes back into chapters 6 – 9 in the textbook. Many Christians and Catholics claims that God created this world and he is in charge of it. This perfect God only wanted the best for his creation. If these facts are true then why did God allow the evil in this world to even persist? Therefore, many believe that there is no such “mighty God”.
In chapter 10 of our Philosophy book, it states five different types of evilness. The first one is the mystery of evil. Many people ask and wonder why does bad things happen to the kindest people and not the bad people. Although the kindest people can accidentally do something bad there is no reason for God to not help them for their punishment. For example, there are two eight-year-old boys Tom and Ben. Tom the gentle, kindhearted, innocent eight-year-old boy was playing handball with his classmates. He hits the ball harder and faster then most of his classmates. All of the sudden the ball hits the other boy, Ben in the face because he did not react fast enough. Ben then tells his dad when he gets home and Ben’s dad wanted revenge. He decided that the next day he was take a wooden stick and beat Tom until he is bruised everywhere for hurting his precious Ben. Where does the Almighty God take in this place? Why didn’t God stop Ben’s dad from hurting Tom? Tom did not do this intentionally. Where did this mystery of evilness come from? Ben’s dad did not have to beat up Tom in result; he could’ve just made Tom apologize instead.
The second reason of the problem of evil is “The argument from evil”. Going back to Christianity, they affirmed three propositions: God is all-powerful (including omniscient), God is perfectly good, and Evil exists. 2 But many argue that [1] if God (an all-powerful, omniscient, omnibenevolent being) exists, there would be no (or no unnecessary) evil in the world. [2] There is evil (or unnecessary evil) in the world. [3] Therefore, God does not exist. 3
In oppose to the problem of evil, the free-will defense defends that God does exist but he created the world with freedom for a reason. “It is logically impossible for God to create free creature and guarantee that they will never do evil.” 4 God did not set our world and everyone to be the same. We are morally responsible for our actions. He created freedom for us to choose goodness or evilness. Even though there is a lot of evil in this world that God created, he did not set a certain amount of goodness or evilness in this world, it is the best an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God could do. If God set everybody’s mind to think the same and only goodness exist with no freedom of choice. We might as call robots and not humans. For example, if my family is running low on money and I know that my neighbors are rich and they usually lay money everywhere around the house. I have the free-will to rob them when they leave the house and create evilness. This free-will gives me the responsibility for my own actions. Therefore, I am the cause for what I am.
The theodicy defense drives further than that free-will defense does. This defense says that evil is a good thing in this world. The British theologian John Hick is interesting because he endeavors to put forth a full-scale justification for God’s permitting the evil in the world. Hick said, “in order that human beings, as free responsible agents, may use this world as
