The Christian Vanguard

The following is a study guide I typed out for my philosophy of religion class. The Problem of Evil A. “Evil and Omnipotence” J.L. Mackie (1) Explain the problem of evil. The problem of evil states there is a contradiction within this set of statements: God is omnipotent, God is wholly good, and evil exists. Since God is omnibenevolent, God wishes to abolish evil, and since God is omnipotent, then God could abolish evil. If an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God exists, then evil does not exist. But since evil exists, then an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God does not exist. (2) Explain the problems with the four fallacious solutions Mackie considers. 1. “Good cannot exist without evil” or “Evil is a necessary counterpart to good” The main problem with this response is that it restricts God’s omnipotence, if not outright rejects it. If God and evil are necessary counterparts, then God cannot eliminate evil. This would also make “good” and “evil” similar to being “great” and “small”, but ...

The three components of Perfect Being Theology are great making properties, compossible properties, and uniqueness. A great making property is any property that endows its bearer with some measure of values and greatness, or metaphysical stature, regardless of extrinsic circumstances, that it to say, it has intrinsic goodness. Compossible properties are collections of properties if it is possible that they all be had by the same individual at the same time or all together. There are no properties which are inconsistent with one another. Uniqueness means that God is the being such that no greater can be conceived, following St. Anselm.   Why think there is intrinsic goodness? I f all goodness is external goodness, then nothing would be good since they don’t terminate in some intrinsic goodness. So, if P is good for some other thing P1, but P1 isn’t worth pursuing unless it is itself good, which is denied when we deny intrinsic goodness or good for something else, P2, whic...

Probably the most well known objection to St. Anselm's Ontological argument, usually attributed to Kant, says that existence is not a predicate. When we inquire into the nature of things, we say that it is this shape and that color, and these statements have some meaningful content to them because we are able to predicate something to them. They tell us something about the object. However, saying that X exists tells us nothing about the nature of the object. So being is not a predicate.  This is not the view of the scholastics, and definitely not the view of St. Thomas Aquinas, who does say being (or existence) is a predicate. So how then do we deal with the above objection? Let's look at the mode of inquiry. When we ask what something is, we answer by giving a more common term to which we add a specific difference. So when we ask what a cat is, we say it is a mammal that has this or that distinguishing feature. We may ask what this more common thing is as well, and we ...