J. L. Mackie on the Problem of Evil and Omnipotence

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Suffering and pain are identified as necessary evils though undesirable they are critical price people must pay for moral responsibility and freedom. Arguably, the universe would be better if angelic and human agents were to pick brighter action courses which yielded lesser pain and misery (Johnson 64). Evil is logically needed for the existence of counteracting good rather than simply a logical by-product. With regards to soul making theodicy, evil is reasonably needed for building of righteous or good character habits in free moral agents. The end result is that, logical evil serves as paramount test of personal faith and goodness. Agents who attain goodness as well as faith are recompensed with everlasting ecstasy whereas agents who do not achieve that are tormented eternally. This justifies suitable suffering and pain needed for constructing and testing g of good souls. Mackie asserts that only a small proportion of total suffering and pain experienced by conscious creatures affects people, something which makes him question the logic of morally perfect and omnipotent being permitting such continued suffering to creatures that have no souls and are not moral agents to be tested (Mackie 300). Contrary, it should be understood that all creatures were created by God including human beings and thus none should be exempted from the agony of life. The problem of animal suffering and pain remains a serious explanation challenge for theodicy of soul making (Johnson 70). This is partly because the theodicy does not provide an account of why animal pain is necessary for molding angelic and human souls. Nonetheless, soul-making theodicy provides insufficient explanation of physical evils because it seems to be quiet about such substantial suffering and pain which appears unimportant to human agents’ actions.

Evil produces ‘’good’’

The fundamental idea in this scenario is that particular forms of evil are important for various types of good. Evil is physically essential for realization of various forms of good (Mackie 111). Prime example to consider here is disease and pain versus medical advances. Existence of disease and pain create possible sympathy, heroism, benevolence and perseverance to eliminate these evils. Nevertheless, without suffering and disease, it would not be logically possible to have feelings of sympathy and notable progress in medicine. When disease strike human beings, scientists and researchers converge together and try to reason together to come with possible prevention measures and treatments. Many innovations and medical equipment have been invented due to magnitude of evil brought by diseases (Hasker 355). Due to advances in medicine people are able to live healthy, stress-free and happily. Furthermore, large group of individuals including researchers, medical practitioners, scientists and many others are employed in medical field either directly or indirectly and earn source of livelihood from it.

Mackie points out that evil contribute to overall goodness. For instance, let’s consider a situation where parent forces his/her child to take a spoon full of certain bitter drug , though the pain makes the child feel discomfort and distress the ultimate outcome is that the child regains his/her good health and starts to live normal life. Notably, without undergoing pain and suffering induced by bitter and unpleasant drug, the child cannot obtain good health (Mulgan 194). The act of God allowing people to experience evil discourages them from engaging in unacceptable behaviors thus leading to a near morally upright universe. Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome mainly came as a result of sexual immorality. One may wonder why Omnipotent and wholly good being allowed a disease whose cure has remained a riddle to scientists and researchers. The fact remains that though AIDS brings agony to many human beings it has greatly contributed to growth in field of medicine (Gottfried 432). Additionally, the disease has installed some form of discipline with respect to practicing indiscriminate sex and ensuring faithfulness among couples. Those who continue practicing sexual immorality are at risk of contradicting the disease, a condition which serves as their punishment (Gottfried 382).Therefore, God allows evil to the world as a discipline and a discouragement towards immoral behavior.

Taking into account a situation where everyone would get anything he/she wants at any given time. For example, a situation in which there would no hunger, famine and food would be plenty throughout. Such occurrences would make people lazy since they will never experience any difficulties that may force them to think. In fact, they will eat, drink, get entertained and practice all sort of fan. Consequently, agricultural innovations such as developing drought and pest resistant crops, development of Genetically Modified crops, invention of agricultural machinery among many others will never be realized (Gottfried 400). Actually, God allows people to go through famine, hunger and other problems so that they can critically think and become creative (Luft 243). According to Gottfried, Suffering builds people’s strengths and increases creativity as well innovation. Some will opt to do irrigation. People farm as much as they can, while others engage themselves in other activities such as trade among others to obtain a living. The strongest people around the world are as a result of being subjected to evil. Mackie argues that a person will face various challenges at some time as God builds him/her to become productive and resourceful individual not only to himself/herself but to the whole world (Salza 392). Prudently, a progressive world with stepwise overcoming of evil by good is actually a better universe than a universe with stable endless unchallenged dominance of good.

Conclusion

The existence of evil does not totally disqualify the proposition that God is omnipotent and morally perfect. It is almost impossible for goodness to exist without evil. Actually, existence of evil brings tremendous improvements in the world. God gives people the free will to discern between good and evil so that they can make informed decisions (Johnson 60). Mackie recognizes that there is no adequate logical finding to convince anyone that there is no rationale for believing in Supreme Being. Nonetheless, without existence of evil the world would not experience the gradual progress in many fields. Therefore, the essay agrees with Mackie’s claim that the universe is better with some evil in it than it could be without evil.

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