Mackie Evil And Existence Summary

This paper states one of many answers to the presence of evil and questioning God’s omnipotence presented by Mackie in his article “Evil and Omnipotence”. Mackie has his own “Inconsistent TRIAD” formula that states: 1. God is omnipotent 2. God is omnibenevolent 3. Evil exists. He argues that these premises are inconsistent since all three of them cannot exist at the same time. The premise below states that the free choice of good or evil by men is dependent on God. And if men can choose good on some occasion, then men can choose good over evil on every occasion. But the existence of evil and men making bad choices a lot of the time questions the omnipotence and omnibenevolence of God. Following are the premises extracted from the argument: …show more content…
This premise says more about the existence of evil, and how men do make bad choices. According to Mackie, evil is necessary as a means to bring about goodness, i.e. certain kinds evil are necessary for certain kinds of goods. And he believes that evil is due to human freewill, thus agreeing to the existence of evil. Mackie thinks that first order evil like pain gives rise to first order goods like compassion. And in the same way second order evil is necessary to give rise to second order goods. Thus, he believes that evil is a logically necessary part of good. Evil being a part of good, and if God is prepared to put up with first order evil to promote second order goods, surely God would want to eliminate second order evil then. But, according to Mackie, God lacks the power to eliminate second order evil and thus is a limit to his power. He also argues that men created by God chooses bad even though God could have made us to choose good all the time, which could have eliminated evil from the world. Thus, Mackie argues that God’s failure to do so suggests that God is no omnipotent and