Michael Tooley's Argument For The Existence Of God

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Recommended: Deductive argument from evil

Alexa Berra
Intro to Philosophy
Spring 1 2016
Final Paper
The Problem of Evil Evil exists. No philosopher (and typically no other human) denies this. As well, any God that may or may not exist is omnipotent and omnibenevolent. Omnipotent being “all powerful” and omnibenevolent being “all good.” If He is not, then he probably would not have earned the status of “God.” So one who believes in God typically willingly admits that God obtains both of these qualities. So how could all three of these facts possibly be so at the same time. In other words, how can someone who has the power to do whatever He wants, who is also incapable of doing bad, allow evil to happen. How could He either create evil or stand by as evil happens, without interfering? The argument then goes, for …show more content…

According to Michael Tooley in “The Problem of Evil”, a theodicy is an explanation or argument for the existence of God, even though evil does exist. So that being said, there are certainly attempts to explain how this contradiction is possible, but do any of them hold up? As we explore just a few of those attempts, we will analyze each to see if there truly is any logic behind the theories.
One possible way to explain how God could possibly exist while at the same time evil exists is that God is not all good. In the article “Leibniz on the Problem of Evil,” Michael Murray and Sean Greenberg discuss the idea of God being the author, and he is the author of everything that exists. Since evil exists, then God created evil. Murray and Greenberg go on to explain how there are three different aspects to God’s “authorship” of the world (or universe). There is the creative cause, the conserving cause, and the concurrent cause. Basically, these

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