In under 500 words!
The problem of evil as it relates to the Christian understanding of God, goes like this:
Premises:
1. God is infinitely all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving.
2. That a being possessing all three of those qualities could not create evil.
1. For god to create evil, he would either have to not be all-knowing, thus be unaware.
2. Not all-powerful, therefore, would not have the power to prevent it.
3. Or not all-loving, therefore would not have the motivation to avoid evil.
3. Evil exists in our world.
Conclusion: Therefore God, as defined in Christianity, cannot exist because we see evil thriving in our world.
Two reasons why this problem of evil is flawed.
1. First, because we are given the premise of an all-knowing , all-powerful , and all-loving god as existing. The reason that is a problem is because premise three is based on what we hold to be evil. If the first premises exist as truth, then we must submit to God’s definition of evil rather than us finite beings judging an infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving God by our own moral standards.
The first premise specifies truth which conflicts with the soundness of the third premise.
2. The second premise is not sound because if there is evil in the world, it does not follow that a god with all three of those qualities wouldn’t allow evil to exist. Rather a god with a goal, which requires him to self-limit his power, and due to his infinite knowledge and his all-loving qualities, would have created this world as the “best of all-possible” worlds.
Why would God decide to limit himself? If his goal was to create beings who could love him, it would require us to have a free will to decide to love him or not. That would introduce the potential of evil existing in this world, which we observe that the potential has become reality.
Would God feel it worthwhile, knowing what evil we would experience in this world, knowing this wouldn’t be a perfect world, to create this world? Well, we’re here, now, and as we stated before in point one, who are we to judge the morality of such a god? That this world exists indicates not only that this was the best of all-possible worlds, but that God decided it was and is worth the evil in the world in order to get the benefits of this “best of all-possible worlds.”
This does not prove the existence of God, nor whether evil exists in the world or not. What it does do is prove that there is a couple of alternate explanations to the problem of evil that doesn’t require one come to the conclusion that there is no god.
The problem of evil: SOLVED!
