Evil and suffering test

What is Mackie’s inconsistent triad?

What is Mackie’s inconsistent triad?

• God is omnipotent: he is all powerful

• God is omnibenevolent: he is all loving

• Evil exists

What is one of the counterarguments for Mackie’s inconsistent triad?

That some evil is necessary for certain types of good like courage (second-order good)

What are the use of second order good?

It is to seek to maximise first order goods as they are more valuable.

How does Mackie counters to the first counterargument?

With the idea of malevolence and cruelty, it is possible for people to possess second order good without the presence of second order evil.

What is Alvin Platinga’s free will defence

• A morally significant action is one that is either morally good or bad

• A being that is significantly free is that is able to do or not do morally significant actions

• A being created by God to do morally good actions would not be significantly free

• So the only way God could eliminate evil, would be to elimate significantly free beings

• But a world that contains significantly free beings is more good than a world that does not contain significantly free beings.

What would be Mackie’s counter for the free will defence?

An omnipotent God could’ve been able to create any logically possible world including one where everyone freely chooses to be good. That means second order is still redundant.

What are the two stages of creation in the Irenaeus theodicy?

• An immature being that is yet to develop

• The developmental stage that will eventually allow the person to become the "Child of God”

What was Irenaeus mean by the world being a ‘soul-making place?

We are all created as imperfect so we can freely choose whether we would like to complete our development to become the ‘Child of God”.

What happens to those who (haven’t) completed their development?

They will continue thier soul-making journey after their death but will eventually reach to the kingdom of heaven.

What are the two criticism of the Irenaeus Theodicy

• If everyone goes to heaven, this seems unjust as immorality is not punished - this denies “The Fall” and Jesus’ role is reduced to a moral exmaple.

• Examples like the Holocaust seems too extreme for just developing good qualities

What did D. Z. Phillips said in “the Concept of Prayer”?

Allowing evil to continue can never be an expression of love, this wouldn’t support Jesus’ teaching of compassion.

What are Irenaeus’ counterarguments to the criticism?

Heaven was for everyone because if life simply ended, God’s purpose would never be fulfilled as only a supremely good future in heaven can justify the magnitude of suffering and evil.

What are Irenaeus’ counterarguments to D. Z. Phillips?

Many ‘evil’ people cannot be held responsible for their actions, for example, their actions could be the result of ill treatment and hence eternal punishment would be unjust

What was the Augustinian Theodicy?

God created the world and at the time of creation it was good. Evil was a privation of good not just entity itself. Evil was a result of angels who turned away from God, misused their freewill and tempted Adam and Eve and since all humans are ‘seminally present in the loins of Adam’, we are born with original sin. Natural evil is described as the punishment for sin as the “penal consequences of sin”

What happens on Judgement Day?

At the end of time, the good will go to heaven and the bad will go to hell because evil is punished. Hence God’s world can be seen as perfect in the end.

What is the criticism of the Augustinian Theodicy?

if the world was perfect and there was no knowledge of good and evil, this would bring the question of how could there be freedom to obey or disobey God, since good and evil are unknown. The fact that Adam, Eve and the angels disobeyed God means that there are already a knowledge of good and evil. This shows the flaws within Augustine’s interpretation of the tree of knowledge.

What did F. D. E. Schleicermacher say in his book “The Christian Faith”?

It is a logical contradiction to say that a perfectly crerated world has gone wrong, since this would mean that evil was created imperfect or God allowed it to go wrong.