Running Head:PROBLEM OF EVIL

Problem of Evil and God's Existence
Ammar Ather
Roll#:14-10556, Sec:B
Forman Christian College
(A Chartered University)
Problem of Evil and God's Existence
The existence of God and questions pertinent to it, has been discussed for centuries predating Biblical documentation and golden Greek philosophical era of Aristotle and Plato. Thus a supernatural identity has always been the centre of attention among people, Empire, states, ever since man has been derived by intuition of knowing certain things.
God has been called by people at times of distress and reassurance. The ancient Egyptians and civilizations called gods when shaken by ordeal. Christians remember God as the embodiment of salvation. People offered god with festivals, coronation ceremonies and even blood sacrifices.
The identity of God is perceived differently by people of different beliefs, times and areas. The image of God ranges from Pantheism in the Vedic references to strict Monotheism in Islamic scriptures. This idea is imperative for proceeding and constructing research based on pure rational and Philosophical grounds. The objectivity demands reviewing God and existence within the context of a specific frame of thought and then appropriate approach is utilized to construct an argument.
Thesis statement:The belief in God is a cardinal question in dealing with the soteriological and moral implication of mankind which is better contemplated by reviewing theodicy which dealt in the problem of evil and objective morality.
This issue has its significance as some contemporary scholars assertion that the problem remains the greatest challenge to theism even after ample work is done resolving the matter. All this is important as it is directed to Abrahamic faith which make more than half of the world population.
What makes Islam, Christianity and Judaism prone to such a scrutiny is the belief in the absolute sovereignty and authority in God. Pondering over the argumentation will help us better understand whether the problem is grave or a fad within the literary circle.
A thing of utmost importance is the way we see the problem. There is no concrete way for proving the existence of God, but there are reasons that will lead us to believe about God and goodness. During the inquiry we base and stick to the major problems of evil and suffering.
Philosophy has much to say about the problem so that thinking it that way will well serve the purpose of constructing and formulating the paper.
The research questions discussed throughout the paper are listed below:
What the major premises of the problem of evil? How theodicy answers moral evil and unanswered prayers?

The following literature review will help serve the purpose of constructing a legitimate case for the existence of God when subjected to skeptical analysis.
The problem of evil and suffering, a central concept and argument used against the theism can be combated by carefully building an argument which include the solutions of showing that God may be justified in permitting evil and the extent of evil that there exists, without causing disbelief(Wright, 2013, p 25).
A typical characteristic of a belief is that it can be challenged. Some of these beliefs got rejected while others are held although they stand opposite to factual evidence or other beliefs.
Considering two simple propositions will help build the idea. First is the common belief that we cannot travel an infinite distance. Second is rudimentary mathematical statement that a finite distance can be divided infinitely.

