Even before one gets to Rowe's argument, however, one may disregard Hick's argument because it depends on imagining an infinite number of possibilities to explain away evil, rather than accounting for it. Instead of actually explaining how a benevolent and omnipotent god can allow evil to exist, Hick's argument simply states that this evil is not really evil, although with no evidence to back this up other than the convenient

" (16) In other words, since God is not completely benevolent, one must protest against God for allowing that which is not just or that which is evil to exist. In an illustration of this strategy, Roth refers to the work of Elie Wiesel, who "shows that life in a post-Holocaust world can be more troublesome with God than without him" (9). In his works, Wiesel looks at different forms of

Personal Theodicy Apologetics The problem of evil is something everyone has to face sooner or later. As Schlesinger points out, philosophers want to understand “why there is any suffering in the world at all.”[footnoteRef:2] The problem with a philosophical approach to suffering is that it does not reveal the whole story or the whole picture of why suffering (evil) exists. Religion, on the other hand, does provide that whole story—and depending

Theodicy The problem of Sam the neighbor is not something new in the spiritual evaluation of the human condition. The presence of discomfort, fear and violence leads the casual observer to believe that if there is a God, he or she or whatever it is, has a desire to see people suffer in pain and confusion. There is little doubt that the human experience is filled with disappointment, failure, death and

Evil and Suffering The logical problem of evil is that if God is all-good then evil should not exist. Perhaps one can argue, then, that evil is a creation of man and that God cannot not prevent that, but God being Omnipotent, and, therefore, by definition able to accomplish all should be capable of preventing if not destructing evil. Either then God is not all good, or he is not all

" Defenses against it may be equally inconclusive, but in their fertility they at least promise a solution some day. Bibliography Adams, Marilyn McCord. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Belliotti, Raymond a. Roman Philosophy and the Good Life. Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2009. DeRose, Keith. "Plantinga, Presumption, Possibility, and the Problem of Evil," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (1991), 497-512. Draper, Paul. "Probabilistic Arguments from Evil," Religious Studies 28