Relation to the world· Philosophy of religion
Evil refutes God
Axis: The problem of evil — Is evil compatible with a good and all-powerful God?
The existence of massive, gratuitous evil is incompatible with a God at once good, all-powerful and all-knowing: either he cannot prevent it, or he will not. Evil is the strongest argument against God.
Movements 1
Show inferred positions (1)
Epicureanisminferable
The gods, perfectly blessed, do not meddle with the world: there is no providence. The dilemma transmitted under Epicurus's name concludes that the world's evil is incompatible with a god at once good and all-powerful.
Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus; Lactantius, On the Anger of God, 13
Philosophers 4
Humeexplicit
In the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Philo revives Epicurus's old questions: faced with the world's mass of suffering, divine goodness and omnipotence cannot be inferred from nature. Evil is the reef on which natural theology runs aground.
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, X-XI
Schopenhauerexplicit
A reversal of : this world is not the best but the worst of all possible worlds, for a world even slightly worse could no longer subsist. Evil is not a deficiency of being to be excused but the positive substance of existence, a decisive proof against any good creator; every theodicy is thereby an indecency.
The World as Will and Representation, vol. II, ch. 46, 'On the Vanity and Suffering of Life'
Show inferred positions (2)
Epicurusinferable
The so-called Epicurean dilemma, transmitted by Lactantius, concludes that a God at once good and all-powerful is incompatible with the existence of evil: either he wishes to prevent it and cannot, or he can and will not. For Epicurus, the blessed gods do not meddle with the world.
Lactantius, On the Anger of God, 13 (attributed dilemma); Letter to Menoeceus
Lucretiusinferable
Lucretius does not reason about a good and all-powerful God, but turns the argument from design on its head: if the world had been made for us by gods, it would not be so gravely flawed. Yet the greater part of the globe is devoured by mountains, forests and seas, the climate afflicts men, the soil resists their toil, wild beasts and diseases strike them, and the newborn is cast naked and wailing on the shore of life. So many defects prove that nature is the work of no providence: this is less a theodicy than a of the absence of divine design.
On the Nature of Things, V, 195-234 (a world so flawed cannot be the work of the gods)
- Descriptive QuestionEpicurus's riddle
Can God prevent evil but not want to, or want to but not be able? One of the three, his power, his goodness, or the reality of evil, must give way: which one?
evil and the attributes of God - DescriptiveEvil with no culprit
Free will excuses the evil humans do; but the earthquake, disease, the pain of animals are no one's fault: what then remains to absolve the creator?
a natural disaster - DescriptiveOne evil too many
Even without a strict contradiction, does the mass of apparently pointless suffering, a fawn dying alone in a forest fire, not make a good God who watches over all highly improbable?
the mass of suffering - DescriptiveWhat if God could not do everything?
One can save God's goodness by taking away his omnipotence: a God who withdraws and limits himself, or before whom evil is a rival principle he does not create.
the nature of God - DescriptiveGod's silence
Alongside evil, another absence accuses: that of a God who, if he existed and loved us, would not let himself be sought in vain.
God and those who seek him