The Problem of Evil

Very few people deny that evil exists in this world. We see evil all the time on our television screens. The fact that there is evil has always been a major argument against the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent God. In fact whenever a Christian decides to explain the faith, someone will very likely, and early in the discussion, bring up evil as an objection. What are the defences of the faithful against such arguments? How does the argument for objective morality (see section on Culture and Ethics) affect our attitude to this discussion?  Also, how does this issue relate to intelligent design? On this latter point we can broaden this discussion to include two things:
 
1. The existence of suffering and death in the natural world.
2. The claim by some atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, that many aspects of the natural world are imperfect and thus could not be created by a perfectly good and omnipotent God.
 
This section of the website will attempt to tackle some of these issues.

 

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