THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AND THEODICY
KÖTÜLÜK SORUNU VE TEODİSE

Author : Özcan AKDAĞ
Number of pages : 473-480

Abstract

God and the existence of evil is one of the important controversial issue in the history of thought. Since Epicures time, some thinkers argued that there is tension between existence of evil and wholly perfect and good God. If God is wholly good and omnipotent being, he does not have permitted to existence of evil in the World. We are experiencing that there is evil in the World. Based on this experience, most of atheist thinkers, like Hume, Flew etc., concluded that there is not an omnipotent and wholly good God. In order to find a solution to this problem, most of theist thinkers developed some arguments against atheistic charges. One of the most important is ‘theodicy’. The main purpose of theodicy is to demonstrate that there is not an inconsistency between God’s essential attributes and the existence of evil in the World and that it cannot be an argument against Gad’s existence. In this context, a theodicy argues evil has important roles, like it serves to be known what good is and causes to produce some greater goods, in the created world by wholly good God. Based on these reasons, most of theist, like Augustine, Avicenna, al-Ghazâlî, Thomas Aquinas, and Leibniz, tried to develop a theodicy. According to them, there is not an inconsistency between wholly good God and the existence of evil in the created world, because God has some right reasons to permit to the existence of evil in the World. In this study, I focused on a theistic response, called ‘theodicy’, to the atheistic arguments based on evil. Consequently, I draw a conclusion that we cannot know why God permitted to the evil in the World because of lacking of our epistemic access to

Keywords

Evil, God, Theodicy, al-Ghazâli, Thomas Aquinas, Leibniz

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