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The Problem of Evil

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Title: Philosophy of religion. John Hick Author: MC Last modified by: Mike Connolly Created Date: 6/16/2003 12:27:52 PM Document presentation format – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: The Problem of Evil


1
The Problem of Evil
  • Be quite clear
  • The problem of evil is a serious challenge to the
    Christian faith and its concept of God.
  • There are two main types of evil in the world.
    What are they?
  • God is OMNIPOTENT
  • God is ALL LOVING
  • EVIL EXISTS
  • What is the problem?
  • An answer to the problem of evil/a justification
    of God in the face of evil is called a Theodicy.
  • You have 15 minutes to create a Theodicy. 5
    minutes to prepare your presentation.

2
Based on Philosophy of Religion. By John
HickWith a tiny bit of help from Mr. C
  • The problem of evil.
  • The Augustinian Theodicy 354-430 AD
  • The universe is good, the creation of a good
    God for a good purpose
  • Everything that has being is good in its own way
    and degree, except insofar as it has been spoiled
    or corrupted. Therefore evil Moral evil and
    natural evil, decay and disorder, has not been
    set there by God but represents the going wrong
    of something that is inherently good.
  • I am blind, but my eye is good! The evil of
    blindness consists of the lack of a proper
    functioning of the EYE.

3
Augustine
  • Originally the universe was a perfect harmony
    expressing the Creators divine intention.
  • How did evil come about?
  • From those levels of the universe that involved
    free will, the free will of angels and humans.
  • Some angels turned from good, from God.
  • They tempted the first man.
  • The fall of angelic and human beings was the
    origin of Moral evil and sin.
  • Natural evils and disasters like earthquakes,
    storms etc are the consequences of sin. Man was
    guardian of the Earth, but his sin has set nature
    awry.
  • We did this, not God!
  • All evil is either sin or the punishment for
    sin. Augustine.

4
The Augustinian Theodicy
  • At the end of history there will come a judgment
    when Many will enter into eternal life and others
    into eternal torment.
  • This theodicy clears God of any responsibility
    for the existence of evil by putting the
    responsibility upon the creation of free will.
  • Evil all stems from the culpable misuse of
    creative freedom in a tragic act of cosmic
    significance, in the prehistory of the human
    race.

5
Criticisms
  • If God is omnipotent, and the universe was wholly
    good, how could it go wrong?
  • How could free creatures without trace of evil,
    fall into sin? How could creation go wrong
    spontaneously and without cause? There is a
    contradiction here. It amounts to the
    self-creation of evil out of nothing. Augustine
    suggests that perhaps some Angels received less
    grace or received less assistance from God! A
    flawless creation would never go wrong and if it
    did, then responsibility is with the creator. God
    it is guilty!

6
Criticism
  • Can we accept Human species as having been once
    morally and spiritually perfect and then falling
    into a state of self-centredness which we have
    today.
  • Evidence suggests that humanity gradually
    emerged out of the lower forms of life with
    limited moral awareness.
  • Are earthquakes, floods, disease, really the
    result of the fall of humanity? Can we accept
    this?
  • What about the idea of eternal torment in hell?
    The fate of many human beings. The punishment
    would serve no constructive purpose. Evil and
    punishment would have a permanent structure in
    the universe.

7
The Iranaean Theodicy 130-202AD
  • Two stages in the creation of the human race.
  • We were brought into existence as intelligent
    animals endowed with immense moral and spiritual
    capacity. Not the perfect Adam and Eve's of
    Augustine. But immature creatures at the
    beginning of a long process of growth.
  • This second stage is now taking place. We are
    gradually being transformed through freewill from
    human animals into children of God.
  • Why were we created immature?
  • Iranaeus suggests the value of human freedom.
  • Ready made goodness verses goodness derived from
    moral choices and freewill and situations of
    difficulty and temptation.
  • Which of these is the more valuable?
  • An imperfect humanity morally struggling moving
    towards complete humanization?

8
  • Humans are formed within and as part of an
    autonomous universe within which God it is not
    overwhelmingly evident. In which God may become
    known by the free response of faith.
  • The Human Condition involves the tension between
    selfishness and the call of morality/ religion to
    transcend self-centredness.
  • Moral will evil is a necessary condition of
    humanity in a state of genuine freedom, where
    humanity can freely develop in response to God's
    non coercive presence.

