Some people view the problem of evil as the most serious challenge to the Christian tradition. "How can God exist when there is evil in the world?" This question arises due to the nature of God. God is understood to be benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent. If God is all-knowing, all powerful and all good he would know that some evil would occur, he would have the power to prevent it and the desire to do so as well. Consequently, there should be no evil. When one observes society, numerous examples of moral evil abound. How can God allow this?

Even more pressing is the question of: "Why doesn't God intervene to stop all the evil and injustice?" Because God does not appear to be doing anything about the problem of evil, many people have simply ceased to believe He exists, while others feel He cannot have all three characteristics previously ascribed to Him. There are other kinds of evils as well, such as earthquake, fire, and flood. For the purposes of this paper, however, I will focus on moral evils, the evil which one person does to another. Despite these arguments, there is a God who created the world, who is loving, all-powerful, and who knows what He is doing, but the

Theists often state that moral evil is due to free will. If it is man's free will that accounts for moral evil then God cannot be blamed for it. If the possibility of choosing evil is a logical consequence of free will, then the occurrence of some such evils is virtually a logical necessity. Philosophers have many opposing arguments with which to counter this assumption. If it is not a logical impossibility for man to choose good on one or even several occasions, then there is no logical impossibility in man's freely choosing the good on every occasion. If there was open to a benevolent God the possibility of creating beings who freely choose good, and He did not take this opportunity, this would prove that He is not omnipotent. If God is all-powerful He should have made human beings perfect. A perfect God should create perfect beings.

The second objection is due to confusion over the exact definition of free will. If decisions are random and not determined by the will, then they have no value. However, it is not true that our every action is determined by heredity and environment. It would be foolish to say that our actions are completely free, that habit, our emotions, external stimuli, our genetic likes and dislikes do not have some influence on our behavior. Free will does not mean an action without cause or motive. The very nature of the will demands that a motive be present. Freedom does not mean an absence of influences, rather that these influences do not force one to decide a certain way, but that one can select between the influences. Free will is the self in action. Some may argue that we are not always conscious of all the influences upon us all the time, and that if we only knew this or that unconscious motivation then our behavior would be explainable by cause and free will would be eliminat!

reason that moral evil is in the world is because God, by giving man freedom of choice, allows it.

The third objection to the free will defense is the paradox of omnipotence. The argument that if God makes laws that He is bound by or makes laws by which He is not bound, or that He cannot control human behavior makes Him not all-powerful can be easily explained.). For example, a janitor does not sweep a room after a lecture. His boss can tell him that he needs to do his job and sweep the room. However, his supervisor cannot both demand that he sweep the room and not sweep the room at the same time. This is not something that can be done or left undone. The fact that the janitor "cannot" both sweep the room and not sweep the room does not mean he is physically incapable of doing it or that he is limited in the way he would be if he had no arms. To say that God is not omnipotent because He does not nurtur

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Approximate Word count = 1842
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)