Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Virtually all monotheistic religions profess that there is a divine being who is significantly good, knowledgeable, and powerful. The evils of this world present various challenges for such religions. The starkest challenge is directed towards views according to which there exists a being who is wholly good, omniscient, and omnipotent. For it would seem that such a being would have the moral disposition, the knowledge, and the power to prevent any evil whatsoever, and from this one might readily conclude that if there were such a being, there would be no evil. On one version of this challenge, the coexistence of evil with a God defined in this way is logically or metaphysically impossible. This has come to be called the logical or the modal problem of evil. Another is that the existence of such a God is improbable given the evils of this world, or at least that the existence of these evils significantly lowers the probability that such a God exists. The concern expressed is that these evils provide good evidence against the existence of such a God. This version is known as the evidential problem of evil.One traditional response to these problems for theistic belief is to provide reasons why God would produce or allow evil. This is the project of theodicy – the defense of God in the face of the problem of evil. Prominent among such attempts are the free will theodicy, according to ... log in or subscribe to read full text