Analysis Of God And The Problem Of Evil

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Throughout history, many philosophers have tackled the issue surrounding our knowledge of God. In recent centuries, more specific, sensitive and radical questions have been put forth that have challenged the common understanding of God inevitably causing a great disturbance in the fields of philosophy and religion. Among these questions is a very essential question dealing with God and the problems of evil. This question argues God’s status as both omnibenevolent and omnipotent.
The problem of evil can be represented very easily, if god is omnibenevolent, then he/she would have an uncompromising desire to help prevent evil, and if He is omnipotent, then he/she should have the ability to exterminate evil, yet it is quite obvious that evil still exists in this world. In the following paragraphs I will be examining B.C. Johnsons essay entitled as “God and the Problem of Evil” to look at the following argument of God.
Johnson’s argument states that an ideal being of supreme grace and unstoppable power cannot possibly exist in our world of evil. He sets out the problem in the beginning of his essay informing his readers of the main focus of his essay, grabbing their attention almost making the reader sympathise with the baby. Johnson’s analogy is as follows “a house catches on fire and a six month old baby is painfully burned to death”. He questions how someone could believe that God is “good” even though he had the ability to save the innocent child yet chose to let it die. To justify such behaviour someone needs to provide an undoubtable proof or explanation of such action. Johnson restates a list of excuses common theists would likely give in defense of God’s behavior in his essay. He examines each and every one of the excuses and ...

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... his position on the problem. He concludes that there is not even the slightest possibility that God could be both all-powerful and all good. That leaves us with three possibilities as Johnson lists towards the end of his essay: (a) that God is more likely to be all evil than he is to be all good, (b) that God is less likely to be all evil then he Is to be all good, or (c) that the probability of each is the same that God is equally likely to be all evil as he is to be all good. It can easily be concluded that case (b) is invalid, since God can be justified as evil through Johnson’s essay and discussion of the above-mentioned theists. Given that case (b) if false, this leaves us with cases (a) and (c), the only other possibilities, which allow for the likelihood or probability that God is not all that good, thus the problem of evil triumphs over traditional theism.

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