Summary Of Evil And Omnipotence By J. L. Mackie

In his article, Evil and Omnipotence, J.L. Mackie begins by addressing that every argument for the existence of God shown by philosophers has had its faults. The aim of Mackie’s argument is to prove that philosophy is not capable of criticizing arguments for the existence of God. Another aim is to prove that God does not exist, thus eliminating any positions made by theologians. Mackie calls his argument the ‘problem of evil’ since it demonstrates that the conception of both an omnipotent and wholly good God lacks rational support and is therefore irrational. The problem of evil follows a set of propositions that are inconsistent with one another. The problem is (i) God is omnipotent, meaning there are no limits as to what ‘God’ can do …show more content…
The strongest reply to the problem of evil in my opinion is the free will defence. The argument of moral evil follows: (i) if God exists then he is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good (ii) if God were omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good then the world would not contain moral evil (iii) the world contains moral evil therefore (iiii) God cannot exist. In order to defend this argument, true believers in a God must show that it is not the case that a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good could allow for some moral evil to exist. This is why the free will defence is the strongest reply against the problem of evil. Moral evil exists because God gave us the ability to be free agents - the ability to make our own free choices. God created all beings in his image to be able to be significantly free and to not be determined to do only the right thing. By creating free beings, he does not make them do what is right, thus a god creates creatures who are capable of evil. If we are created to be free it becomes impossible to guarantee that there will not be any evil within the world. However, clearly God has good reason as to why he decided to make a world with beings who are free and have the ability to choose evil over good actions or vice versa. A defender of the free will defence would argue that a world containing free beings with free …show more content…
Perhaps beings would never understand the power of goodness without seeing some evil. Evil is used to bring about goodness in people, much like wearing a cast after breaking your arm, you need to endure the pain to bring about the desirable end of a healed arm. This is why I believe that the problem of evil is not a compelling argument, because as someone who believes in God we can argue in the opposite direction to the problem of evil. The problem of evil argues that because evil exists it leads to there not being an existing god. One believes in God may argue that there may be an existing God and the existence unjustified evil. If there were an omniscient, omnipotent and wholly good God then there wouldn’t be any unjustified evil in the world. Since there is a omniscient, omnipotent and wholly good God, who is incomprehensible to humans, who allows unjustified evil to exist thus he create free beings. Free beings with the capability to choose right from evil and thus the existence of unjustified evil in the