J.L. Mackies Evil and Omnipotence Essay -- Philosophy Philosophical E

J.L. Mackie's "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 premises,† it can be concluded that a completely good and omnipotent being will eliminate all possible evil. After establishing these added premises Mackie continues with his piece to list and negate several theistic responses to the argument. A common objection to the problem of evil is to claim that good and evil are both necessary for each other to exist. They must be looked at as counterparts. Another way of putting it is that without experiencing evil, we couldn’t possibly recognize or know what is good. Evil must exist in order for good to exist in the same way that the concept of up must exist if there we are to conceive of down. Mackie denies that this is true however. He explains that good and evil cannot be logical opposites like up and down (or great and small) because up and down are not qualities. It wouldn’t make sense to favor up over down or vice versa as one could do with good and evil. Also, even if it were true that evil is necessary for us to conceive of good, we would only need a very small amount. And it wouldn’t seem right to say that very little evil exists in the world. A second and stronger objection to Mackie’s version of the problem of evil is explained to us using the terms 1st and 2nd order goods and evils. 1st order goods/evils are purely physical. Examples are pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. It is claimed by many theists that 1st order evils such as pain and suffering are necessary for 2nd order goods like courage and charity. However there exists what Mackie calls a â€Å"fatal objection† to this claim and that is that along with 2nd order goods there must also exist 2nd order evil... ...Contingency Argument that whether a contingent series of causes is infinite or not, that fact is now irrelevant because as long as the series as a whole is thought to be contingent the existence of God can still be proven. So the Contingency Argument looks something like this. #1. The universe as a whole is a contingent being. #2. The Principle of Sufficient Reason is true. #3. The existence of a contingent being must be explained by something other than itself. #4. There must be an external, necessary being. (God.) The obvious problem with the Contingency Argument is that we do not know whether or not PSR is true. It has been suggested by some philosophers that the existence of the universe is merely a â€Å"brute fact,† or that it is possible for the existence of something to be explained by nothing. Also one can easily reject the first premise due to the fallacy of composition. Just because all the parts of something exhibit a certain quality doesn’t mean that the whole of something exhibits that same quality. So although the Contingency Argument seems stronger than the Causal Argument, it still fails to prove anything because some of the premises can be rationally denied.