The Problem of Evil Does Not Disprove God

The reason for that is because animals don't have the full capacity of self-reflection and realization of the self that humans have. However, I disagree with him that you need that kind of awareness in order to experience pain and suffering. While it might be true that most animals are not self-aware, that is, the knowledge and awareness of your own personality or character, [1] they still are aware of things. It's strange for my opponent to say that animals are not aware of pain, because they share a similar evolutionary history with us, react in ways we would if we were in pain, and also have a central nervous system like us. Saying animals are not aware of their suffering is, I think, a convenient fairy tail my opponent wishes to tell himself. So in conclusion, we still have a problem of evil, since animals have had to live a life of suffering and misery for billions of years. Natural DisastersPro states that natural disasters are amoral. Meaning that they are neither good or bad. And so when an earthquakes or tsunami kills thousands of innocent people, we cannot say that there has been any evil that has taken place, since this is an event that was not caused by an moral agent. However, I think my opponent misses the point. If an omnipotent and morally perfect God exists, then this is something he could prevent that would not violate human free will. So again, we have a case where there is unnecessary pain and suffering taking place that is not caused by humans acting of their free will. Child Suffering Pro states that child suffering falls under free will, since everyone knows that when you bring a child into existence, you create the possibility that this child will suffer from a variety of things. However, he then claims that if child suffering were really a problem, then the human race would stop breeding and go extinct. But since humans don't stop having children, this refutes the claim that child suffering is a problem. Sadly, Pro again misses the point. If an omnipotent and morally perfect God exists, then he could have created the world in such a way to where there is no child suffering at all. Creating such a world be an easy task for an omnipotent being. Moreover, a morally perfect and all-loving God would have the strongest desire to create a world where no child had to suffer. Human Free Will Can Exist Without Evil In response to this, Pro misinterprets what I was arguing for. He says:"I completely agree with this statement. This is why, in the beginning, mankind was given the free choice of a life without evil. Mankind rejected that, and then made a free choice to procreate knowing that there would be bad things that would happen to the entirety of their offspring. " -ProTo recap, what I agued previously was that God could have given human beings both free will and moral perfection, that way they would never choose to do anything evil. However, Pro misinterpreted what I was saying because if human beings had free will and moral perfection, then they would have never eaten from the tree of knowledge to begin with. Being morally perfect beings, they would have respected God's wishes to not eat from that tree. So the point of my argument was to show that even if we ignore animal suffering, natural disasters, child suffering, and we pin free will down for being the sole reason why there is evil and suffering, it's still the case that this does not get us around the problem of evil. For reasons I have just explained above. Conclusion In this debate Pro has appealed to the free will defense to explain away the problem of evil. Indeed, in his conclusion he says:"Free will allows for evil to exist, and since humankind freely chose to allow evil, and procreate in a world with it, free will refutes the problem. " -ProHowever, as I have shown throughout this debate, there is evil and suffering that is not caused by free will. These include the suffering that animals have to go through, the natural disasters that hit places where people live, and the many diseases that children suffer and die from. All of this is suffering NOT caused by human free will. Besides, even if we were to accept the claim that human free will is the cause of all suffering, this does not help us get around the problem of evil. Since, as I stated earlier, God could have given us both free will and moral perfection, which would insure that we never did anything morally wrong. Thus, the problem of evil prevails and the resolution is negated. Source:. http://www.merriam-webster.com...