If god is omnipotent and good why does evil exist
...st, whose beliefs in God being all-powerful (omnipotent), and all-good and yet acknowledging the existence of evil. Although I must stress that certain types of pain are needed for human life such as pain warning us of impending problems, that it’s the needless pain like the pain and suffering inflicted on others, which is the sign of evil existing in this world. The problem of evil can be distinguished on four levels, imperfection, natural evil, moral evil and unbelief, and each of these levels begin with the claim that if God existed then the world would reach a certain standard, although these problems would not exist in a world created by God. According to Christianity, God created the world and he sustains it, that he knows all things and can achieve anything, and that he is good and wants only the best for his creation. How can evil exist if these claims are true? One of these claims about God must be untrue, however one cannot rule out the existence of God. Richard Swinburne states that, “a world without problems, difficulties, perils, and hardships would be morally static for moral and spiritual growth comes through response to challenges; and in a paradise there would be no challenges”, that with the existence of evil man can better understand the world around him. Then another philosopher by the name of Leibniz states that, “There must exist some one Being of metaphysical necessity, that is, to whose essence existence belongs”, that the cause of the universe’s existence must be necessary, in so far as that God has made this world for us for a reason. This leads me on to say that the most plausible argument for theistic beliefs is the free will argument that in fact God, “created a world where moral evil was a genuine possibility”, that, “God was making the better choice, because a world containing free agents is better than a world without them.” If God is to give human freedom, then one would have to admit that a world with free human agents, is a world where evil is possible for these free human agents to exact. This way of thinking has been used by St. Augustine to explain that the evils such as pain and suffering are a result of “non-human” creatures, such as “fallen angels” who can “wreak havoc on the material universe”. This view can also be found in C.S. Lewis’s ‘The problem of pain’ where he states that “some mighty created power had already been at work for ill in the universe”. The writings of Alvin Plantinga’s, ‘God, Freedom and Evil’, also show this as he states “it was not within the power of God to create…a more favourable balance of good over evil…to the actions of the non human persons it contains”. St. Augustine and following on from his line of thought Thomas Aquinas constructed many arguments as to why God allows evil to exist in our world. They say that evil is ...