John L. Mackie’s development of the logical problem of evil

     John L Mackie was an Australian philosopher who developed the inconsistent triad 1. God is omnipotent 2. God is omnibenevolent 3. evil exists Mackie pointed out it is logically inconsistent for these three statements to exist simultaneously. this is because if God were omnipotent he would have the power to remove evil as his omnipotence means he is capable of any feet. if he was omnibenevolent then he in his lovingkindness towards his creation would want to remove evil so that creation did not suffer. the idea that any omnibenevolent being would deliberately tolerate is horrendous and is a very anathema to the very idea of omnibenevolence. The existence of evil is so tangible in its effects and scope that any denial of its existence would be nonsensical. thus it is not possible for all the characteristics to exist at the same time.

   An alternative solution is removing one of three points in the inconsistent triad, for example; if omnipotence is removed then we can understand why evil exists, because whilst God is loving his creation and wants to prevent evil, he does not have the power to do so.this solution echoes the stance taken by process theologians such as whitehead, who claimed that God was part of the universe and responsible for starting off the evolutionary process that le to humanity, however such a God as part of the universe did not have sufficient power to remove evil. process theologians regard God as ' the fellow sufferer who understands'

However, this does not satisfy the vast majority of religious believers that believe God was responsible for creating everything in the universe ex-nihilo and is therefore greater than all his exist in the universe.

Some suggest…