9
  • OK! The bulk of human pain is traceable to moral
    evil i e men and women acting sinfully.
  • But what about natural disasters?
  • Sometimes human wickedness and folly is
    intermingled with disasters. Humans caused the
    pain. i.e. poor housing in an earthquake zone
    humans are to blame!
  • But
  • Natural disasters do exist and are part of the
    nature of the world.
  • Iranaeus
  • The divine purpose to become children of God,
    could not be served in a paradise!

10
Can we blame God for our imperfect world, for
disasters?
  • Iranaeus
  • God's purpose was not to create a paradise. A
    maximum place of pleasure and minimum paying. The
    world is a place of soul making. Free beings
    grapple with the tasks and challenges of their
    existence to become children of God.
  • Iranaeus uses a counterfactual hypotheses to
    support the argument
  • Imagine a paradise with no pain or sin. You
    could not murder. There would be no need to work.
    Everything is on a plate. You jump off a
    building and feathers would appear to gently
    stopped you.
  • OR
  • The real earth. Pain and suffering and love and
    happiness and joy and hunger and greed and
    achievement.
  • Which would you choose? In Paradise to live a
    childish dreamlike existence. Or on Earth to live
    a life of challenge and become a child of God.
  • In relation to God's purpose, Paradise would be
    the worst option!
  • Free growth can only come in a world of
    dependable laws, real dangers, frustration, pain,
    obstacles etc. A good place for soul making. That
    is why there are natural disasters. We have got
    the best of possible worlds.

11
Points of interest
  • Good can triumph over evil through a person's
    reaction
  • their courage, character etc. But the opposite
    is true also fear, selfishness, destruction.
  • Is the ultimate good worthwhile? To become
    children of God whilst some people suffer pain/
    fear/ anger/ death/ upset/torture
    /suicide/abortion/crime/war/disease/cancer
    /storms. The answer must be in terms of a future
    good great enough to justify all that has
    happened on the way to it.
  • Heaven will render worthwhile all the pain and
    travail of the long journey of human life.
  • Pain/joy/upset/happiness/defeat lead to heaven.
  • All human beings shall in the end attain the
    ultimate heavenly state.

12
Some criticisms
  • Rejects the fall of humanity and damnation of
    some.
  • Why cannot God create a person making world
    without these mega evils.
  • Evil and suffering - some statistics
  • An estimated 3500 people die of hunger every
    day.
  • About 1 billion people or 1/6 of the human race
    suffer from malnutrition.
  • 400,000 children die every year in Brazil from
    hunger related diseases.
  • 1,211,285 Iraqi children died of embargo related
    causes between 1990 and 1997.
  • An estimated 1645 women die of pregnancy and
    child birth every day.
  • An estimated 9.3 of all children born in the
    southern hemisphere die before their first
    birthday.
  • Explains the need for a person making environment
    but it does not justify the actual extent of
    human suffering. Auschwitz!

13
Process Theology
  • Process Thought restates the problem of Evil.
  • God is Powerful.
  • God is All Loving.
  • Evil Exists.
  • Read the Statements carefully.
    What has Process thinking done?

14
Hick Process Theodicy.
  • Process thought God cannot to be unlimited in
    power, but interacts with a universe which God
    has not created, but can influence.
  • Process thought it is influenced by the thinking
    of A N Whitehead.
  • The Christian tradition
  • God is creator and Sustainer of the universe ex
    nihilo. His power is unlimited. Due to human
    freedom God withholds his unlimited power. We
    become autonomous creatures in a realm in which
    God acts non coercively.
  • Process Thinking Yes, God Acts non-coercively by
    persuasion and lure. This is because he is
    limited by the structure of reality. God is
    subject to limitations imposed by basic laws of
    nature and the Universe.
  • The universe is an uncreated process which
    includes Deity. Wow!
  • Griffin States God cannot completely control
    creatures.
  • God's power over each occasion, and in directing
    the stream of occasions as a whole, is
    necessarily limited, and the reality of evil in
    the world is the measure of the extent to which
    God's will is thwarted. Thwarted by a war,
    disasters, death, violence etc.
  • God continually offers the best possibility to
    each occasion but the successive occasions are
    free not to conform to the divine plan.

