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Notes Towards an Ash՟arite Theodicy

Gary Legenhausen

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Abstract

Atheists have argued that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of God. They claim that (1) it would be wrong for a person to allow evil which one could prevent, and (2) because God is omnipotent, He could prevent evil. So, (3) since evil does exist, a perfectly good and omnipotent God does not exist. This is the oldest and most pressing attack on theism, and theists have developed a variety of defensive responses to this argument. In this paper I propose to outline a strategy which appears to have escaped recent attention, and to compare this strategy with two more widely discussed types of theodicy.

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Atheists have argued that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of God. They claim that (1) it would be wrong for a person to allow evil which one could prevent, and (2) because God is omnipotent, He could prevent evil. So, (3) since evil does exist, a perfectly good and omnipotent God does not exist. This is the oldest and most pressing attack on theism, and theists have developed a variety of defensive responses to this argument. In this paper I propose to outline a strategy which appears to have escaped recent attention, and to compare this strategy with two more widely discussed types of theodicy.

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Available abstract

Atheists have argued that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of God. They claim that (1) it would be wrong for a person to allow evil which one could prevent, and (2) because God is omnipotent, He could prevent evil. So, (3) since evil does exist, a perfectly good and omnipotent God does not exist. This is the oldest and most pressing attack on theism, and theists have developed a variety of defensive responses to this argument. In this paper I propose to outline a strategy which appears to have escaped recent attention, and to compare this strategy with two more widely discussed types of theodicy.

Key concepts: Theodicy, Theism, Philosophy, Argument (complex analysis), Epistemology, Existence of God, Variety (cybernetics), Moral evil

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