The evil-god challenge Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The evil-god challenge - Essay Example These two notions are a measure by which human lives are evaluated. Depending on the actions of a person he or she may have a reputation of a good or a bad one. From early childhood, while listening fairy tales we begin to learn the concept of good and evil. We are taught that good always wins, though it is not so in the reality. Then the concept of God enters the life of children and they fully believe in what is written in the Bible, that is, the existence of the Lord is doubtless as well as the good nature of his personality and actions. Still there is a hesitation whether God exists and what his essence. So let’s consider this question with the help of research of theistic works on the theme of Stephen Law and Theodore M. Drange. To begin with we will study the argument of Law’s â€Å"The evil-god challenge† in which he touches the aspect of the good or evil will of the Lord who has the power to control life on the Earth as he is its Creator. From the beginning to the end of his work Law doubts the good motives of God’s activity for he allows so much suffering for his creatures, people. One of the main reasons of such a situation, according to the author, is that through the way of travails humans can become stronger and recognize good with even greater intense. Furthermore, the Lord has gifted people with an option of good or evil so it depends on them which one to prefer. And it is God who has allowed evil to exist by his decision not to made humanity his puppet theater giving it the opportunity to make a choice in favor of evil. Law claims that the explanation of such phenomenon as natural disasters which destroy and cripple the lives of sentient inhabitants is His will to prevent a g reater tragedy that is invisible for people. This is the first-order evil which needs the second-order good (theodicy) as a world’s virtue, for example. In this respect the suspicion or hypothesis of evil god arises. People just don’t understand how can a good