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An Argument For God's Non-Existence

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What is the problem of evil, and how compelling is it as an argument for God’s non-existence? The problem of evil is as follows:
1. If God exists, God is a perfectly benevolent omnipotent being by definition. This means that God can do absolutely anything as long as it is physically and logically possible. God is also kind and fair.
2. A perfectly benevolent being would want to prevent any unnecessary evil if they could. They would not allow there to be any type of evil in the universe they created or exist in.
3. Saying all this, there is still evil in our universe. There exists both natural evil and human evil.
4. From this, we can conclude that since there is evil, that means that there is no God. If there was, evil would not exist.
Number 1 is held to be a conceptual truth …show more content…
Looking at number 2, would one consider it to be true? That God would not allow any type of evil to exist? God has given humans free will, and thus humans are highly likely to engage in acts of evil. If God completely prevented evil from this universe, then humans would have some part of their free will stripped away. This would be unacceptable to that God and thus would be the reason on why God allows evil to exist. Now comes the question, what is considered evil and is all evil considered evil? Is evil considered evil according to God? Or is evil considered evil according to the majority of humans? What if one thing or event that is evil is considered okay to God? Or vise-versa? We cannot simply ask God, so we must assume that all evil is bad. However, is natural evil as bad as human evil? Natural evil means a state of affairs that involves suffering of an innocent human being that is not a

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