Richard Swinburne

’s “The Problem Of Evil”: God’s Existence Essay, Research Paper

Richard Swinburne’s “The Problem of Evil”: God’s Existence

Philosophers have looked for ways to explain God’s existence for centuries.

One such argment that the believer must justify in order to maintain the

possibility of God’s existence is the problem of evil. In his essay, “The

Problem of Evil,” by Richard Swinburne, the author attempts to explain how evil

can exist in a world created by an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent Being,

namely God. Swinburne uses to free-will defense and says that God gave us a

choice between doing good and doing evil. If someone chooses to do good over

evil, then that Good is greater than if one had no choice at all but to do good.

This is a weak argument and in order to clarify those weaknesses one can look

at Steven M. Cahn’s essay entitled “Cacodaemony.” This essay parallels

Swineburne’s, but states that an omniscient, omnipotent, omnimalevolent Demon

created the world. By looking at how weak the argument for cacodaemony is, one

can see how unlikely it is that the Demon exists and then can see that the

existence of God is just as unlikely.

In “The Problem of Evil”, Swinburne says that an omniscient, omnipotent,

omnibenevolent Being created the world. If this were true, how can evil exist

in this world. If God consciously knew He was creating a world in which there

is evil, then He would not be omnibenevolent. If God did not know He was

creating a world in which evil exists, then He would not be omniscient. If God

is omnipotent then He would be able to stop any evil from occurring. Either way,

God would not be what Christianity makes him out to be. Swinburne argues that

the theodicist, one who believes that it is not wrong for God to create a world

in which there is evil, can logically explain the existence of evil in the world.

The main argument that the theodicist uses is the free-will defense, which

claims that God gave humans the freedom to choose between doing acts of good and

acts of evil. The theodicist argues that the good person could do is greater if

it is chosen instead of doing evil. It is better to choose to walk an elderly

person across the road instead of deciding to push the elderly person in front

of an oncoming car. The theodicist believes that it is better for a person to

have that choice, though nearly everyone would naturally choose to help the

person across the street, than to have no choice at all and be forced to help

that person. Swinburne writes that giving people a moral responsibility to do

the right thing is good. “But if He did so by imposing a full character on a

humanly free creature, this would be giving him a character which he had not in

any way chosen or adopted for himself” (9). Swinburne believes that the freedom

to choose and develop ones own character is a very important thing and each

person deserves to have the ability to choose between Good and evil.

This, however, does not justify the amount of pain and suffering in the

world. If someone were to consciously choose to do an evil act over a good one,

the suffering caused to the innocent people involved would not be right. There

are some people with mental disorders or those born with retardation that do not

have the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, or who sometimes suffer

from lack of proper judgement. These people cannot make a choice between good

and evil, so sometimes they do evil acts, and sometimes they do good ones.

Would it not be better for these people not to have the choice, a choice that

they may not be fit to make. For example, a man who is schizophrenic may hear

voices that tell him to do something that he knows is morally wrong, such as

kill somebody. Would it not be better for God to intervene and make this

person’s judgement better. It most certainly would be better for God to

intervene and give this person a proper sense of right and wrong and the ability

to do the right thing. It would have been a better world if God had created

Hitler so that he would not feel the need to order the massacre of millions of

Jews. Swinburne, however, thinks that it is better for these people to have a

choice to do wrong or to do right.

Swinburne argues that, although evils are bad, their existence is necessary

for the existence of some types of goods. Certain evils that occur, such as the

suffering of others, cause us to be compassionate, courageous, self-sacrificing,

etc. Swinburne says that these are goods that exist because of the existence

of evil. “Evils give men an opportunity to perform the acts which show men at

their best” (10). Someone who sees a woman getting raped may show courage and

compassion by trying to stop the rapist. It is illogical, however, to say, that

it is a good thing that woman was getting raped so that the kindhearted citizen

could i

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