Hello, my name is Elmar Kremer.
I am a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy
at the University of Toronto.
This is the 7th in a series of talks
on classical theism.
Since the 1950's, philosophers
of religion have spent a lot
of time on an old question, 
whether the evil in the world
is consistent with the existence
of a good and omnipotent God.
In 1955, JL Mackie, a follower of David
Hume sparked new interest in the question
when he developed the following 
argument:
1: Good is opposed to evil in such a way
that a good thing always eliminates evil
as far as it can.
2: There are no limits to what an 
omnipotent thing can do.
3: Therefore, the proposition that a good 
omnipotent thing exists,
and that evil exists, are incompatible.
Mackie did not assert in the article
that evil exist, but if you are prepared
to make that assertion, you can 
continue the argument.
4: evil exists.
5: Therefore, there is no good 
omnipotent thing.
Classical theists and theistic 
personalists alike reject the
first premise of Mackie's argument.
But they do so for different
reasons.
Reasons which reflect disagreements
about the nature of God,
which I have explained earlier
in this series of talks.
First, is their disagreement 
about whether God is a person
in the same sense in which 
you and I are a persons.
Second, their disagreement
about whether God's goodness
is moral goodness.
As a result of these underlying
disagreements, they respond
to Mackie's first premise 
in quite different ways.
Theistic personalists say that 
the first premise is false.
Because God might have a 
good reason for permitting evil.
They do concede something 
like one, namely that a good thing
always eliminates evil as far as it can, 
unless it has a good reason for permitting
the evil.
But that concession does not 
save Mackie's argument because
they argue it is possible that God
has a good reason for permitting
the evils that are present in the world.
Indeed, it is possible that 
lowering the amount of
evil in the world would only
make the world worse.
That would happen if 
lowering the amount
of evil required eliminating
goods, like the good of human
free will, which are so great
that any world which lacked them
would be overall worse than
the actual world we live in.
But the argument does not end there.
Atheists objected that there 
are certain evils which no
morally good person would permit
if he or she were able to prevent them.
Take the intense of innocent 
children.
God could prevent that 
suffering without any difficulty.
So his failure to prevent it
would be contrary to our
basic moral principles
and therefore would
be unjust and morally bad.
Faced with that sort of objections, 
theistic personalists could only say
that as far as we know, God is 
justified in permitting such
suffering even though in many 
cases we cannot see exactly how
he is justified.
Turning to classical theists,
they reject Mackie's first
premise in a more radical way.
In their view, god is not a person in 
the same sense as you and I are persons
and so we cannot reason from our 
experience of how good persons act
to conclusions about how God would act.
The goodness of God does imply 
that the world is a good world,
but that is consistent with its
containing evil.
Classical theists also reject
the idea that God is justified
only if he lives up to our moral
standards.
On the contrary, God's actions
are good and just because
they are in agreement with 
God's knowledge of his own goodness.
Therefore, theistic personalists are
mistaken when they say that if God
exists, his permission of intense
suffering must be justified by its
agreement with out moral principles.
The same mistake appears in a famous
tombstone epitaph.
Here lies Martin Ingleblod.
Have mercy on my soul o God
as I would do if I were God
and ye were Martin Ingleblod.
Classical theist never tire of repeating
that God is not just another person.
Not even the nicest and most 
intelligent one around.
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