Mackie's Argument Analysis

The existence of God has been presented by a multitude of philosophers. However, this has led to profound criticism and arguments of God’s inexistence. The problem of evil provides the strongest argument against the existence of God, presented by J.L Mackie. In this paper, I aim to explain the problem of evil, examine the objection of the Paradox of Omnipotence and provide rebuttals to this objection. Thus, highlighting my support for Mackie’s Problem of evil.

Mackie’s argument highlights the inconsistency that arises between the premises of God’s existence. Mackie proposes the problem of evil to be that “God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; [God exists]; and yet evil exists” (Mackie, 1955, p.200). He essentially states that these four

In stating this there has been a multitude of objections against the Problem of Evil that aim to present themselves as solutions to Mackie’s problem. The most famous is the Paradox of Omnipotence, which arises in the connection of the problem of evil and the issue of free will (Harris, 2011, p.81). Some believe that evil arises as a result of the independent actions of humans, as opposed to being ascribed to God. Meaning the evil in the world is a consequence of free will and it is this free will that is permitted by God in the creation of mankind. The paradox states that an omnipotent being can “either make things which he cannot control, or an omnipotent being cannot make things which he cannot control” (Keene, 1960, p.74). Whilst, this paradox intends to remove the relation between God and evil, placing the responsibility in the hands of something independent from God, it fails to successfully do so. This is because if God is omnipotent, then he is all-powerful. If God is all-powerful, then his power should not be contested by limitations. Therefore, if he fails to control human free will, then he fails to be omnipotent and thus, inconsistency is found between the premises from the Problem of Evil. Continually, if free will is controlled, it is not free will at all and therefore, God is wholly responsible for the evil in the world. Furthermore, this

This is achieved by stating that evil is an illusion and thus, non-existent. However, this statement is invalid because evil is profoundly unavoidable, as it exists in correlation to the good that can be observed. Essentially this means that evil is necessary for good, acting as a counterpart. This is because if there was only good in the world a lack of evil would mean that this goodness would fail to be recognised, and thus a world with only goodness fails to exist because it cannot be appreciated. Additionally, by no means can the suffering of moral or natural evil be justified as good, and thus, if it brings a negative state to an individual or group it cannot be classified as good and in turn, it must be categorised as the opposing force, this being evil, therefore evil