15
  • Evil 1
  • Discord, the failure to attain harmony.
  • Whitehead states discord is the feeling of evil
    in the most general sense, physical pain or
    mental evil, such as horror, sorrow, dislike.
  • Evil 2
  • When each moment fails to retain the highest
    appropriate intensity and allows for triviality.
  • The evolution of the universe and life on earth
    is due to the continual divine impetus to
    maximize harmony and intensity.
  • The good produced i e greater and greater
    harmony and intensity outweighs and makes
    worthwhile the evil produced.
  • God's could have left a primal chaos, but create
    an ordered universe evolving ever higher forms
    of actuality.

16
God in the dock
  • Why evil?
  • Order- complexity- evil -suffering.
  • Or
  • chaos
  • Which of these would be better?
  • God is a limited Deity creating goodness in the
    face of the fact of evil.
  • God's goodness is vindicated in that the risk
    taking venture in the evolution of the universe
    was calculated to produce... a sufficient quality
    and quantity of good to outweigh all the evils
    that have in fact been involved .

17
You choose
  • Hitler/Auschwitz OR
  • Jesus- Socrates and Gandhi- Einstein Lincoln-
    El Greco. Millions of marvellous human beings.
  • Griffin ... for the sake of avoiding a mans
    inhumanity to man... should God have avoided
    humanity altogether?
  • Only if your answer is yes, Can you indict the
    God of process theology on the basis of evil in
    the world.
  • God shares are human joy, and the pain etc.
  • the whole weight of earthly sorrow and agony,
    wickedness and stupidity, passes into the divine
    consciousness, together with the glory of all
    earthly happiness, and ecstasy, saintliness and a
    genius.
  • Wow! A God who suffers With us!
  • Only God knows the total balance between good and
    evil. He finds that the risk is worth taking.
    This should help us to accept that the good does
    indeed outweigh the evil

18
The appeal of process Theodicy
  • Avoids the problem arising from belief in an
    omnipotent God. God does not need to be
    justified for permitting evil, since it is not
    within God's power to prevent it.
  • The appeal of the challenge. The call to engage
    on God side in the struggle against evil.

19
Mr. Cs Chess Analogy
  • Let us imagine that creation, as we have it, is a
    kind of game of chess (game is obviously too
    light a word but is needed for the analogy).
  • God is the greatest ever player, whilst Evil is
    very good, but not as good.
  • God will inevitably win the game, but at a cost
    pieces will be lost in the process of winning a
    knight here, a pawn thereevil!
  • We have three responses to the game
  • Stand back and just watch
  • Work for Evil
  • Participate on Gods behalf

20
Criticisms
  • Can we accept?
  • The Actual life of most of mankind has being
    cramped with back-breaking work, exposed to
    deadly or debilitating disease, prey to wars and
    famines... Barbara Ward.
  • Can we accept?
  • ... for each one such marvellous human being,
    perhaps tens of thousands of others have
    existed... their lives... spent in a desperate
    and often degrading struggle to survive.
  • Third-world poverty sickness and death and
    disaster verses Einstein et al
  • Can we accept?
  • Mass suffering that God might create an elite?
  • In order and to create good, there must be the
    possibility of creating evil i e human evil.
    Suffering/evil does not occur in order that there
    be an elite.

21
  • Hick
  • ... the starving and the oppressed, the victims
    of Auschwitz, the human wrecks who are
    irreparably brain damaged. can hardly be
    expected to share the process God's point of view
    or to regard such a God as worthy of their
    worship and praise.
  • It would help if process theodicy could affirm
    the eventual completion of the creative process
    in a future heavenly fulfilment in which all are
    eventually to participate. The tragedy of human
    life would not then be ultimate.
  • Griffin
  • While not excluding life after death, we cannot
    draw from this possibility the hope of a
    limitless final good to justify all evil.

22
A Process Thought Story from Mr. C
  • Concentration camp and prisoners watch the
    execution/hanging of several prisoners.
  • They walk away into their hut and one prisoner
    says to another Where is God now?
  • The other looks back at the dead and says There
    is God.
  • A God who suffers with us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
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