Richard Swinburnes The Problem of Evil Gods E Essay Example For Students

Richard Swinburnes The Problem of Evil: Gods E Essay Richard Swinburnes The Problem of Evil: Gods ExistencePhilosophers have looked for ways to explain Gods existence for centuries. One such argment that the believer must justify in order to maintain thepossibility of Gods existence is the problem of evil. In his essay, TheProblem of Evil, by Richard Swinburne, the author attempts to explain how evilcan exist in a world created by an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent Being,namely God. Swinburne uses to free-will defense and says that God gave us achoice between doing good and doing evil. If someone chooses to do good overevil, then that Good is greater than if one had no choice at all but to do good. This is a weak argument and in order to clarify those weaknesses one can lookat Steven M. Cahns essay entitled Cacodaemony. This essay parallelsSwineburnes, but states that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnimalevolent Demoncreated the world. By looking at how weak the argument for cacodaemony is, onecan see how unlikely it is that the Demon exists and then can see that theexistence of God is just as unlikely. In The Problem of Evil, Swinburne says that an omniscient, omnipotent,omnibenevolent Being created the world. If this were true, how can evil existin this world? If God consciously knew He was creating a world in which thereis evil, then He would not be omnibenevolent. If God did not know He wascreating a world in which evil exists, then He would not be omniscient. If Godis omnipotent then He would be able to stop any evil from occurring. Either way,God would not be what Christianity makes him out to be. Swinburne argues thatthe theodicist, one who believes that it is not wrong for God to create a worldin which there is evil, can logically explain the existence of evil in the world. The main argument that the theodicist uses is the free-will defense, whichclaims that God gave humans the freedom to choose between doing acts of good andacts of evil. The theodicist argues that the good person could do is greater ifit is chosen instead of doing evil. It is better to choose to walk an elderlyperson across the road instead of deciding to push the elderly person in frontof an oncoming car. The theodicist believes that it is better for a person tohave that choice, though nearly everyone would naturally choose to help theperson across the street, than to have no choice at all and be forced to helpthat person. Swinburne writes that giving people a moral responsibility to dothe right thing is good. But if He did so by imposing a full character on ahumanly free creature, this would be giving him a character which he had not inany way chosen or adopted for himself (9). Swinburne believes that the freedomto choose and develop ones own character is a very important thing and e achperson deserves to have the ability to choose between Good and evil. This, however, does not justify the amount of pain and suffering in theworld. If someone were to consciously choose to do an evil act over a good one,the suffering caused to the innocent people involved would not be right. Thereare some people with mental disorders or those born with retardation that do nothave the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, or who sometimes sufferfrom lack of proper judgement. These people cannot make a choice between goodand evil, so sometimes they do evil acts, and sometimes they do good ones. Would it not be better for these people not to have the choice, a choice thatthey may not be fit to make? For example, a man who is schizophrenic may hearvoices that tell him to do something that he knows is morally wrong, such askill somebody. Would it not be better for God to intervene and make thispersons judgement better? It most certainly would be better for God tointervene and give this person a proper sense of right and wrong and the abilityto do the right thing. It would have been a better world if God had createdHitler so that he would not feel the need to order the massacre of millions ofJews. Swinburne, however, thinks that it is better for these people to have achoice to do wrong or to do right. The French and Indian War EssayThe existence of the Black Plague in medieval Europe caused suffering and deathto millions. It also resulted in the bettering of living conditions. The deathof one third of the population of Europe cannot be justified by the compassionfelt by those that lived towards those that die. Another example of aninstrumental good is penicillin. It was discovered and helped to cure polio andsaved many lives. The suffering of the many that contracted, suffered and diedfrom this disease cannot be justified by the few that fought to conquer thisdisease. It is not a good thing that Polio existed. Even if the theodicist still believes that the existence of God and theexistence of evil are compatible, by looking at Steven M. Cahns essayCacodaemony, one will see that they are not. In his essay, Cahn parallelsSwinburnes situation of the problem of evil with the problem of goodness. Cahnstates that it is equally likely that if an omniscient, omnipotent,omnibenevolent Being created the world, then an omniscient omnipotent,omnimalevolent Demon could have done the same. The problem that arises inCahns essay is: how could a world containing goodness have been created bythis all-powerful Demon? It exactly parallels the problem in Swinburnes essay,how could evil exist in a world created by God?Cahn attacks this problem by using the same argument that Swinburne uses,the free-will defense. Cahn also creates two types of good, just as Swinburnecategorized two types of evil. Cahn calls these goods moral goods, those humansdo for each other, and physical goods, those found in the human envir onment. Cahn writes that the Demon could have created a world in which humans do nothave the ability to do good, but this Demon has. Cahn writes that the Demon hasgiven humans free-will to choose to do evil or good. If one chooses evil overgood, then that evil is greater than if one had no choice at all but to do evil. The Demon thus had to provide human beings with freedom, so that they mightperform their bad actions volunarily, thus maximizing evil(23). Cahn writesthat the world wouldnot be as evil as it could be if the Demon made it so thateveryone was just evil. These arguments are not very convincing. Too many people choose good overevil for this to be the worst of all possible worlds, which is what it shouldbe if an omniscient, omnipotent, omnimalevolent Demon created it. This worldwould be more evil if the Demon made us inherently evil and goodness did noteven exist. If we were all made with the same characteristics as the Demon thenwe would be more evil than if we had to choose to come up with those evil traitson our own. This world would be a worse place if everyone just fought and hatedeach other, just like this world would be a better place if everyone waspeaceful and happy. This Demon could not exist because there is too much goodin the world, and that good does not get an adequate explanation. Since thearguments for Cacodaemony is disproved, so is the one for the theodicist, sincethese two arguments are equally likely and equally weak. By looking at Cahns Cacodaemony, one can see how improbably it is thatan omniscient, omnipotent, and omnimalevolent Demon created the world. Cahnsargument, however, exactly parallels Swinburnes in The Problem of Evil. Bothuse the free-will defense to attempt to explain how evil or goodness could existin a world created by God or a Demon. Both arguments have the same strength, asCahn notes, and both are very weak arguments. If it seems unlikely that anomniscient, omnipotent, omnimalevolent Demon created the world, then it is justas unlikely that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being created theworld. It is likely that neither God nor the Demon exists, and the problem ofevil and the problem of goodness wind up supporting the position of the atheist. Category: Philosophy