Explore the key ideas associated with the problem of evil and suffering

Mackie presents us with an Inconsistent Triad which displays the fact that God’s omnipotence, omnibenevolence and evil cannot all exist alongside each other. Due to the clear contradiction, Mackie states that only two of these things can be true whilst the third isn’t. Instantly, this presents a problem for religious believers as they are either forced to strip the classical idea of ‘God’ of core qualities of love/power, or deny the fact that evil exists. Essentially, if God was all these things at once, evil would simply not exist because he would not will it and have the power to prevent it. This idea can be related to that of Hume’s who has a similar idea of inconsistency. Simply because evil exists, he is either not omnipotent or not omnibenevolent. This shows a problem for Hume because God no longer fits in with the God of classical theism and he is a “limited deity”, he goes on to say that God is either “incompetent or malicious”. This is further compounded by Epicurus: “God is either willing and unable, or unable and unwilling, or he is neither willing not able or willing and able…”. The problem of evil and suffering makes it difficult for religious believers to claim a justified belief in God; he is either a God barely worthy of worship or a God that ceases to exist at all.
Another key idea is a defence of God from the problem of evil: The Free Will Defence. It explains that humans are given free will and this is the sole cause of evil. Swinburne says that if God was to intervene with our decisions or create us to be naturally inclined to make good decisions, this would not be true free will. He explains that humans need to experience suffering for growth and development and be able to take responsibility. If not, and humans were immortal, we would have unlimited chances to fix mistakes and wouldn’t have to take responsibility – that is not free will.