Problem of
Evil:
Therefore, there is no all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God.
ONTOLOGICAL DEFENSE:
Premise #1 is false. All the evil is necessary because you can't have good without evil.
OBJECTION:
There is no reason to think that you can't have good without evil. In fact, the Christian idea of Heaven is a counter-example: It's a place with all good and no evil. Also, it is weird to think that every time you do something good, something evil happens to counter-balance it.
KNOWLEDGE DEFENSE:
Premise #1 is false. All the evil is necessary because God wants us to know about good and evil (it's a GOOD thing for us to know about it) and so the evil in the world is there for that purpose – so that we can learn about it.
OBJECTIONS:
(a) There's way too much evil in the world than is necessary for that purpose.
(b) If God is all-powerful, surely he can think of ways to give us the knowledge without all the massive suffering and evil stuff in the world. (E.g., Why not just watch a compelling set of DVDs? Or a virtual reality machine? Or bite an Apple of Knowledge?)
(c) It is not clear that knowledge of good and evil is a GOOD thing. Didn't Eve get in trouble for biting that apple? Seems like God didn't want us to have that knowledge.
FREE WILL DEFENSE:
Premise #1 is false. All the evil is necessary because Free-Will is a good thing (that's why God gave it to us), but with Free-Will comes the possibility that people will choose to do evil things.
OBJECTIONS:
(a) Free-Will can explain moral evil (things humans do: theft, murder, war, rape, etc.) but it cannot explain natural evil (hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, etc.)
(b) Having Free-Will doesn't guarantee that we will choose evil. E.g. Heaven is a place where we have free-will but only choose to do good. So it's not clear why evil is necessary.
(c) There's still too much evil (even if we're only talking about human evil.) Surely an all-powerful all knowing God could do something to make it less likely that we'd choose to do bad things.
IDEAL-HUMANITY DEFENSE:
Premise #1 is false. All the evil is necessary because it helps humanity to evolve, to grow, to reach its potential, etc.
OBJECTIONS:
(a) There's way too much evil in the world than is necessary for that purpose.
(b) If God is all-powerful, surely he can think of ways to reach this goal without all the massive suffering and evil stuff in the world. (E.g., Why not just watch a compelling set of DVDs? Or a virtual reality machine? Or bite an Apple of Knowledge?)
(c) Is it worth it? Are we really better off?
(d) Is this defense circular? ''the world is crappy so that we can learn to get around the crappiness...'' If the world wasn't so miserable, we wouldn't need to learn these skills...
SOUL-BUILDING DEFENSE:
Premise #1 is false. All the evil is necessary because it builds character.
OBJECTIONS:
(a) There's way too much evil in the world than is necessary for that purpose.
(b) If God is all-powerful, surely he can think of ways to reach this goal without all the massive suffering and evil stuff in the world. (E.g., Why not just watch a compelling set of DVDs? Or a virtual reality machine? Or bite an Apple of Knowledge?)
(c) Often times the suffering makes people WORSE off.
FINITE-GOD DEFENSE:
The argument presumes we're talking about a being with all 3 attributes. But God does not actually have all three attributes... (so THIS argument is good, but that doesn't mean there isn't a God – He's just lacking in one or more of the attributes...)
OBJECTIONS:
(a) Is this a God anyone would want to believe in?