Outline the problem of evil and one possible response to it.

The problem of evil is one that is often thought to come in two forms - the logical and the evidential - both of which arrived at due to the Christian devotion to the idea of a God of all perfections (i.e. as omnipotent/infinitely powerful, omnibenevolent/infinitely loving and omniscient/infinitely knowing). The logical, often expressed as "the inconsistent tried" (after Mackie) can be proposed as follows: An omnibenevolent would not want us to suffer (i.e. through evil) An omnipotent would be capable of stopping our suffering (i.e. removing evil from the world)An omniscient being would know how to stop our suffering (i.e. removing evil from the world)Therefore, an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being would not allow for suffering to exist. Suffering does existTherefore such a being does not exist. The evidential problem of evil, by contrast, seeks to disprove the existence of God by appeal to the amount of suffering that exists in the world, often pointing to the existence of gratuitous suffering and evil that exists (i.e. suffering and evil that appear excessive, the removal of which would not compromise net good or happiness in the world). The argument suggests that there exist instances of intense suffering that a being such as God would have been capable of preventing without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse (with it being assumed that a wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse). Therefore, as such excessive suffering exists, God (in the perfect form) cannot exist. One of the means through which the existence of God is defended against the problem of evil is through theodicies (vindications of God in the wake of the problem of evil). One such theodicy is that given by Irenaeus. Irenaeus refers to the world as a "vale of soul-making", for the manner in which he believes the experience of evil in human lives to be conducive to the development of human souls such that they are fit for heaven. In much the same way that human babies must be weened on milk before moving to solid foods, so too must human souls weather evil and use their free will such that they are prepared for heaven. On Irenaeus' account, the world is the best of all possible worlds because it allows humans to fully develop, and creation is furthermore seen as incomplete, as humans are not yet fully developed. This theodicy is often used in conjunction with John Hick's notion of "epistemic distance", whereby God makes leaves his existence open to argument (for if his existence was immediately apparent then we would not have the free will to choose to believe in him); therefore, God allows us to experience evil as a means through which to develop our souls, and similarly allows us to exercise our free will to do act accordingly, and to furthermore choose to come into a relationship with him. Therefore, God allows evil to exist such that it aids in the development of human souls.