Statements: 321,452
Perspectives: 108,905
Topics: 42

When one conceives of God as unlimited with respect to power, knowledge, and moral goodness, the existence of evil quickly gives rise to potentially serious arguments against the existence of God.

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2 reasons for

2 reasons against

Reasons For

2 perspectives

Reason for 1 of 2

1.The argument from evil may or may not be sound, since one or more of its premises may be false.
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2.Nevertheless, conceiving of God as all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good makes the existence of evil a basis for formulating such arguments.
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Reason for 2 of 2

1.The argument from evil may or may not be sound, since one or more of its premises may be false.
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2.Nevertheless, the conception of God as unlimited in power, knowledge, and moral goodness combined with the existence of evil generates such arguments.
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Reasons Against

2 perspectives

Reason against 1 of 2

1.Alvin Plantinga's free will defense shows that even granting omnipotence and omniscience, it may be impossible for God to create free creatures who always choose good.
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2.If the co-existence of God and evil is logically possible, then evil's existence does not generate a 'serious argument' but merely an emotional or probabilistic challenge.
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3.The claim conflates logical and evidential versions of the problem, overstating how quickly evil gives rise to arguments that threaten classical theism's internal coherence.
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Reason against 2 of 2

1.Many classical theists (Aquinas, Maimonides) deny that God is 'unlimited' in the sense of possessing maximal discrete properties, making the framing a category error.
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2.If divine omnipotence means 'able to do what is logically possible' rather than 'unlimited power,' the argument from evil loses much of its initial force.
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Topics

Problem of Evil

Key Terms

God(Classical theism; used to fix the referent of 'G' in the Bayesian formulation): An eternal, personal being of maximal power, knowledge, and goodness who created the universe
Moral goodness(describing God's moral perfection): The quality of being perfectly ethical and always choosing what is right and just.
Unlimited with respect to knowledge(describing God's omniscience): The idea that God knows everything—past, present, and future—with complete understanding.
Unlimited with respect to power(describing God's omnipotence): The idea that God can do anything and has no limits on what God can accomplish.
evil(Spencer's naturalistic definition grounding evil in biological mismatch rather than moral or theological categories): The non-adaptation of constitution to conditions
knowledge(Distinguished from mere true belief, which may be the product of indoctrination and need not exercise deliberative capacities.): Justified true belief — true belief that has been arrived at through the exercise of deliberative capacities, including comparison of and deliberation among alternatives.
problem of evil(Used as a basis for arguing against the existence of the God of traditional theism): The philosophical challenge of vindicating God's moral attributes (particularly omnipotence and perfect goodness) in light of the existence of evil in the world

Alvin Plantinga's free will defense shows that even granting omnipotence and omn...If divine omnipotence means 'able to do what is logically possible' rather than ...If the co-existence of God and evil is logically possible, then evil's existence...Many classical theists (Aquinas, Maimonides) deny that God is 'unlimited' in the...

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Nevertheless, conceiving of God as all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good...Nevertheless, the conception of God as unlimited in power, knowledge, and moral ...

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AI-extracted3/3 agreementValid

SEP: evil

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Whether the argument is sound is, of course, a further question, for it may be that one or more of the premises is false. The point here, however, is simply that when one conceives of God as unlimited with respect to power, knowledge, and moral goodness, the existence of evil quickly gives rise to potentially serious arguments against the existence of God.

Extraction notes

Validity: The premises accurately capture the passage's reasoning that despite questions about soundness, the conception of an unlimited God combined with evil's existence does give rise to potentially serious arguments against God's existence.

Confidence: The passage explicitly states this conclusion and offers the reasoning, though the argumentative structure is modest—it is more of a qualified claim than a full syllogism.

Details

Type: claim
Perspectives: 4 (2 for, 2 against)
Edits: 1 edit

When one conceives of God as unlimited with respect to power, knowledge, and moral goodness, the existence of evil quickly gives rise to potentially serious arguments against the existence of God.

Reasons For

Reasons Against

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