Essay: Tom

‘‘Examine how faith may be challenged by natural & moral evil’’

Faith may be challenged by the concepts of natural and moral evil, there is the logical
problem of evil; it comes from the expression of the ‘inconsistent triad’ this states that an
omnipotent and omniscient God must possess power and will to remove all types of evils
from the world, however as we see, evil is still an ongoing existence in our world therefore
this changes the beliefs of such a God. The Greek philosopher Epicurus stated that “Is God
willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent? is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent. Is he both willing and able? Then whence the evil?” This leads to the
traditional views of God being omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent being
questioned and may change the faith that Christians have in God.

However this view may also be disregarded and through the works of Augustine Hippo, he
stated that there was no such thing as evil and that evil Is a privation of good, this view
would lead believers to believe in an almighty God and would meant that faith would not be
challenged by natural and moral evil. This view can be supported by the analogy that
darkness is the absence to light and therefore this would mean that evil is the absence of
good which would leave there to be no logical problem of evil to solve and the blame would
not be on God therefore strengthening the faith of the believers.

There is also however the evidential problem of evil which leads to the topics such as war,
disease and natural disasters, the evidential problem of evil is based on the facts that we
observe of the world for example “The great dying’. This example shows how the problem
of evil caused millions of other species to cease to exist and the perpetrator is seen to be
God since he is the creator of the universe and he is responsible for evolution, he
programmed it so why couldn’t he made it less destructive. It also leads to the argument
that the evils can be seen as unjustifiable and pointless, the example of the fawn going
through suffering before dying is pointless and goes against the moral convictions, this
would lead there to be belief of a non-existent God consequently resulting in faith being
challenged by the natural and moral evils.

The argument of the ‘Free Will Defence’ argues that God has to allow free will in order to
comply with the free will that us humans have, the free-will defence works, then, is by
distancing God from the moral evil in the world. Moral evil is not brought about by God, the
free-will defence argues, but by free agents. God is therefore not the author of moral evil,
and so is not responsible for it. If god was responsible for the evil then we have no freedom
and therefore we are in control of the evil and God is not, this would support the faith in
God and show that it is through our own moral actions that evil comes about and God
cannot help this as it takes away our freedom.

Overall there is some extent of evil that provides the greatest challenge to believers to have
faith in God after all the evil and suffering, this comes from extreme cases, as in ‘The
Brothers Karamazov’ for example in which there are children going through intense
suffering and no matter how many times the young girl asked for God’s help in her prayers
he never helped, he never answered her which leads us to believe just how much evil
happens and how it isn’t dealt with by God which leaves us questioning our faith in him and
leaves the question of why did he let it happen in the first place. It relates back to the point
about pointless evils; the parents had no motive to torture the daughter yet they did, this is
not the god that we are presented with in the Bible and therefore may hinder someone’s
faith in the God they believe in.