The existence of God has been an abstract subject debatable by many people due to different perspectives and religious beliefs. However, one of the common aspects is that God has never been seen by any human being due to His omnipotent and omnibenevolent nature. This means that His existence is a mere belief based on biblical accounts. The question on how to reconcile with the existence of evil, therefore, in a world with the Omniscient God becomes a problem. Attempts to show the contrary arguments have been presented by different authors with the focus of indicating God’s existence is debatable. Moreover, due to the growing issues of evil deeds occurring within the society, God’s existence is further questioned. The purpose of this study will be to explore the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil suggesting that God’s does not exist.
The argument against God’s Existence
By definition, God is said to be all-good and powerful and all-knowing such that nothing can occur without his knowledge and without Him allowing it to occur. This means that God has the supernatural control to oversee all the activities that happen within the globe. He is able to see everything that happens in the world and actively is involved in controlling the expected outcomes due to His prowess. His good nature suggests that God’s activities and interests within his people are based on the best possible outcome available, thereby it is assumed He will only allow for events with positive benefits to people to occur (Holder, 2017). The all-powerful nature allows God to mandate events in the supernatural realm such that they will be in synch with the natural activities. Furthermore, it means that God has the capability to actively stop any calamities and evil deeds from occurring especially considering He is good in nature. Finally, His all-powerful nature demands that He can directly command items within the globe to function per His liking and to be in line with the interests of the people. Considering that God holds the named principles, it is safe to argue that the world would be good without any traces of evil deeds. Moreover, people would enjoy positive outcomes of any events occurring in the world since God is all-kind and loving and would not let any harm come to his people.
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However, while these assumptions have some degree of truth in them, they particularly do not assert the existence of God. His possession of the three characteristics is not reflected in the events occurring in the globe at any time. According to Friesenhahn (2016), evil deeds are permitted to happen without any interventions from the Heavenly Master whatsoever. It is an expectation that evil activities should not occur because God exists and can prevent such occurrences. However, this is not the case as argued by Davis (2017), who purports that if God is omniscient, He should have the knowledge of every way that evil can come into existence and how to prevent it before it happens. Moreover, He should be present in any situations that are critical and can result in evil deeds, which is due to His omnipresent nature. His presence would be essential towards reducing the impact of evil activities or towards preventing its occurrence in the first place. Furthermore, God should understand how to prevent the existence of the evil deeds in the first place, which means that if there exists an omnipotent God, then no evil should exist, but the opposite is experienced.
The counterargument is that God might be in existence but not be as powerful as people expect him to be. Therefore, people should have reduced expectations for God. According to Peterson (2018), since God is unable to prevent the occurrence of evil activities and allows for serious issues to develop beyond human understanding, the only logical explanation is that He is not as powerful as people think. As a result, it is better to have reduced expectations regarding His reach on what He can and what He cannot do. This is because the high expectations posted on Him yield adverse effects on people as He does not prevent evil from occurring and thus leads to reduced quality of life for the people. Moreover, limited expectations will help people to have fewer worries concerning evil outcomes that are not prevented by God.
It is arguable that a supernatural being possessing the qualities that God has should have the capability to prevent evil from occurring, and more specifically, disasters such as fires and drought. However, God does not prevent these evil deeds from affecting the people despite His all-loving nature. According to Friesenhahn (2016), He does not give the humans control over every aspect of the globe as is it expected. As a counter-argument, God provides humans with the free will defense mechanism whereby individuals have the mandate to do anything provided they understand the consequences that develop from their actions. This means that humans are given the ability to reason and determine whether an activity is regarded as evil or not. Moreover, the reasoning capacity enables humans to have an upper hand in deciding on principles to use in either preventing the evil deed from occurring in their lives or practices towards mitigating its occurrence. This shows that God has given humans a considerable amount of control over their lives and activities that occur from within their conduct. However, to counter the counterargument, it is important to understand that natural disasters are not caused by humans, but rather, they occur naturally and are harmful thus can be considered to be evil. According to Davis (2017), God has not given humans any control over the natural calamities and their evil nature tends to become destructive and can lead to catastrophic outcomes. Therefore, even when humans are given free will to decide on various matters, God still does not allow for humans to have complete control over the world such that they can be self-sufficient.
An examination of the world reveals that Evil deeds still exist, and having much evil means that God’s existence is questionable. According to Scott (2015), other than natural calamities, other evil activities such as crimes, homicides, rape, theft, and murder, among others, are still experienced by the people. This means that God’s control over the globe is limited in many ways. On a theistic account of the world, it is expected that much less evil would be experienced in the world due to God’s overall control and power. However, on a non-theistic account of the world, the level of evil expected in the world is not pre-determined, which means evil deeds can be more or less compared to the theistic accounts. Considering the high levels of evil in the world, it is arguable that God is not in existence (Friesenhahn, 2016). This is because His existence would mean He will deal with the evil promptly rather than leaving the same to escalate and continually deprive the people of their happiness. In this regard, the evil in the world is in support of a non-theistic account of the globe, which is why God’s existence is in doubt.
Conclusion
The research was conducted with the focus of detailing the logical and evidential problem of evil in the world, which suggests that God does not exist due to the occurrence of evil deeds that are not countered. With the understanding that God is all-good, powerful and all-knowing, the expectation is that He will not allow any bad deeds to occur that can have an adverse effect on his people. Moreover, He is expected to ensure that he derails any evil prior to its occurrence as He is all-knowing. However, the expectations are not lived up to since evil still exists in the world and in massive amounts. The non-theistic account of the world, therefore, is found to be fit in explaining the control of God over the earth as He does not mitigate the evil occurring within the globe. Therefore, based on findings from the research, God does not exist as evil deeds prevail beyond the expectations.
References
Davis, S. T. (2017). The problem of evil. In The Palgrave Handbook of the Afterlife (pp. 371-389). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Friesenhahn, J. H. (2016). The Trinity and theodicy: the Trinitarian theology of von Balthasar and the problem of evil . Routledge.
Holder, R. D. (2017). God, the multiverse, and everything: Modern Cosmology and the argument from design . Routledge.
Peterson, M. L. (2018). God and Evil: an introduction to the issues . Routledge.
Scott, M. S. (2015). Journey Back to God: Origen on the Problem of Evil . Oxford University Press.
