All Possible Worlds Theodicy Analysis

The word evil, according to the Webster Dictionary, is defined as profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity. A lot of the time people use the word evil in a supernatural sense, exclusively talking about the devil, but actually the concept of evil is a lot more real than some invisible force that dwells beneath the earth’s crest. It is a lot more evidence of “real world evil” than any “other-worldly” evil in the universe. You see real-world evil every day when you turn on the television: terrorists, wars, natural disasters, diseases, conspiracies, greed, etc. Not only does this type of evil exist, but these terrible things are in abundance all around the world and has been that since the beginning of time. Even in Christian scriptures, …show more content…
But perhaps the problem of evil is deeper than this. Maybe all this wickedness of the world is necessary for us to have the best possible life on this Earth. This is what John Mackie describes in “Best of all possible worlds Theodicy” and the Free Will Defense. The theodicy was originally proposed by Gottfried Leibniz in the 18th century and a lot of philosophers, including John Mackie himself, have been arguing on this theodicy. In Mackie’s essay about the theodicy, he states that “the universe is better with some evil in it than it could be if there were no evil” and that there is so much of the evil because humans have free will and they just make the wrong choices. I actually happen to agree with this theodicy that Mackie …show more content…
To help me explain this point better, I like to use an example from the famous series, Star Trek. There is a character named Mr. Spock who is from a planet where they cannot lie and he doesn’t take people’s feelings into account. For him it’s like a curse because his ability to always tell the truth, often gets his team in trouble and his personality and quality of life appears to be very poor. Trust me, no one wants to be like that. God has given us the gift to make decisions freely. God giving us free will was meant to be a blessing. When you can make a choice between right and wrong and you choose right, it makes you feel morally good. Free will creates second order goods, but the problem is that it can also create second order evils. It actually creates more evil than good. Humans just often choose evil over good, and God couldn’t have foreseen that mankind would abuse his gift like we are. So God giving us free will is not a limit on His power, but it actually shows how much power he has. Nobody on earth can create something that can act on its own with no orders. Only the great Creator can do that. Now to talk about God being all good. We are all made in God’s image, according to Christian views, so if God loves himself, he must love us. If you love

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