This suggests that we need to be very careful when analyzing things in different contexts.
The find of paramount importance is that an argument should not be build on intuition and particularly when we assuming about a phenomena which is subjective in nature. Thus such an argument has no compelling grounds.
Moral objections to God comes into play in the face of the issue of Abortion, Homosexuality, Gender transformation and related things where a law consistent with religious teachings is imposed, to keep people away from involving. For instance the right to abort seems to be legitimate superficially but in the process a living being is brutally murdered, making this a sin and crime which outweighs the basic human right in Abortion.
Unanswered prayer is another issue that pops up when carrying on with the issue of Evil and suffering. Though largely a theological problem, unanswered prayer complements the problem of evil and suffering(Craig, 2005, p 51). We can see that in two ways, by which we take it. The first is the indifference in choice and preference. When we are facing constraint in resources we know we cannot satisfy all. But when this happens with already predetermined amounts it results in unanswered prayer which is consistent with increasing population.
Dr William Lane Craig giving a simple elaboration of prayer that is inconsistent with natural phenomena. For instance, Dr Craig gave example of two college men praying for the same girl, so that if one's prayer is heard,by the virtue of default the other remain unanswered(Craig, 2005, p 53).
The second way by which unanswered prayer can be seen is in terms of a phenomenon, which states that sometimes unanswered prayers are due to the greater evil that can result if the prayer is answered. Wrong motivation is a cause of unanswered prayer (Craig, 2005, p 54).
There is also reconciliation between the above idea and existing concepts in literature.
First is the causal nature of the universe. This idea suggests that an event that happens in a universe is result of a cause which has the precedence. Assuming that bad motives end up in a greater turbulence of events, once materialized, resulting in greater evil, it can disturb the perfect functioning of society. This specific idea is of chief importance in other religions as well, including Buddhist idea of Karmaphala.
There is another dimension to the wrong motive and unanswered prayer. If we assume the above causal relation as our major premise, we see unanswered prayer is more likely to occur if the intention and motive is more and more evil. This is also reflected in Aristotle philosophy about the relative goodness and badness of evil. According to that philosophy evil or badness cannot be seen as ascribed to being opposite of goodness, rather there is an extent to which an evil is bad and goodness is good(Wright, 2013, p 50).
Free will defense and the existence of evil:
“The argument of free will defense was given by Alvin Platinga. He asserted that free will by its very definition is the room for a choice which is not best. His argument that evil don’t exist as extreme negative to goodness. However its the measure away from exact goodness that makes an event more and more evil. For example you meet a beggar while he asks for some amount of money. The most good event is that you actually give him money, the other option of an event is when you let the beggar go empty. The event is not as good as before ,but still another event measuring far away from goodness is that you end up mocking him. The argument here is that since we are given free will we are actually having an option to do things other than the most good ones, which if quite deviated ends in evil.
In his research Philosphia Christi quoted “A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God's omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good”(Christi, 2008). Thus Platinga opted for Liberalism as a support for the free will.
Discussion: We started the literature review with indirect quotation from Wright’s book which suggested that we should attempt to answer and reconcile with theist view by holding the assumption that God may be justified in permitting evil of sought and amount we find in our world(Carson, 2007). However there do a exist another approach which can help ameliorate the issue of evil, which is the solution that will try to explain why, if any, and we don’t know why God is justified in permitting evil, the sort of it and measure of which we find in the world still does not discount the existence of God and sharing the attributes of Omni Potent, Omni Benevolent and Omni Present. Thus an in-depth analysis help us better understand the issue at hand. This will also proceed towards the problem of natural evils, which is a kind we didn’t review given the scope of the paper. Any finding on that will shorten the gap between this attack and defense.
Conclusion:Research was started with the introduction to the concept and image of God which can be assumed and then subjected to various argumentation.The theodicy which help solve the problem refers to all the arguments against the existence of God in the light of evil and suffering.Literature had ample academic discussion on that and a proper insight leaves the room for many other arguments and dimensions.Un answered prayer and free will was touched precisely given the scope of paper.That led us better understand the issue at hand and where to start in the literature,in case we have different question but related to the same issue.

Glossary
Theodicy:The attempted refutations of the arguments against the existence of God due to the evil and suffering in the world.
Pantheism:The image of God which says that God is manifested in the nature itself..
Problem of evil:The issue about the existence of Omni Potent, Omni Present and Omni Benevolent God will there still prevail evil and suffering in the world
Objective morality:The sujective and personal opinion on on ethics and moral law is disregarded.
Free will:The concept that humans have at their disposal choices, out of which they decide to act

References
Wright, N.T., (2007). Evil and the Justice of God. 1st ed. London: Penguin publishers.
Craig, W.L., (2005). Hard Questions Real Answers. 4th ed. New York: e.g. Houghton Mifflin. pp.e.g. (51-54).
Christi,Philosophia, (2008). Reflections on Evil and the Justice of God. Philosophy. 10 (2), pp.(461-170)
Carson,Thomas L (2007). Philosophy realism and the problem of evil. Philosophy and Phenomeological Research. 75 (2), pp.e.g. 45
Craig, W.L (2008). The Problem of Evil. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-problem-of-evil. [Last Accessed e.g. 31 A