Reference no: EM133621404

Assignment:

Answer any two of these questions.

1. What is the problem of evil, and what does Mackie mean when he says that it is a logical problem? What three main propositions constitute the problem of evil? What is the evidential problem of evil, and how is it different from the logical problem of evil?
2. According to Mackie, what are some of the adequate solutions to the problem of evil, and why does he call them "half-hearted"?
3. One of the solutions that Mackie identifies as fallacious asserts that good cannot exist without evil. If so, why is God not omnipotent? What objection does Mackie raise against the principle that a quality (redness, for example) can exist only if its logical opposite (non-redness) exists? How does the quantity of evil in the world present a problem for a theist who holds that evil exists because good cannot exist without evil? What is Mackie's response to the claim that evil is necessary as a means to good?
4. Another proposed solution asserts that the universe is better with some evil in it than it could be if there was no evil. How can a distinction between first-order good and second-order good be used to help solve the problem of evil? How does the existence of second-order evil invalidate this argument?
5. What is the free-will solution to the problem of evil? Why are second-order evils not a necessary result of free will? If human wills are really free, why is God not omnipotent? What is the "paradox of omnipotence"? Is it plausible to believe that the good of free will outweighs the evils that it causes?
6. What do you make of Mackie's overall argument? Are you convinced by it that there is no God? If you are not convinced, where do you think he goes wrong?
7. What does the theodicy project attempt to do? According to Hick, what are the two main demands on a theodicy hypothesis? What are the two basic types of Christian theodicy?
8. How does the Augustinian theodicy (i.e., the free-will defense) explain the compatibility of evil in the universe with a limitlessly good God? According to Hick, why does Augustinian theodicy lack plausibility for educated people today? Is it plausible that all the evil in the world is due to the misuse of free will?
9. In Irenaean theology, what are the two stages in the creation of humankind? What is Hick's modern re-expression of these two stages? Why were human beings created at an "epistemic distance" from God? Why were human beings created as morally imperfect? How does our animal nature conflict with our ethical nature?
10. According to Hick, why did God create a natural world that causes the nonmoral evil of human pain and suffering? What is the principal threat to the plausibility of Irenaean theodicy? Do you think Hick's response to this threat is plausible?
11. Why can no person-making world be devoid of evils that we consider intolerable and indiscriminately distributed? Why does Irenaean theodicy require an afterlife? If God exists and wants us to attain eternal happiness in heaven, why did God not simply create us in heaven?
12. Is the suffering of nonhuman animals compatible with the existence of an all-good and all-powerful God? What could Hick say about this?
13. According to Russell, how do the goods that philosophy seeks to achieve differ from those that physical science seeks to achieve? Why do "practical" persons find philosophy a waste of time?
14. What kind of knowledge does philosophy seek to obtain? What are some of the questions for which philosophers have found no demonstrably correct answers?
15. How does philosophy free us from "the tyranny of custom"? How does philosophical contemplation, by beginning with the not-self, enlarge the self? How does the impartiality of philosophical contemplation carry over into the world of action and emotion?
16. What is the greatest benefit that comes from pursuing philosophical questions? Do you agree with Russell? Can you think of any other benefits of philosophy that Russell did not mention?
17. What do you think? Is it a waste of time to seek the answers to philosophical questions for which we are unlikely ever to find the correct answer? Is it always good to question our beliefs and customs, or should we simply accept some of them without questioning them? If we are searching for the meaning of life, is it better to turn to religion than to philosophy?