Problem of evil

Question 1

Epicures and John Mackie

Answer 1

The inconsistent triad

Question 2

Plotinus

Answer 2

Believes that evil doesn’t exist because the entire universe is perfect. Evil is just a lower level of goodness.

Question 3

Spinoza

Answer 3

Perspective is what makes something evil. An object isn’t evil, it’s only if we make it evil. For example, a knife can be useful to spread butter or evil to hurt someone.

Question 4

Herbert McCabe

Answer 4

Nothing in the wrong place is just as real as something in the wrong place. For example, if someone drives their car over the cliff, it’s the nothingness under the car that’s worrying.

Question 5

Charles Matthews

Answer 5

Argues that Augustine essentially denies the reality of evil.

Question 6

Friedrich Schleiermacher

Answer 6

There isn’t a motive for angles to sin unless the were created imperfectly in the first place.

Question 7

D.Z. Phillips

Answer 7

Challenges Hick’s argument that evils can be instrumentally good or useful. No one can justify things such as the Holocaust because it might lead to good. It is still immoral. The soul making theodicies are overly utilitarianism.

Question 8

Kant

Answer 8

Free will is essential in acting morally.

Question 9

Swinburne

Answer 9

God gives us a wide range of evils so that we can learn the consequences of them for our own actions. We only fully have free will if we understand the consequences.

Question 10

Stephen Fry

Answer 10

If there is a God, he is unworthy of worship because of all the evil that there is. For example, no God would allow bone cancer in children.

Question 11

Leibniz

Answer 11

‘Best of all worlds.’ God could have made so many other universes but he made this one. As God is omnibenevolent this must necessarily be the best possible world.