Definition of Evil and God's Nature

A broad concept of evil defines it as any and all pain and suffering, yet according to John Kemp, evil cannot be correctly understood on "a simple hedonic scale on which pleasure appears as a plus, and pain as a minus." According to the National Institute of Medicine, pain is essential to survival: "Without pain, the world would be an impossibly dangerous place." Marcus Singer says that a usable definition of evil must be based on the knowledge that: "If something is really evil, it can't be necessary, and if it is really necessary, it can't be evil."

The narrow concept of evil involves moral condemnation, and is applicable only to moral agents capable of making independent decisions, and their actions. Philosopher Eve Gerrard suggests that evil does not describe ordinary wrongdoing, and that "there is a qualitative and not merely a quantitative difference between evil acts and other wrongful ones; evil acts are not just very bad or wrongful acts, but rather ones possessing some specially horrific quality." Calder argues that evil must involve the attempt or desire to inflict significant harm on the victim without moral justification.

Evil takes on different meanings when seen from the perspective of different belief systems, and while evil can be viewed in religious terms, it can also be understood in natural or secular terms, such as social vice, egoism, criminality, and sociopathology. John Kikes writes that an action is evil if: "(1) it causes grievous harm to (2) innocent victims, and it is (3) deliberate, (4) malevolently motivated, and (5) morally unjustifiable."

Omniscience is "maximal knowledge." According to Edward Wierenga, a classics scholar and doctor of philosophy and religion at the University of Massachusetts, maximal is not unlimited, but limited to "God knowing what is knowable." This is the most widely accepted view of omniscience among scholars of the twenty-first century, and is what William Hasker calls freewill theism. Within this view, future events that depend upon choices made by individuals with freewill are unknowable until they occur.

Omnipotence is maximal power to bring about events within the limits of possibility, but again maximal is not unlimited. According to the philosophers Hoofman and Rosenkrantz: "An omnipotent agent is not required to bring about an impossible state of affairs... maximal power has logical and temporal limitations, including the limitation that an omnipotent agent cannot bring about, i.e., cause, another agent's free decision."

Omnibenovelence sees God as all loving. If God is omnibenovelent, he acts according to what is best, but if there is no best available, God attempts, if possible, to bring about state of affairs that are creatable and are optimal within the limits of physical reality.

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