Create A Metaphysical Argument: The Concept Of Good And Evil (Term Paper Sample)

Tamaray, Jaeger Dwayne G.
Philo 130
“Good and Evil”
Introduction
“God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exist” (Mackie, 1955). These are three propositions that have clear contradictions (Mackie, 1955) and it is claimed that Evil and God are two realities that could not simultaneously exist (Augustine, 2016).
To begin, we must first define Evil. “Evil is whatever humans dislike, whatever makes them unhappy or dissatisfied” (Augustine, 2016) or in a more comprehensive manner, there are two adequate explanations regarding the concept of evil; first is the “Natural Evil”, which are bad effects that does not result from the intention or actions of moral agents; second is the “Moral Evil”, which does result from the intentions or actions of moral agents (Calder, 2013). The existence of Evil alone can already debunk the concept of God as All-good. Good on the other hand is anything that came from the goodness of God, which makes the human population, as a whole, happy (Mendoza, 2016). So how come that these two opposite realities are able to exist simultaneously?
As an All-good being, it can be automatically assumed that God would not create evil because it would be against his nature as evil contradicts his Omni benevolence as much as his omnipotence.
In a discussion in a class of Professor Bumatay, he discussed that humans have already a concept or an idea to distinguish what is good. He gave an example of helping because of poverty where helping is the good and poverty is the evil. In this example, he explained that we could still do good (help) without the existence of evil (poverty) in a way that we can still help if no one needs it and because of this, it came to me that “no, we can never have good without an evil.” That is why in this paper, I would argue that “evil”, as explained above, was made to exist for us to explain the concept of “good”, which is said to be from God, and distinguish it from just an average thing or phenomenon.
Today, we normally explain the concept of good through giving examples of evil and differentiating the two concepts. This will be explained and used later in this paper. After which, good will be explained thoroughly and will be differentiated from just a normal event/thing/being. Then provide the reason for the existence of evil and how it is related to explaining the concept of good.
The Concept of “Good” and “Evil”
There are a lot of explanations and definitions when it comes to explaining the concept “good.” In the modern American dictionary, the word good is defined in a lot of ways. For instance, a restaurant is good when it has qualities that exceed the standards of a typical restaurant; in this case the word good is an adjective that pertains to the qualitative standard of the restaurant. But this is not the type of good that we are going to discuss in this paper. The good that we will discuss is the good that came from the omnibenevolent being, which is God.
Good, in this case, is explained as anything that has been created by the goodness of God. According to Maimonides and other philosophers, God created everything ex nihilo, meaning God created the universe out of nothing (Seeskin, 2005). In this particular case, God stands as a necessary being to all; meaning there cannot be anything existing if God didn’t exist at all. God is explained to be the absolute first and is eternal; He can neither have a beginning nor an end. The universe’ existence is contingent and resides upon the decision of God to create it or not. But with the goodness of God, He willed the creation of the universe, which is for the benefit of mankind (Seeskin, 2005). God was never forced nor obliged to create the universe because if so, he would’ve have just been a puppet machine designed to create a specific greatness – an impotent god not being able to do what he wants. On the contrary, God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. Through this, we can assume that He wanted to create everything with the inclusion of His goodness and, therefore, everything that we know now came from God and are all good. Or is it?
However one major contradiction to the benevolence of God is the presence or the existence of evil. Evil is explained as whatever that makes us unhappy or something that we dislike. And this is true because by definition, evil is something that is profoundly immoral, wicked, or unpleasant for mankind as a whole. For instance, you killed a person because he owed you money that he cannot pay that you cannot afford to live without. Killing is of course written as a sin in the Ten Commandments, and a sin is also a form of evil. Going back to you killing, you have made something very unpleasant to the person and those who are emotionally connected to that person. Not only that, you have also done a wicked and obviously an immoral thing, it is killing, there is nothing much to be explained regardless of the situation, it is killing.
There are two types of evil, first is the “Natural Evil.” Natural evil is something that is not a result of mankind. One example is natural calamities. We cannot control the atmosphere of the earth; we can only hope to prepare to face its changes. We all know what happens after these calamities; after effects such as death, destruction, and deprivation, which obviously causes mankind to be unhappy and naturally we dislike such events.
The second type of evil is the “Moral Evil.” This type of evil on the other hand is the effect of the actions of moral agents. An example for this was given before, killing, but the perfect example for this is corruption. Corruption is done by people who want more than what is available. Obviously this is automatically pointed out as a form of evil because it takes all the benefits that a man can get as a result of his hard work; livelihood, nutrition, and all his needs.
The existence of this reality having evil debunks the existence of God because it nullifies the claim that God is omnibenevolent and if He would want this world to be all good He would have just used His omnipotence to permanently eradicate evil from this universe.
How do we know what is considered as Good?
After explaining the basic concept of good, how do we actually know what is good? In this case, we must first put ourselves in a reality, which there is no evil. Now this may sound pleasing but this kind of reality would actually be a cold reality, only for those who whose jobs pay for wiping out evil.
If there were no evil such as pain, poverty, corruption, catastrophes, and such or even failure perhaps, it would appear as if God created us for the benefit of us rather, it would appear as if God created us how He wanted to create us, making Him less benevolent. This would be one of the outcomes that we have in our knowledge today if there were no evil. Is this still looking good? Perhaps it would benefit some but not all. For an instance imagine yourself living everyday and everything happens all the time; everyone wins the lotto, everyone has his or her own car, business, house, preferred partner, I mean everything would appear equal and typical. There would be no actually point of searching for jobs because you were automatically handed with everything you need and want because there is no evil to give you the statement, “work hard for what you need” and hard work is something that mankind dislikes to do themselves.
Without evil, people would be contented and might have not died, and we can also equate this to all races and creatures that have become extinct. We would have never have evolved because we would have never needed to adapt to the harsh environment, evil, that our world have given us. We would never have been able to do what we want to do since everything is given to us already. For instance a person wants to be an owner of a company but he cannot have more social power over people since it would have resulted to inequality, which we all know humans dislike.
If this had happened, everything would become typical or normal as if everything is ordinary. To explain normal, we will us its linguistic definition. The term “normal” is a homological word, meaning it literally explains itself. For example the word “unhyphenated”, the word already explains itself. The term normal is pretty much the same but we are using explanations in a form of some natural property like ordinary, typical, or common; rather, we want to explain the concept of normal as something that is neither good nor evil. It is not evil to live and have everything that you want but is eating the same amount and type of food, at the same time, and in the same manner still considered as good? Somehow, it is similar to a combined exaggeration of equity and equality; and the non-existence of our free will
We often mistakenly explain “good” as kindness, helping, moral virtues, or some similar synonyms to both “good” and its definitions; this is called the “Naturalistic Fallacy.” According to G.E. Moore, we should not try to define the concept “good” in terms of a natural property (Tanner, 2006). That is the reason why we explain “good” as everything that God created. This brings us back to our previous question, did God only create good? If so, why does evil exist throughout?
The famous answer to this question is free will. It is once said that God gave free will to people as a good from Him, it allows mankind to do what they want and think for their own. People wanted more than what they have that they used their free will to do evil and this provides answer to the question why does evil exist? Evil is the creation of mankind. I respectfull...