Is God The Supreme Being?
By: Miguel, Dionne
PHI 101
To explain the concept of the problem of evil can be explained very quickly
and efficiently to make it very understandable for even the slightest of minds. Theists
have created the term “ problem of evil” for those who question God's ableness.
People such as Gottfried Leibniz claim that “ god must have made the best possible
universe” ( Stephen Stich; Tom Donaldson, 62) are those people who put their complete
belief in god and created that word against those people who question him.
The first person who first thought that god is not almighty was Voltaire. I was
intrigued and took sides with Voltaire on thinking that we do not live in the perfect
universe, as Sir Leibniz has claimed we do. I believe that Voltaire was a logical man
who devoted his life to the name of science. He used rational points of view of
physical proof that questioned the god’s power, with examples of the holocaust, war,
and floods to back his reasoning. All these examples, in my eyes, have been caused
by people due to humans having free will. Since we ultimately have free will, we can
do anything we want without sin since god intended for us to have free will. Since
humans are a very destructive species, we are bound to cause chaos and use the
excuse of “ god” to forgive their actions, such as war and the Holocaust. This
concept of free will is, unfortunately, also backed up by what is happening in the
world today. The war between the Gaza Strip and Israel is also a war based on
religion. With all that is happening around the globe, theists also use skeptical
theism as an excuse, in my opinion, to defend god’s name and his absence within
that problem.
I am pretty much questioning the concept of skeptical theism in general.
Skeptical theism is starting to bring the world's destiny into play as if it were written in
stone by god. This concept asks the same question: do we have complete control of
what we do and our path, or is it already written in stone, and we do not know it? The
quote, “ if god was right not to prevent the holocaust, does this mean the holocaust
was part of some divine plan?” ( Stephen Stich; Tom Donaldson, 71) has me very
uncomfortable. Bringing into the facts of our past, including our ancestors, the Jews
were brought to this world born to war and were framed for killing Jesus Christ. Even
to the extent of medieval times, pogroms were used to kill mass groups of Jews in an
organized way. The Jews were a suffering people with no place to call their own. Is
this fair for them? What would happen if, on the contrary, it were the Christians
instead of the Jews? I feel as though they would beg for God's help, even though it
would bring the reductio concept. God would not help them because, in place, it was
the Christians that god had that planned for the ultimate plan for our planet.
