The Problem Of Evil

7 Pages 1846 Words

e of God. I will first explain an atheist perspective, and then identify the weaknesses of this standpoint. In William Rowe’s paper, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism”, he purports that the problem of evil leads to the reasonable assumption that God does not exist. His argument is tri-fold. The argument begins by stating that there exist suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient God could prevent without sacrificing a greater good, and without allowing an equally bad or worse situation to happen. Following premise one, premise two states that an omniscient, omnibenevolent, God would prevent the occurrence of suffering, unless doing so would destroy a greater good, or cause an equally bad or worse evil to occur. These two premises lead to the obvious point that an omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent God cannot exist. Rowe concedes that premise two is agreed upon by both theist and atheists alike, so in order to dispute the atheist perspective, one must dispute premise number one.
In endorsing premise one, Rowe acknowledges that we as humans cannot always see the greater good that is the result of an evil. To do ...