Phil 1101 1st Edition Lecture 4 Outline of Last Lecture I. The Ontological ArgumentII. His argumentIII. What’s wrong with this argument?IV. Anselm’s responseV. PremisesOutline of Current Lecture I. The Problems of EvilII. The Problem of Evil Argument (Mackie)III. Two basic types of evil/sufferingIV. Easy way out of this problemV. More likely responseVI. 4 initial theist explanations for evilVII. Crux of the problem?VIII. The Free Will Objection?Current LectureI. The Problems of Evila. Old name from an old problem for people who live in particular religions have faced for a very long timeb. If there is an all-good, all-powerful God, why is there so much suffering in the world?c. Mackie develops it into an argument taking the side of the atheistThese notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.d. Suffering is really the issue- not evile. The Problemi. There is suffering (or evil), which seems incompatible withii. There is an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing GodII. The Problem of Evil Argument (Mackie)a. If God exists, then He is all-good and all-powerful and all-knowing.b. If God is all-good, then He would want to eliminate any suffering he could.c. If God is all-powerful, then He could eliminate any suffering he wants to.d. Therefore, if God exists, there would be no suffering.e. But there is sufferingf. Therefore, God does not exist.III. Two basic types of evil/suffering:a. “moral suffering”: suffering caused by humansb. “natural suffering”: suffering due to natural causesi. Two ways to read this argument:1. (like Mackie): deductive argument meant to show God cannot exist2. (like Johnson): inductive argument meant to show that God probably doesn’t existIV. Easy way out of this problem (not popular, but you can take it)a. There is no suffering: unattractive to Christians & implausibleb. God is not all-good: he’s just pissed off and doesn’t like youc. God is not all-powerful: not strong enough to fight off all evilV. More likely responsea. God has a reason to allow sufferingi. We can give a plausible reason, consistent with God’s attributes for why God allows suffering1. There’s a reason that God had to make a world like ours, if he wanted to make the best possible worldVI. 4 initial theist explanations for evila. An all-powerful being is responsible for evil (another all-powerful being: Satan)i. If there’s another, you cannot have two all-powerful beings if they’re to be all-powerfulb. He is punishing those who sufferi. If he is all-good, why is he going around punishing?- the punishing is severeii. How could he be that vengeful and be all-good?c. There can be no good without evil (good and evil are comparative)i. Maybe there has to be some suffering in order for there to be any good atallii. Doesn’t account for the amount of evil/suffering in the worldiii. How much suffering for good?- only a little bit of suffering needed (1 actual event)d. We couldn’t know good without evil (most plausible)i. In order to know good, you need to appreciate some suffering firstii. Why so much evil?iii. If he is all-powerful and wanted us to understand suffering, God would have had a film day insteadVII. Crux of the problem?a. In order to address the problem, theist must give an explanation for why:i. Children and innocent sufferingii. There is so much sufferingVIII. The Free Will Objectiona. Version 1: A world where people have free will is better than a world without free willi. Couldn’t we have free will AND no evil?b. In heaven: do people have free will (if it’s a good thing- they have it) & there is nosufferingc. Choices not particularly significant if we have free will but no