There are two main types of evil and suffering that occur in the world, they are; moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil includes things that happen like murder and the holocaust that occurred whilst the Nazi’s were in charge of Germany. The types of natural evil that occur include things such as Floods, Earthquakes and the Tsunami that occurred recently. These problems of moral and natural evil, they contradict the God of classical theism again because if God was all of the things it is said that he is then surely he would not create people such as Adolf Hitler who was responsible for so many deaths. God would also not allow such things to happen in the world like natural evil, once again this questions the attribute of God that says that God is all powerful, the question that arises from this is that; Does God posses the power to actually stop natural evil from happening? There have been philosophers such as Hume, who came up with the inconsistent triad. It still has two attributes of the God of classical theism, however it has removed the attribute that says that God is all knowing and replaced it with evil exists. The explanation that Hume gave for this is that you can not have all three attributes together, he said that God must not know how to stop evil and suffering or because if he did then he would have stopped it already.
It could be said that the level of suffering that somebody endures could make a difference for the problem of suffering that occurs, for example it can not be said that banging your elbow is the same as losing a family member. Although the question that arises here is; Should there be any level of suffering occurring in the world at all; should God allow suffering to occur, not matter what extent it is?
B) There have been large amounts of solutions otherwise known as theodicies. These have been brought forward to the problem of evil and suffering. These include the Augustinian, Iranaean, Process Theodicy and the Free-will defence. However, it could be said that the Process Theodicy is not really a Theodicy, this is because it does not maintain the God of classical theism and the existence of evil and suffering. The main two theodicies that I will be concentrating on are the Free-will defence and the Iranaean Theodicy.
The free-will defence states that God has given humans free will to do what ever they want to do. This is due to a necessary distance that must be maintained between God and the human race. This is known as the epistemic distance, and it allows humans to have free will. It is considered as being important for humans to have the choice of free will because, if free will were not made, then everybody would have the same beliefs and follows the same God and guidelines. Also, if we did not possess free will then we would not have the choice of weather we should do something or not. The strength of the free will argument is that if God created all humans with free will, then it can be said that humans themselves choose to do good or evil, however a weakness of the free will argument is why did God create humans so that they can do evil things. It is also said that to say it is “God’s Will” is wrong also, this is because if it is God’s will that was given to everybody then God would not want us to do evil things, he would have wanted everybody to do good things instead. The free will defence is quite successful in explaining the problem of evil, this is because it says that God created everybody with the choice to do good or evil, it is just that some people have chosen to do evil in their lives whereas others have chosen to live their lives good and done as God has asked of them. It is however possible to say that why has God created people who want to choose to do evil, why could God not have created everybody to do good in their lives?
The Iranaean Theodicy is again similar to the free will defence. This is because it is saying that a God wants human to come into a relationship with him that is freely chosen and not something that has been forced upon them. It was Hick that developed the idea of a period of perfecting. The Iranaean Theodicy is based upon the fact that humans have developed from animal existence, again as I have previously mentioned it is said that God wanted humans to come into a relationship with him that was freely chosen. There must be an epistemic distance between humans and God. The strengths of this argument are that; only in an environment were there was danger, challenge and the possibility of evil would it be a possibility for humans to evolve. Also it is said that suffering enables moral actions to occur. However there are some weaknesses of this argument. They include the questions that are asked like; is the price too high to pay for a greater God? If all humans are going to heaven like it is said in this argument, then why does God enable humans to suffer? If God were omnipotent, we would have the virtues without having to suffer. There is also no explanation of extreme suffering that occurs to the human race, for example the holocaust. The Theodicy does take into account the theory of evolution, however this is an inadequate response to the problem of evil.
This Theodicy again is fairly successful in explaining the problem of evil because it does take into account evolution, and also the survival of the fittest, however, this response is inadequate for the problem of evil because it does not really take into account extreme suffering that has occurred and also some natural disasters that have occurred over the years that were not necessarily foreseeable.
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Andrew Penman 12 C
