God's Omnipotence: The Argument Of The Existence Of God

Throughout the course of human history perhaps no issue has caused as much debate or controversy as the question of the existence of God. People on both sides have provided a variety of interesting arguments to support their positions. Perhaps no argument is as famous as one by Hume which has come to be known as the problem of evil. The argument goes as follows, “Epicurus’ old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but no able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil.” I am going to break down this argument into its premises, and explain how the premise about God’s omniscience causes the argument to fail. The first premise of the argument …show more content…
They are as follows: If God is all good then he is willing to prevent evil. If God is an omniscient being, he knows how to prevent evil. Finally, if God is omnipotent he can prevent evil. These premises function in an extremely important way for the argument. The argument is careful with the first premise to establish that God has the ability to perform any action that he wishes. It is furthermore careful to establish his benevolence so that we feel he would only wish to perform actions which are good. These premises work off the foundation created to drive home the heart of the issue. Clearly following the first premise God has the capacity to achieve any action, and these premises work to establish that God would also be the type of being who would desire to act to prevent evil. This brings us to the center of the …show more content…
Because God is set up as a being who possesses all knowledge, we are forced to entertain a wide variety of possibilities. At a mere surface examination, it does seem like an all-powerful God would wish and prevent evil from occurring. However, we as humans simply have limited mental capacity, and we cannot know everything. This argument created a God which is far beyond our limited capacity. Therefore, it is well within the realm of possibility that in fact God in possession of all knowledge has a reason for allowing evil to occur. Perhaps evil in fact functions in some manner according to the grand design of God that it facilitates a greater good or works to create a better existence for us as humans. These are the types of replies given by the likes of Augustine, and Aquinas and the fact of the matter is that the way the argument is framed they remain an absolute possibility. Because of this God in his infinite wisdom perhaps allows evil because it creates a greater good or world in the big picture, in this case he would still have his all-powerful status and benevolence, but evils existence would not work to contradict his existence. Because this is a scenario which totally fits within the parameters established by the argument, but negates the conclusion the argument is