Leibniz God Is Evil Essay

There is a Problem of Good if God is Evil

Problem of Evil

God, the greatest conceivable being (GCB), is known to be omnipotent, omniscience, and omnipresent. Religious individuals tend to perceive God as all good and all loving. They tend to believe the existence of Earth and all that inhabit it, including our individual existences, to have been created exactly in God’s image. However, evil plagues our earth, despite being made by this God. This raises a disagreement between who God is and what he created, known as the problem of evil. If God was pure good, he would not know evil, and he could not create evil. Therefore, the idea of a good God and human reality are disconnected. However, I believe there is a presence of evil in God that does

Leibniz has faith in a good and perfect God. For him the answer to the problem of evil is that God draws greater good out of suffering. He states, “then we must say that God permits this but does not will it, even though he concurs with it because of the laws of nature he has established and because he knows how to draw a greater good from it," Leibniz, (7). Of course, humans cannot predict how awful situations and evil can eventually lead to good, as this is very complex and takes time to see. Leibniz understands this, explaining that God's order surpasses human minds, and that we do not know the extent to which good can be derived from evil (Leibniz, 5). He believes that humans struggle to understand and accept this concept because “it is difficult to love God when we are not disposed to will what God wills,” (4). People generally want to avoid suffering, so I believe this statement to be fair. Because of this explanation of the problem of evil, Leibniz is able to stand by his point that God is perfect. He believes “it is appropriate to remark that there are several entirely different perfections in nature, that God possesses them all together, and that each of them belongs to him in the highest degree,” (Leibniz, 1). If God is the GCB he must be perfect- after all “to act with less perfection than one could have is to act imperfectly,” (Leibniz, 3). I agree, acting

In both scenarios, the essence of God equates to the state of our reality. For example, if God is evil, and so much suffering exists in our world, then why is there still good? Where does it come from? My point being that the problem of evil stops being a problem when God is neither good or evil. The question of evil was likely raised because people need God to be purely good for their own comfort (if someone is searching for a GCB to praise, why would they choose to praise a God that makes them unjustly suffer “just because”?). Our human definitions of the terms “good” and “evil” likely cannot even be applied to such an inconceivable being, since they are so subjective. Our definition of “great” in GCB correlates to our human experiences. If you believe in God, of course you want him to be good as we understand goodness. Humans love what is good. But God is not only good. This being said, things could not, and should not, be a different way. To answer the question, if God is good, how is there evil? He intended there to be. God is good and God is evil. If it were different, we could not experience the human condition, and God would not be