The Ontological Defense: Goodness cannot exist without evil. So a world without evil is impossible. Counterargument: 1- Goodness isn’t a type of evil. Goodness and evil and like “red” and “not-red.” With contradictory concepts it’s possible to have one without the other. 2- Lack of evil doesn’t preclude goodness. If it did, there would be no goodness in heaven.
Knowledge Defense: Knowledge of evil is important (even to understand goodness) and it cannot exist unless there’s evil in the world. Counterargument: Suppose this is true, then how can one explain the excess of evil? Unnecessary evil is not justified by the knowledge defense. Evil must be necessary for something other than our education.
Free will defense: Evil is necessary for free will. We choose and sometimes we choose evil over good. Counterargument: 1- There’s still much more evil in the world that is necessary. Why is evil chosen so often? The theist needs to answer this question. 2- Heaven offers another example. Angels are free and yet they don’t choose evil. Why not?
Ideal Humanity Defense: Evil improves the human race. Counterargument: This is an argument of the living, not the dead.
Character (or soul) building defense: Evil is not wrong for our own sake. Counterargument: If this is true, then fighting evil becomes wrong (you shouldn’t alleviate a person’s suffering because it’s good for her character).
No comments:
Post a Comment