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Human free will philosophy essays
Evil philosophy essay
Evil philosophy essay
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“Inside each of us, there is the seed of both good and evil. It's a constant struggle as to which one will win. And one cannot exist without the other” (Burdon). The concept of good and evil is similar to the existence of god since there also has to be the existence of evil. The existence of God and evil has been discussed by philosophers and people for years over whether they are compatible. The debate is based on how a person interprets the existence of God and evil. In the excerpt, Surprise! It’s Judgment Day from Basic Problems of Philosophy, it involves God and Martin at the gates of heaven and Martin is furious about how God forces people to suffer, but God could require people not to suffer. The debate turns into a theory if God could not create the existence of evil. I was able to determine that the existence …show more content…
of evil and the existence of god are compatible. The existence of god and evil are compatible because of free will and virtue. To support that the existence of God and evil are compatible, one of the leading arguments is free will.
God provides a person the free will to make up their mind to act the way that they want. It is explained logically in the excerpt by God, “Free will is a great good, a necessary ingredient in the best of all possible worlds. And it would be contradictory for me to give people free will and, at the same time, guarantee that they never use that freedom to cause suffering” (Davis 137). God’s explanation is right about freewill because a person will decide to do good or do evil and God has no control of the choices. Suffering will happen when someone is affected by evil, but the only way to stop suffering is to remove free will. If one takes away free will, then life is predictable, boring, and meaningless. Free will contains evil always because it lets a person prefer to cause people suffer or accomplish great phenomena with free will. Free will limits the amount of suffering by letting people select their own path in life, but suffering from some type will still be there. Free will understanding will bring up talk about happiness because of
virtue. The idea of virtue is as important, but it has traits of evil and god. To find happiness through virtue, a person will suffer to find that happiness. The existence of evil is seen through a person suffering to find happiness or any type of virtue. In the excerpt, God defends virtue in an argument with Martin by saying “Virtues are good, and a necessary ingredient in the best of all possible worlds. And the idea of virtue in a world without suffering is contradictory. It would be impossible to be courageous where there is no danger, to be generous where it costs nothing, to be sympathetic where no one is hurt” (Davis 137). God’s virtues are a noble quest because it shows the best traits of somebody, but the way to reach virtue will make the person suffer. Through the persons suffering existence of evil is shown. If happiness was just giving to people it would be pointless because the person hasn’t grown as a person or gain knowledge or ability. Virtue shows good traits in time of need or conflict like courageous, generous, and sympathetic. The existence of evil gives worth to the virtue that one develops. To discover virtue a person must suffer. The existence of God and evil are compatible under the understanding that each other needs each other to work. The existence of God and evil are ideas a person would only want to have one of the two, but the ideas coexist with each other. They work together due to free will and virtue. The excerpt from the story makes a great case for the compatible of the two, because it is a debate as God could defend the way the world works due to God. God and evil are never separate but are one ideal that causes people to execute things and learn from it.
The lines that define good and evil are not written in black and white; these lines tend to blur allowing good and evil to intermingle with each another in a single human being.
The question of God’s existence has been debated through the history of man, with every philosopher from Socrates to Immanuel Kant weighing in on the debate. So great has this topic become that numerous proofs have been invented and utilized to prove or disprove God’s existence. Yet no answer still has been reached, leaving me to wonder if any answer at all is possible. So I will try in this paper to see if it is possible to philosophically prove God’s existence.
The problem of evil is inescapable in this fallen world. From worldwide terror like the Holocaust to individual evils like abuse, evil touches every life. However, evil is not a creation of God, nor was it in His perfect will. As Aleksandr
that the same can be said for the universe as a whole. It seems to
The Proof of the Existence of God There are many arguments that try to prove the existence of God. In this essay I will look at the ontological argument, the cosmological. argument, empirical arguments such as the avoidance of error and the argument from the design of the. There are many criticisms of each of these that would say the existence of God can’t be proven that are perhaps.
