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Example research essay topic: Problem Of Evil Moral Evil - 2,266 words

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... own. But importantly, an omniscient being does not know what it's like to be human, and does not know feelings like hope and fear. God is supposed to be incorporeal, bodiless. A consciousness, if you will. So obviously, God can be neither male or female, because to be either requires a body, which God has no use for.

In summary, God is incorporeal, omniscient and omnipotent. Since the development of the theory of evolution, the Teleological Argument has lost some of the persuasive force that it once enjoyed. So whether the Darwinian theory of natural selection is true or false, it does stand in competition with the intelligent designer hypotheses as a possible explanation for why nature is so abundant with organisms so strangely fitted to their survival. The theory of biological evolution developed by Charles Darwin and others, states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce, and seeks to explain the origin, diversity and complexity of life.

Darwin says that in biology there's random variation, mutations if you will, sexual selection and regrouping, selective retention; and all this feeds the theory that those who are fit for their environments will survive. Survival of the fit. Small changes over a long period of time can accumulate, resulting in complex but useful variation. Hence, says Darwin, 'as more individuals are produced than can possible survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existance'.

It's this struggle that's responsible for any variation, however small, that might better a species' welfare. It would in fact be unusual if throughout time, no variations had turned out to be useful. A good example of useful variation, is the giraffe. Consider that the giraffe didn't always have a long neck, because they didn't need one. It isn't hard to see that when it did become necessary to reach food higher up in the trees, the ones with the longest necks would have the greatest chance of survival. From the strong principle of inheritance these slightly longer necked giraffes would tend to produce similar offspring, and since it was these slightly longer necked giraffes that were more likely to survive, it was very likely that a slightly longer necked giraffe would mate with one like it, and so on, and so on.

Darwin compares 'beings of the same class' to a big tree. The new buds and twigs represent the existing species, and at each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to beach out on all sides, to cover and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, the same way that species have tried to overmaster other species in the 'great battle for life'. Of the many twigs that flourished when the tree was nothing more than a bush, only a few have grown into branches; much like the species which lived thousands and thousands of years ago, very few have living varied descendents. Many limbs and branches have rotted and fallen off, which represent the species that just couldn't hack it. Dawkins explains the origin of like this way: 4 thousand million years ago the seas were nothing but Cambell's 'primeval soup'.

After the organic structures in the soup (the beef chunks) became locally concentrated, energy from the sun made them combine into larger molecules. At some point a beef chunk was formed by accident. For our purposes we " ll call him Stan, the lone replicator beef chunk. He might not have been the biggest or tastiest beef chunk, but he had the crazy property of being able to create copies of himself. However unlikely it seems, consider that over the course of hundreds of millions of years lots of un probable things can and will occur.

So this lone beef chunk populated the seas with chunks in his likeness, but he was not a perfect beef chunk, he did occasionally make mistakes. Erratic copying of beef chunks can give rise to improvement, and it was vital to the evolution of beef chunks that some became tastier over time. It is these mistakes that made evolution of high grade beef possible. As miscopying's were made, the soup became stew, filled by several varying grades of beef chunks, all dependents of Stan, the lone beef chunk. Some grades would become more prominent in the beef comunity, probably because some grades of beef chunks replicated at a faster rate than others.

Another characteristic to be considered is accuracy of replication. Some grades of beef chunks were probably more accurate, took their jobs more seriously than others. This will also affect the varying population of beef chunks in the primeval stew. This stew must have been ultimately successful in it's concocting, it must have been populated by good tasty beef chunks, either in that they were chop full of preservatives, and lasted a long time, or that they replicated quickly, or accurately. It was bound to happen: the stew was becoming thick. This particular primeval stew was not capable of supporting an infinite number of beef chunks.

After all, a can only holds 12 ounces. We must also consider, that for a beef chunk to be good and healthy, it must have it's own good share of broth, which is rich in vitamins and minerals necessary to create replicas; and broth is certainly finite. So the war between the chunks began. It proved to be a matter of survival of the fittest, only the high grade chunks would prevail. As Cambell's upped it's standards, the low grade chunks would ultimately lose. It is then that chunks began to use battle strategies, the high grade chunks began building vegetables to protect them, first peas, and then as times got tougher, they needed bigger vegetables, like carrots and potatoes.

So what has become of this primeval stew? It's in your stomach and in mine, and they created us. They have come along way, those beef chunks. So next time you ponder your current state of being, just think of Stan. If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, then evil must not exist apart from God. For it to do so under those criterion would be impossible.

This leads you to question the true power of God, and the true good of God. If God is all good, and has the power to stop evil and doesn't, then God must have a slightly nasty disposition, and therefore is not all good. If God wishes to stop evil and can't, then God is not omnipotent: He is limited. If God is perfect, than why does he let this happen? At this angle, it seems foolish that we should worship the being that seemingly subjects us to such pain and anguish, doesn't it? You might picture being 7 in a classroom, and the boy who sits behind you pulls your hair everyday and makes you cry.

