Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

For almost two thousand years in the West, the problem of evil has persisted as a serious challenge to traditional belief in God. The God of classical theism is believed to be omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good (see Article 28, omnipotence; Article 29, omniscience; and Article 30, goodness). Many thoughtful people maintain that such beliefs are in tension with certain beliefs about evil. When this tension is given more exact shape and structure, we have a specific formulation of the problem of evil and have the stage set for certain kinds of responses to it.During the 1960s and 1970s, philosophers concentrated a great deal of attention on the logical problem of evil (also called the a priori problem and the deductive problem). The logical problem revolved around the charge that propositions(1)God is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly goodand(2)Evil existsare logically inconsistent. Sometimes the claim that there are large amounts and extreme kinds of evil is substituted for (2). Clearly, the issue is one of deciding whether or not the relevant claims about God and evil can be clarified and reconciled.Critics such as J. L. Mackie argued that the theist qua theist must believe both that God exists and that evil exists, but cannot do so consistently. The alleged inconsistency, however, is not obvious; it is neither explicit nor formal in nature. In order to make the implicit inconsistency ... log in or subscribe to read full text