Evil is often considered to be anything that causes suffering of any form the problem of evil is an ancient philosophical and theological debate, in which the existence of evil poses a challenge to a belief in the existence of God Philosophers often make the distinction between moral and natural evil, and this is the first way that the existence of these types of evil poses a challenge to a belief in the existence in God. Moral evil is any evil brought about by a free- will agent ire humans Free-will agents can choose between good or bad and can therefore lead to the suffering of others. An example of moral evil would be the Holocaust during the second world war, because this was caused by humans and resulted in the suffering of six million Jews through starvation, torture, and death.
Moral evil can cause a lot of questioning about the existence of God because it raises questions such as, if God was omnipotent and omniscient then why doesn’t he intervene? God must have created humans with free-will for a purpose, and could he not accomplish this purpose without the need for evil and suffering? Does any divine purpose justify suffering? Therefore, is a God who works in this way worthy of worship? Similarly, natural evil poses the same problem This is anything that causes suffering but is beyond the control of a free-will agent. Such evil results from the world being the way it is and can include examples such as tsunamis, earthquakes and drought. One particular example of this type of evil is the boxing day tsunami in Thailand which killed more than 300,000 people.
Natural evil in particularcan pose a challenge to a belief in the existence of God because it can question the whole basis of God’s existence by questioning why God as a creator would create the world in such a way where evil can cause such atrocities, If God can create the world ‘ex nihilo’ why could he not create his world without natural evil? If God created the world, then he must be responsible for natural evil and this could contradict the belief that he is omnibenevolent Therefore, is a God who created the world in such a way where people can suffer from natural evil worthy of worship? These questions can pose many challenges to a belief in God because they contradict the way God is perceived within religion and the existence of different types of evil can question the basis of God’s entire existence for many people.
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Nonetheless, one the main arguments concerning evil that poses the biggest challenge to belief in God is the classical problem of evil This concerns the assumption of a perfectly good (benign), all powerful (omnipotent) and all knowing God (omniscient) creator God. J L Mackie stated ‘God is all powerfuli God is all loving and yet evil exists,‘ This poses the question that if God possesses all these characteristics then why is there still evil in the world? The logical problem of evil attempts to show that the assumed proportions lead to a logical contradiction and therefore cannot all be correct, and therefore God cannot logically exist. J L Mackie (1917-1981) an Australian philosopher attempted to demonstrate this through his inconsistent triad.
In this work he dealt with the inconsistency of evil’s existence alongside traditional characteristics of the God of classical theism, An alternative solution to the problem is to try and solve the inconsistent triad by removing one of the three points (that God is omnipotent, God is omnibenevolent, or that evil exists), At each corner of the triangle these propositions lie and any attempt to solve the inconsistent triad would involve removing one of the three statementerne of the main challenges posed by evil to believers in God would be solving the inconsistent triadi If God’s omnipotence were to be removed then we can understand why evil exists because whilst God loves his creation and wants to prevent evil, he does not have the power to do so However, this can still pose a challenge to religious believers who believe that God created the universe ‘ex nihilo’ and is therefore greater than everything that exists within the universe.
Alternatively, God’s omnibenevolence could be removed and evil still exist, because having the power to remove evil does not necessarily mean that God wants to, and if God was not all-loving then he should not care if his creation suffers. However, again this causes more problems for religious believers because this kind of God is so far from the imagination of all classical theistic religions as to be unrecognisable, so the problem therefore remains, The only other way of solving the inconsistent triad would be to pronounce that evil does not exist, and in doing so retaining God’s characteristics of omnipotence and omnibenevolence, and that evil is only our perception of God’s purpose that we cannot understand.
However, many would disagree with this accusation that evil does not exist because as Hume pointed out, the effects of evil are felt too widely and its presence attested too vividly for it to be dismissible eg the six million innocent Jews who died during the Holocaust. Therefore, this argument poses a huge problem to believers in God because by stating that evil clearly exists in the world, one of God‘s characteristics must be false, questioning again the basis of his entire existence. Another reason why the existence of evil poses challenge to a belief in the existence of God is Immense Suffering. This is in cases where evil affects more than one person, the suffering can extend to many people, in some case millions of people. An example of this includes genocide such as the murders of six million Jews during the Holocaust in the Second World War.
This poses a challenge to the belief in God because it raises questions such as, why so many? And what purpose does it serve? It challenges God’s omnipotence; can‘t an all powerful God stop this evil? God’s omniscience is also challenged, by asking where is God in the midst of all this suffering? God’s omnibenevolence is also questioned; how can immense suffering be an expression of God’s love? Traditional theodicies fall shott in the face of immense suffering, ‘free will’, ‘learning lessons‘ and ‘spiritual development’ seems to be a cruel way of reaching this, how is the spiritual development of millions of victims helped in this malicious way? This therefore challenges God as a creator for making a world with such atrocities, because with such power (omnipotence) and love (omnibenevolence) surely a world could have been created without such evil. This therefore leads to the conclusion that evil poses a challenge to the belief in God because if God were to exist in the way religious believers perceive him to be then such evil logically shouldn’t exist under his control.
In the same way, innocent suffering can pose another challenge to believers in God because it challenges one of God’s most precious attributes-justices Examples of innocent suffering include child abuse, cancer and natural disasters. This in particular can cause many problems for religious believers because it goes against the idea that God is omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient. It goes against the idea that ‘God is a God ofjustice‘ in the Bible, by asking, why do innocent people suffer? Also there is no adequate theodicy to explain innocent suffering and therefore this is one of the biggest challenges posed to believers in God because there is no explanation for this kind of evil, and therefore no support for God‘s existence with innocent suffering existing in the world Animal suffering poses another immense challenge to the belief in God. There are many clear and observable examples of animal suffering within the world, such suffering include the suffering within the food chain, animal cruelty, poaching, intensive farming methods and animal testing for cosmetic purposes Alfred Lord Tennyson stated ‘Who trusted God was love indeed.
And love Creation’s final law, Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw, With ravine, shreik’d against his creedi’ Tennyson is stating that nature contradicts the belief that God is a God of love, because it is hard to imagine a world where God would deliberately make animals (his creation) suffer. The philosopher Anthony Rowe also agreed with this by presenting an evidential argument against God‘s existence based on natural and animal suffering His famous example included a fawn trapped in a forest fire, and after several days of agony the fawn died Rowe argues that an omnipotent God could have prevented the fawns suffering without allowing some greater evil to happen or losing some other potential good. He shows that any potential benefit emerging out of the fawns suffering (etgt someone hears the fawns cry and alerts the locals and saves the village), God could have achieved this without the suffering of the fawn, who seems to suffer pointlessly. This challenges God’s nature of love and justice, who could have killed the fawn quickly preventing the days of suffering and torture, There was no justifiable explanation for the fawn’s death and because the fawn suffered pointlessly there is no reasonable explanation from believers in God for why God would act upon this if he were omnipotent and omnibenevolent.
Also it challenges God as a creator because God could have created a world without animal suffering because it doesn’t need to be a part of the created ordert If suffering was meant for the improvement of the quality of one’s soul, and if animals have no souls then why should they suffer? Therefore, animal suffering can pose a massive challenge to belief in God because an omnipotent God should have the power to stop the suffering of his creation, and an omnibenevolent God should express his love towards his creation, not treat them in such a way like this. In conclusion there have been many arguments which argue that the existence of evil contradicts the nature of God‘s existence and his characteristics (omnipotence, omnibenevolence and his purposes as a creator), causing great challenges to belief in God, by questioning his nature, intentions and existence.
