The Existence of God and Evil The problem of evil has been around since the beginning. How could God allow such suffering of his “chosen people”? God is supposedly all loving (omni-benevolent) and all powerful (omnipotent) and yet He allows His creations to live in a world of danger and pain. Two philosophers this class has discussed pertaining to this problem is B.C. Johnson and John Hick. Johnson provides the theists’ defense of God and he argues them. These include free will, moral urgency, the laws of nature, and God’s “higher morality”. Hick examines two types of theodicies – the Augustinian position and the Irenaeus position. These positions also deal with free will, virtue (or moral urgency), and the laws of nature. Johnson
Even though the child many not understand the reasoning of their parents, what is right and wrong is still evident to the child. Because of this polarity, God’s “higher morality” does not determine whether He is good or not in our world. Hick also has his own take on the problem of the existence of God and evil. He also addresses free will, virtue, and the laws of nature. Before diving into each explanation, Hick provides Augustine’s (a Christian teacher) perspective on evil. Augustine states that evil comes from the corruption of good, and that God creates everything as inherently good. As Hick explains, “Evil is essentially parasitic upon good, being disorder and perversion in a fundamentally good creation” (Pojman 127). Evil was not created by God, and He does not impose evil on the world. Hick explores the origin of evil through examining free will. God created people with free will, which is inseparable from their being. For a creature to be a person, free will, with all of its consequences, is necessary. God can create beings that are free from possible sin, but that creature would not be human. Some might argue that God has predetermined our actions, but still allows free will. Hick views that as a contradiction. From this, he derives the notion that people appear to have free will, but in reality, people are, “his [God’s] helpless puppets” (Pojman 128). Hick also goes on to