God Can Allow Some Evil



God Can Allow Some Evil

Introduction

Leibniz was one of the great philosophers of the age of Rationalism and the last major philosopher who was also a first rate, indeed a great, mathematician. His system, especially as developed by Christian Wolff (1679-1754), established the basic form of metaphysics in German universities, providing the philosophical starting point for Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Leibniz's metaphysics is most profitably contrasted with that of his near contemporary Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), since the two of them come down on exactly opposite sides of many important issues (giving us something like a step in Hegelian dialectic). Leibniz's system is also to be compared with the natural science of Isaac Newton (1642-1727), who became Leibniz's bitter enemy, not just in metaphysics, but in the argument over who had priority for the development of calculus. Leibniz, indeed, may have been the better mathematician, but he did not have Newton's success in applying mathematics to physical problems.

Discussion

After reading the story it can be found out that the presence of evil in the world seems to be the most prevalent source of religious doubt and skepticism in our society. The traditional theistic view of God is that he is omni-present, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. However, this presents a conflict with the existence of evil in our world. Why would such a loving God allow so much pain and suffering?

Over the years, both philosophers and theologians have tried to answer this question, which seems to be at the very heart of the atheistic argument from evil. There are two methods of approaching the argument: logical and evidential. I will argue that both of these forms of argument are irrelevant to the existence of a theistic God.

The logical argument claims that the existence of evil is logically incompatible with ...