Comparison Of Dialogue On Good, Evil, And The Existence Of God

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In John Perry’s Dialogue on Good, Evil, and the Existence of God, the characters Sam Miller and Gretchen Weirob debate the problem of evil and God’s existence. Miller attempts to convince Weirob that God’s existence is consistent with the existence of evil by using the principle of the free will theodicy. A free will theodicy is a response to the Argument from Evil, in which the Argument holds that God does not exist because evil exists in the world, and if evil exists in the world, then God does not exist. The theist’s and Miller’s response is a free will theodicy which argues that a world with freedom of choice, or free will, is better than a world without free will. In creating a world with free choice, the risk of evil is apparent because God’s creatures exercise their free will. Thus, God created a world that contains both free will and evil because God’s creatures exercise their free will, which results in both goodness and evil.…show more content…
The first objection asks if it is possible that God could create a world a populated by free creatures who always freely choose the good. If this world were possible, then the free will theodicy claim of God’s creatures having free will would be false, since free will entails the unconstrained ability to choose between different paths of action. Without free will, the free will theodicy would be questioned. The theodicy claims that God thinks the goodness of free will is greater than evil that may result from free will. The free will theodicy attempts to explain that there is a good reason that there is evil in the world. Thus, Weirob’s objection of the possibility of a world which free creatures always freely choose the good would pose a problem to the free will

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