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EVIL & SUFFERING - Coggle Diagram
EVIL & SUFFERING
NATURAL EVIL
- What the world does to us through things such as disease, starvation and natural disasters.
- seen as being generally produced by the chance operation of the laws of nature e.g a flood doesnt intend to drown you
- often the hardest for religious people to accept- moral evil can be put down to free will, but natural disasters not blamed on humans, except where a natural disaster is caused by human activity.
- The obvious seat is to blame God, as it should be easy for an omnipotent god to control the forces of nature, as it is believed he is the one to have created them in the first place
- In Bible, God uses natural evils to punish people e.g plagues, Noahs arc
- However in New Testament this is different when Jesus performs a number of beneficial miracles over the world of nature
MORAL EVIL
- any action where the moral agent (beings capable of acting in accordance with what is right/wrong) uses their will to bring about morally bad consequences
- Includes: - adult, arson, bullying, cruelty, deceit, discrimination, dishonesty, genocide, greed lying etc
- Also refers as evil that comes from human inaction- e.g where someone fails to help another person In danger or trouble
LOGICAL PROBLEM OF EVIL
- Inconsistent triad- God is omnipotent & omnibenevolent, but evil exists.
- They cannot all be true- the logical inconsistency arises here as an omnipotent god would be able to remove evil, and an omnipotent god would wish to remove evil.
SOLUTIONS
- 1) Denying Gods omnipotence:
- he is simply not able to control and stop the evil so cannot be blamed for its existence
- This is preferred solution of process theology
- 2) Denying Gods omnibenevlence:
- for most christians this is unthinkable- the belief that God is both good and loving supports those who experience evil and is the basis for the future hope of heaven
- The hope that God is omnibenevolent doesnt make it true
- FREUD argues this is a case of wish-fulfilment where wishing for something doesntnt make it true
- 3) Denying evil exists: - Solution proposed by St Augustine, who argued evil is 'privatio boni'(privation of good)
- by this he meantthate vil does not exist in its own right but is an absence of good just as darkness is an absence of light
- unfortunately denying the reality of evil isnt acceptable
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