An important statement about the problem of evil, a paradox attributed to Epicurus, was cited by the Scottish philosopher David Hume: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent? Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent? Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?” Since well before this time, the problem has been the basis of a positive argument for atheism: If God exists, then he is omnipotent and perfectly good; a perfectly good being would eliminate evil as far as it could; there is no limit to what an omnipotent being can do; therefore, if God exists, there would be no evil in the world; it is evil in the world; therefore, God does not exist.
Most thinkers, however, have found this argument too simple, since it does not recognize cases in which eliminating one evil causes another to arise or in which the existence of a particular evil entails some good state of affairs that morally outweighs it. Augustine, as the first Christian philosopher refuted this argument by suggesting that God did not create evil as evil is not an attribute but a lack of goodness. He argued that God gave humans the free will to choose and the lack of goodness comes from one’s own use of rationality, given to us when Adam chose the fruit from the tree of knowledge. Therefore, evil is a price we pay in return to our free will – which also in a manner raised the question of God’s omniscience.
The other rebuttal is to attempt a more limited “defense,” which does not aim to explain God’s purposes but merely to show that the existence of at least some evil in the world is logically compatible with God’s goodness, power, and wisdom.
