Evil and The God of Goodness: In Defense of The Problem Of Evil(Part II)

1. If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2. If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.
3. If God is omniscient, then God knows when evil exists.
4. If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate all evil.
5. Evil exists.
6. If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn’t have the power to eliminate all evil, or doesn’t know when evil exists, or doesn’t have the desire to eliminate all evil.
7. Therefore, God doesn’t exist.

That was the argument, the logical problem of evil, which we discussed in the previous article of this series. There are some popular objections to it coming from many internet apologists, I will look at some of them in this article and critically examine them to see if they really do the job they are supposed to. So, let’s see.

Evil and The God of Goodness: In Defense of The Problem of Evil (Part I)

One of the most powerful and troubling arguments against classical monotheism is the problem of evil. Even if a theist believes in the God of the Bible, Qur’an or Torah and accepts the traditional interpretation of those scriptures, the problem of evil may still be a considerable difficulty for him. Something like, “You know, God, I believe in you and your goodness; but why did you allow that to happen?” Epicurus is credited to be the originator of this argument, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither willing nor able? Then why call him God?”

“Now, let’s kill that dinosaur…”