This is addressed in the article “Do Good and Evil Exist?”, written by Richard Koch; author of “The 80/20 Principle” and a masters degree from Oxford University. In the article Koch gives reasons whether to believe good and evil do or do not exist. His first point is that there have been people who are considered good and evil, thereby evil does exist. Obvious people include Hitler, Stalin, Dracula and for for some people this enough evidence to believe it is real. He also takes it a step further to favor a theist or at least agnostic point of view by mentioning that there are things in nature that cannot be explained; in particular, the human unconscious mind, arguing that it may be connected to something greater than humanity 's understanding. This is an attempt to establish an outside force that would prove good and evil exist. In contrast, Koch understands that even by his own logic there are many reasons to believe evil is non-existent. To counter the religious point of view, Koch mentions that religious perspectives have flipped over time. For instance, he says Christians and pagans used to believe that they were accompanied by many literal spiritual beings above the or below them. Now it seems as if ancient tribes and extremist groups believe this while modern day thiests take it in a different context. Thus, the foundation of spiritual belief is unstable and is able to change over time. Furthermore, an argument is made that science has been the sole reason why life gets better and how good and evil are determined. Thereby, science has provided insight on how to make humans happier, instead of the source of happiness being due to an outside force (Koch, 2014). This proves that there is uncertainty and disagreement to what evil is and if it even exists. Even more reason to abolish the word from language due to its
Philosophers of the Medieval period struggled with the problem of evil - specifically, the existence of evil brought a question to the fore: if the world was created by an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, then how was it that evil existed? To further complicate the matter, a second question branched off of the first as individuals pondered over whether or not God was ultimately the cause of evil. If God created everything, and evil exists as part of everything, then God, logically, had created evil. But this presented yet another issue, in that if God had knowingly created evil, then he could not truly be all-good. And it is these concerns that philosophers addressed.
God is the source of evil. He created natural evil, and gave humans the ability to do moral evil by giving them a free will. However, had he not given people free will, then their actions would not be good or evil; nor could God reward or punish man for his actions since they had no choice in what to do. Therefore, by giving humans choice and free will, God allowed humanity to decide whether to reward themselves with temporary physical goods, and suffer in the long run from unhappiness, or forsake bodily pleasures for eternal happiness.
The Deductive Problem of Evil One of the major philosophical debates concerning God's existence involves the problem of evil. The problem has two basic formulations, one is deductive, the other inductive. The deductive form of the problem asks the following: Is the existence of evil logically compatible with a necessarily benevolent and necessarily omnipotent being? One of the philosophers who discusses the problem is Richard Gale. I will begin this essay by outlining the deductive problem of evil according to Gale.
Throughout time people have tried to prove and disprove God, all part of free will. Free will allows people to believe based on faith but can allow people to demand proof. It also allows people to decide who they are, their identity. It’s what gives people the opportunity to build relationships with people. Some relationships can cause problems with God including going against what He tells people not to do, and betraying family. Lastly, it shapes civilization to one day become a great city or it fall and be destroyed. God gave people the free will to worship Him freely instead of being forced, but being able to choose a path to follow can lead to destruction.
The Moral Argument for the Existence of God Kant did NOT put forward a moral argument and anyone who said he does is wrong!!!! Kant rejected all attempts to argue from the world to God, he regarded such an exercise as impossible. However he thought that God was a POSTULATE of practical reason. If you share Kant’s assumptions, then it becomes necessary to assume that there is a God.
what is normal and usual; that it is not usual to be able to describe
It was not until last year that I realized the answer to the little girl's question about the existence of evil. In English class last year I read Arthur Miller's play The Crucible as required reading. According to my English teacher, one theme of The Crucible was that having evil in the world is necessary to balance out the goodness. If either entity overpowered the other, they would throw off the entire balance.
The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God The ontological argument is an a priori argument. The arguments attempt to prove God's existence from the meaning of the word God. The ontological argument was introduced by Anselm of Canterbury in his book Proslogion. Anselm's classical argument was based on two principals and the two most involved in this is St Anselm of Canterbury as previously mentioned and Rene Descartes.
Evil has plagued the lives of all creatures and has existed throughout all of time. The problem of evil is that since God created the world and is all omniscient; omnipotent; and omni-benevolent, and since a good thing strives to rid evil; and because there are no limits to an omnipotent being: then because God is all three the world would therefore not contain evil. But fact is that evil does exist and from this some conclude that God does not exist because he would possess all three omni’s and rid evil. He knows of evil because he created it and had knowledge of what it would be, but he does not stop it even though he is omnipotent then that would explain the conclusion against God’s existence due to the problem of evil. If he exists then why does he allow suffering? pain?