"If God is all-powerful, then he must be able to abolish evil; if God is all-loving, then he must wish to abolish evil; but evil exists, therefore God cannot be both all-powerful and all-loving." (John Hick)

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

God and Evil

“If God is all-powerful, then he must be able to abolish evil; if God is all-loving, then he must wish to abolish evil; but evil exists, therefore God cannot be both all-powerful and all-loving.” (John Hick)

The problem of evil is the difficulty of reconciling the existence of suffering and other evils in the world with the existence of God. There are two kinds of evil that philosophers have distinguished between; moral evil which consists of the bad actions and their unfortunate results for which humans or other moral agents are morally responsible. The second kind is natural evil which consists of the suffering to humans and animals that results from natural causes such as genetic defects, diseases, and natural disasters.

Password

Confirm Password

I agree to the terms of service and privacy policy

The significance of the problem of evil to the philosophy of religion is that it cannot be answered by one person; it needs the attention of the whole human “faculty” to come to a conclusion. Evil is a big part of the philosophy of religion because one main question is why would God cause suffering on humans that do no wrong? Doesn’t suffering break the soul instead of make the soul? I really do not think that there is a satisfactory conclusion because people are always going to debate the issue of God and evil.

“The cause and effect relationship ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

“The cause and effect relationship among things-being-moved and things-moving must have a starting point. At one point in time, the relationship was set in motion. Thus, there must be a First Cause which set all other things in motion.”

The ontological proof of God’s existence states that there is a basic understanding of God, the idea of God is the idea of the greatest possible thing, a being is greater if it exists in reality rather that understanding, if God exists only in understanding then a greater being can be conceived, if there is an idea of the greatest conceivable thing than it must exist in understanding and reality, therefore, God exists in reality. The teleological proof of God’s existence states that the universe exhibits apparent design, we have found and intelligent will to be the cause of such design, therefore, it is reasonable to say that the universe was causes by a purposive, intelligent will. The third, cosmological proof of God’s existence states that the world contains things that were brought here by some cause; everything that exists is either uncaused or caused, there cannot be an infinite regress of causes, there must be an uncaused first cause, the uncaused first cause is God, therefore, God exists. I think the most convincing is the cosmological argument because if you read the bible then this argument relates to it. The bible says God created the universe and man and all the animals, whereas the cosmological argument states pretty much the same thing.