THE PROBLEM OF EVIL & SUFFERING
This topic looks at the nature of the problem across a range of religious traditions, types of evil and suffering and the challenge to religious belief posed by the inconsistency of the nature of God. It looks at versions of this problem posed by David Hume and J.L. Mackie.
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God can do all things that are possible - Thomas Aquinas
nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God - C.S. Lewis Most of the debates in the topic are about whether preventing or undoing evil really is a logical impossibility. If it is logically possible for God to create a world in which innocent people do not suffer, then the fact that our world isn't like that suggests that God is not truly omnipotent or not truly good - or both.
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I do not think that we should ever say of anything that it cannot be brought about by God - Rene Descartes Descartes argues that God created the laws of logic and he isn't bound by them - he could break them if he wanted, such as by creating a square circle. For Descartes, believing that some things are impossible for God is to dishonour God's greatness.
However, Peter Geach arguers against Descartes' view: |
as we cannot say how a non-logical world would look, we cannot say how a supra-logical God would act or how he could communicate anything to us by way of revelation - Peter Geach