Does the Problem of evil prove there is no god?

Philosophers and believers have spent many years trying to come up with a solution to the problem of evil- they call these solutions theodicies. The first theodicy to the problem of evil is the free will defence. Philosophers state that most of the evil in this world is because of our own choice and isn’t god’s fault. While making the world, God faced a choice: he could create people with a choice like us, or he could create robots, without the ability to make choices of their own. God chose to create people with their own choices, and he made the right choice. However the outcome for this is the abuse of freedom that we see around us. The people with a choice sometimes choose to abuse their freedom, to do wrong. The wrong that we do, though, the suffering that we cause, great though it may be, is a price worth paying for something that is valuable: genuine freedom.

The free-will defense is only a partial success. It is correct to say that it is better that the world contains people with freedom than that it contains only robots without any freedom, and I believe that much of the evil that we see around us is a consequence of the abuse of this freedom. However, not all evil is done by humans (Moral evil). Natural disasters are also forms of evil and cause great destruction, but there is nothing that we have done that causes them and there is often nothing that we could have done to prevent them, so any Humanity-centric explanation does not seem to work. This shows that free will only solves the problem of evil partially.

Another theodicy is to the problem of evil is that the existence of evil is a necessary condition for the existence of certain kinds of goods. There are a number of character traits that are valuable only if evil exists. Compassion, for instance, can only exist if there is suffering. Bravery, too, can only be shown if we sometimes face danger. God created us in such a way that we would depend upon one each other, that we would be drawn together to form a strong community. If each of us were self-sufficient, safe from suffering, then the greater goods that come from this would not have been possible.

Again, I believe that there is something to this response to the problem of evil, but that it does not resolve the problem entirely. Though it is clear, I think, that much suffering is justified, that the world would be a worse place without it, it is still simple to point to specific examples of suffering that appear to serve no greater purpose. Each of us has tragedies in our lives, and it seems to us as though the world would have been a better place without those instances of suffering.

A third theodicy to the problem of evil is that evil is a test. God uses evil to test us, to see if our strength in belief for him is stronger or do we think that he doesn’t exist.  He is omnipresent. He looks at everybody and makes sure that we help each other. Humans are not born perfect: perfection comes at the end of the process, not the beginning. Virtue is not give, it has to be achieved. This cannot be done freely without the challenge of evil and suffering.

There is some truth in the theodicy, again, however why would god need to create test when he is omniscient. He should know what he is creating without putting his creations in a test. This show me that god doesn’t know his own creations and that he is not omniscient.

In conclusion, theodicy’s put forward so far have not been able to prove as to why god created evil when he is meant to be Omni-benevolent and omnipotent. Theodicy’s such as the free will theory all have problems and they all contradict themselves or they don’t fully solve the problem of evil. The free will theodicy only covers moral evil not natural evil, the evil is a test theodicy shows that god is not omniscient and the evil is required for good theodicy also doesn’t prove god existence because it still shows that god is evil. After looking at all the information above, I can say that god doesn’t exist because of the problem of evil.

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