J.L. Mackies Evil and Omnipotence Essay - 1652 Words

J.L. Mackies Evil and Omnipotence The philosopher J.L. Mackie wrote a very convincing piece on the problem of evil called â€Å"Evil and Omnipotence,† in which he attempts to show that one of the following premises must be false in order for them to be consistent with each other. #1. God is omnipotent. #2. God is morally perfect. #3. Evil exists. The problem of evil is a deductive a priori argument who’s goal is to prove the non-existence of God. In addition to Mackie’s three main premises he also introduces some â€Å"quasi-logical† rules that give further evidence to his argument. First he presumes that a good thing will eliminate evil to the extent that it can and second, that omnipotence has no limits. From these two â€Å"additional†¦show more content†¦Mackie saves the strongest and probably the most popular theistic response to this argument for last. The free will solution claims that the existence of 2nd order evils is not a product of God but of mankind’s own freewill. The supporters of this claim hold that freedom is a good even greater than 2nd order goods and believe that God is justified for letting 2nd order evils exist in exchange for the ultimate good of freedom. This is to say that even though God is omnipotent he chooses not to use his power to control the will of men. In comparison to the first two theistic responses this one seems to be the best. So it is surprising how easily Mackie disproves it. He asks, if God is all good and all powerful, and if free will is good enough to justify 2nd order evils, why didn’t he create men so that they would freely choose to do good? The only possible objection to this is to say that God’s power is limited and that he is not omnipotent. Also if God is omniscient doesn’t he already know the outcomes of the men which he has created? To truly allow man to have free will God would have to restrict his own power in order to be unable to control men and this leads us to the Paradox of omnipotence. 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