The argument that the existence of evil and suffering counts against, or is logically incompatible with, the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and wholly good God. The logical version, sharpened by J. L. Mackie, holds the two claims cannot both be true; the evidential version, associated with William Rowe, holds only that the amount and distribution of gratuitous suffering makes God's existence improbable rather than impossible. A version of the challenge is traditionally attributed to Epicurus, transmitted through Lactantius, though the attribution is uncertain; theistic responses range from free-will and soul-making theodicies to sceptical theism, which denies that humans are positioned to judge whether apparently gratuitous suffering really is gratuitous.
Facts
Origin YearSourced to the subject's own accountTraditional dating via the Epicurean paradox, reported centuries later by the Christian writer Lactantius; Epicurus own authorship is disputed among scholars since no surviving text by Epicurus states the argument. Classification
Position Kind Connections
Associated With
Why this is disputed. The riddle is traditionally attributed to Epicurus by way of Lactantius's later report; the attribution to Epicurus himself is not securely established in the surviving fragments.
Source The Problem of Evil (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
In Branch
Sources
1. The Problem of Evil (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
The Problem of Evil
The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable to believe in the existence of God.
- Associated With: Epicurus
2. Epicurean Paradox (Wikipedia)
WikipediaEpicurean paradox (Wikipedia), introductionQuote, Epicurean paradox (Wikipedia), introduction
The Epicurean paradox is a logical dilemma about the problem of evil attributed to the Greek philosopher Epicurus, who argued against the existence of a god who is simultaneously omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent.
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description
Plantinga's free will defense answers the logical argument from evil directly: it is impossible even for an omnipotent being to make it the case that someone freely chooses to do what is right, so a world containing libertarian free will cannot be guaranteed free of moral evil. Since libertarian free will is good enough to justify that risk, the bare co-existence of God and evil is not the flat logical contradiction the classical argument claims.
A dissenting reading, from Alvin PlantingaThe Problem of Evil (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Frequently Asked Questions
If God is all-powerful, why does God not simply create people who always freely choose to do good?
Most versions of the free will defense hold that even an all-powerful being cannot guarantee that a genuinely free creature always chooses rightly, since that very possibility of choosing wrongly is what makes the choice free.
The standard reply, developed by Alvin Plantinga, argues that libertarian free will, the kind many theists think moral responsibility requires, cannot be guaranteed by any being, however powerful, to produce only right choices, because a choice that could not have gone otherwise would not be a free choice at all. On this view it is not a real limit on God's power that God cannot make someone freely do right, since the demand asks for a contradiction, a free choice that cannot fail to be right. So long as libertarian free will is valuable enough to be worth the risk, God has a morally sufficient reason to create a world where it is possible, and that possibility carries the possibility of moral evil along with it.
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