The teacher knows he does it, and is within her power to stop it one way or another, but chooses to do nothing. In this scenario you'd imagine that you would grow to hate the boy and hate the teacher as well. So why then, in this similar situation do we not condemn God for his passive nature with all this evil going on? Theists have the burden of explaining how a being that is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good can allow evil to exist, and why a perfect being does or might allow horrible evils to exist in our world.

The problem of evil lies in its origin: Does evil come from God? In spite of God? Using theodicy to define evil is basically an attempt to affirm God's omnipotence and His love for humans, with the existence of evil and without contradiction. Depending on your religious background, the weight each of these options carry may vary greatly.

A theist might argue that evil isn't a problem of coherence at all, for it to be a problem, you must question Gods' power, character, and / or His existence. A theist may also say that evil is a practical truth, as it will require us the courage to forgive and to heal, or they might also hold the belief that to obtain moral perfection, we must face challenges and overcome them. Other appeals often made by theists to explain evil might be: a sin is punished with suffering; having free will enables us to make choices, either for good or for evil. Moral evil is simply an intentional wrong action, where humans or animals suffer. It seems to have a deep root in human existence, it's probably how, over the years we " ve coined the phrase, 'that's life. ' The question doesn't often come up of why this is. It's all we know.

I'm not suggesting that life is merely one long string of time and pain, because I think when asked the question, most people would say that if they had to choose between grief and nothing, they'd choose grief. It's part of life. When identifying the magnitude of moral evil, such things come to mind as the Holocaust, The Oklahoma City bombing, events where the disgusting loss of life can only be blamed on moral evil, namely moral evil on a grand scale. One struggles to explain how men of seemingly sound mind and body would intentionally commit these types of evil, when there is clearly so much evil in the world already.

The distribution of Moral evil is perhaps the most frustrating aspect, because too often innocent people and animals are the victims of crime and injustice. Perhaps it would seem less of an injustice if moral evil was distributed among those who committed the evil. Innocent little old ladies are often the targets of handbag theft, and why does this happen? Why does no one steal the purses of the crack whores? Innocent little ants are often the victims of freak toddler-shoe homicides; and is that right? Wouldn't it be fair then, to turn the shoe to communists?

After all, everyone knows communists are evil, why does no one step on them? Dostoevsky hits a nerve when he raises the question of the suffering of children. What reason could anyone possibly find that a child should be subjected to injustice? One question will continue to surface, WHY? Whatever the reason, moral evil is seldom distributed how we would like, and it's a shame, because everyone feels compassion for little old ladies and innocent ants.

Natural evil on the other hand, is more random. You would be hard pressed to convict anyone for committing hurricane freud, or tornado homicide. Sometimes referred to as 'acts of God, ' these are the kinds of evil that cannot be blamed on humanity. Not to be outdone by moral evil however, the magnitude of natural evil seems to be responsible for an equally disgusting loss of human and animal life. Disease, famine, and fire cause death and misery for millions of lives. Although the distribution of physical evil can't be assigned a pattern, it still seems as though the victims are never what we would label as 'deserving' of natural evil.

Perhaps it's human nature to feel compassion for victims of any kind of evil because living in an 'imperfect' world we can always identify. It can be said that evil of any variety is almost never regarded by humanity as right and just, unless perhaps it's a situation of incredible irony, where sin is turned to sinner. Unfortunately as we can infer from the general distribution of evil, it almost never happens that way. And I suppose it's not for us to decide, after all is said and done, who should be punished and who should be spared. When you start to look at evil in such a broad and general light, it begins to lose it's meaning, I think.

For evil to be understood I think it's best studied one heart at a time, because that's where it strikes it's chord. That's where it begins. It will seem, momentarily, that the materialist has made a momentous point in the Problem of Evil. How can a perfect God create an imperfect world? How can the teacher continue to let that obnoxious little boy pull your hair and make you cry? Hick answers with the Free Will Theodicy.

We decide this: human beings are created at an epistemic distance from God, meaning, we " re on a different level of consciousness than God - and we decide that it needs to be this way in order to come about faith freely and in one's own time. At the same time we were created as immature and morally imperfect beings, in order to attain through freedom the most valuable quality of goodness. It is seemingly Gods purpose to grow perfect human persons, rather than create them. We suppose an omnipotent God could have created us perfect if he chose to, but much like vitamin supplements, they do the job but it's certainly not the best way to get them.

Freely chosen virtues are more valuable than angelic virtues. Moral evil serves the purpose of challenging our faith and forcing us to face our fears. This is ultimately how one gets to heaven. We are given the freedom to make immoral or moral decisions, and having that choice allows us to choose the road we wish to walk upon.

Human persons will become morally and spiritually perfect through moral choice, and this mixed world is the best possible world, evil is necessary for...


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Research essay sample on Problem Of Evil Moral Evil

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