The problem of evil

Abstract

The Two Ways . One is to suffer; the other is to become a professor of the fact that another suffered. The first is “the way”; the second goes round about … and perhaps it ends by going down. Soren Kierkegaard, Journals THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM OF EVIL The most serious challenge to the belief that there is a perfectly good and omnipotent God is the problem of evil. This problem confronts theists both intellectually and existentially. The intellectual problem is that the existence of evil seems to make the existence of a God with these attributes improbable or even impossible. It is therefore an attack on the rationality of belief in God. The existential problem is that seeing and enduring evil makes it hard for humans to trust God even if they come to the conclusion that His existence is not unlikely and that theistic belief is not irrational. The existential problem attacks religious believers' motivation to go on with their lives in a way that gives them meaning. Philosophers are primarily concerned with the intellectual problem, and I will concentrate on that problem in this chapter, but the existential problem is so important that it should never be very far in the background, and although appeal to philosophy is far from the best way to deal with the latter problem, some philosophical positions help more than others.