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

J.L. Mackies ugliness and OmnipotenceThe philosopher J.L. Mackie wrote a very convincing flip-flop on the task of diabolical called Evil and Omnipotence, in which he attempts to show that unitary of the following premises must be false in grade 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 whos goal is to prove the non- institution of God. In addition to Mackies three chief(prenominal) premises he also introduces just about quasi-logical rules that give further turn out to his argument. First he presumes that a keen thing will steal evil to the extent that it mickle and second, that omnipotence has no limits. From these two additional premises, it can be concluded that a completely sincere and omnipotent organism will eliminate all possible evil. After establishing these added premises Mackie continues with his piece to list and negate several theistic response s to the argument.A common remonstration to the problem of evil is to claim that good and evil are twain requisite for each other to exist. They must be looked at as counterparts. A nonher way of putting it is that without experiencing evil, we couldnt possibly recognize or know what is good. Evil must exist in dictate for good to exist in the aforementioned(prenominal) 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 ample and polished) because up and down are not qualities. It wouldnt make horse 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 wouldnt seem right to say that very little evil exists in the world.A second and stronger objection to Mackies version of the problem of evil is explained to us using the terms 1st and second order goods and evils. 1st order goods/evils are purely physical. Examples are pleasure and botheration, pleasure and misery. It is claimed by many theists that 1st order evils such as pain and suffering are necessary for 2nd order goods like fortitude and charity. However there exists what Mackie calls a fatal objection to this claim and that is that on with 2nd order goods there must also exist 2nd order evil... ...Contingency arguing that whether a dependent upon(p) 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 human beings as a whole is a contingent be.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 bei ng. (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 brute fact, or that it is possible for the existence of something to be explained by nothing. Also one can easily reject the beginning(a) premise due to the fallacy of composition. Just because all the parts of something salute a certain quality doesnt 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.