Introduction

Once upon a time, there was a faithful man who was living at the outskirt of the city with his only son and wife, they were worshipping God almighty all the time. His name was Abdullah. All what he owned in this life was a white horse. One day, he got up in the morning and he went to feed his horse as usual, but his horse was gone, it was not there. His friends came to comfort him saying, poor Abdullah that is what your God whom you worship day and night did to you, he took your only horse; he answered; my lord will never desert me. A week later, the horse returned and brought with him a whole herd of wild horses. Abdullah wealth increased. The following day, his son broke his leg when he was trying to ride one of the wild horses. His friends again said, your lord did not save your son from the wild horse, Abdullah replied, my lord would never desert me. The following day, the army came to draft forcibly all young men in the village to serve in the army, but they could not draft Abdullah because he had a broken leg...the story goes on and on.

Sometime we encounter incidents in our life, but we do not know if it is good or bad, it depends on how you look at it, it depends in your faith in God almighty.

Today, I am going to discuss the following points

1. Expressions we need to know.
2. The problem of evil.
   1. Natural evil
   2. Moral evil
   3. The greater good defense theory.
3. The nature of God
4. What do they say about God?

Relevance; I choose this topic because it is the reason the earth was created; it is our very essence of existence.

Expression we need to know

Before we start our topic, we have to know and familiarize ourselves with certain terms.

Evidentialism: is the claim that belief in God must be supported by evidence.

Nonevidentialism: the claim that it is not rationally required to have objective rational evidence for our basic faith.

Atheism: the disbelief in God

Theism: the belief in God

Monotheism: the belief in one God.

Polytheism: the belief in many gods like the Hindus religion

Agnosticism: is the claim of not being sure if God exists or not.

Natural theology: is the project that attempt to provide proofs for the existence of God based on reason and experience.

Ontological argument: the argument for god’s existence.

Fideism: the claim that religious belief must be based on faith alone, and can not be justified by appeal to either objective or subjective reasons.

The problem of Evil

The problem of evil is defined as the difficulty of reconciling the existence of suffering and other evils in the world with the existence of God. There are two kind of evil;

• Moral evil is defined as bad actions and their unfortunate results for which humans or other moral agents are morally responsible like lying, theft, murder, and rape.
• Natural evil is defined as the suffering to humans and animals resulting from natural causes such as genetic defects, diseases, earthquakes, and tornadoes.

The problem of evil was given literary expression by the 20th century French novelist, Albert Camus in his novel "the plague", camus tells the story of the town of Oran which was struck by a plague and its people were dying slow and painful death.

The problem of evil can be reviewed in two prepositions;

·        God is perfect good; he is all knowing, and all powerful.

·        Evil exist.

The atheists would say if there is a God and he is perfectly good, all knowing and all powerful, then evil should not exist, and God should not have created it. My answer is who are we, finite weak creatures to tell God what to do, and what not to do???

If we look at the very essence of life, at its very primitive form; cell and molecules, we find positive and negative expressed every where; ex. Neutron and electron. Without the positive and negative elements, life would cease to exist, or another form of life would exist, which we know nothing about. The same thing with God and Satan, God is the positive force, and Satan is the negative force which eventually will be destroyed and obliterated from the universe. That is the whole purpose of life; it is a test, after it is the judgment and either eternal heaven in the kingdom of God or eternal hellfire with Satan and the evil people.

The greater good defense theory;

There are few philosophical theories discuss the reason of evil creation. One of them is the greater good defense theory. The theists believe that some evil has to exist in life because it is necessary for the achievement of greater good. For example when you take your baby for vaccination, he feels great pain, yet this pain is the only way for a healthier future for the baby; the same thing with the natural evil that befalls us as earthquakes and volcanoes. They look horrible, but it is the only way to cleanse the earth, and for greater holy wisdom which we can not comprehend at the moment, as there is a big gap between God’s wisdom and ours. Therefore we can not neither comprehend nor explain the existence of evil nor the creation of Satan.

Among the philosophers who support this idea is John Hick’s, who was educated at Edinburgh, oxford, and Cambridge university, later, he became a professor of religion at Claremont graduate school.

My own perspective on evil is that it is like spices, we need a very little amount of it to spice the food and make it edible with a special aroma, but too much of it, will spoil the food, making it inedible.

The nature of God;

I will discuss the nature of God in Islam, Christianity and Judaism, as the three religions are from the same source. They are versions of monotheism. They are upgraded just like the different versions of windows.

Judaism is like Windows 95, almost obsolete, very few people still use it.

Christianity is windows ME, 2000, and NT, which is a much better version of Windows 95.

Islam is windows XP which is the most powerful system of the windows versions. It is the most secured the fastest, the best, and the most expensive of the three.

In the three religion, the nature of God is very similar, he is one, All-knowing, All-powerful, Almighty, unseen, unimagined in any physical form, as Jesus said ; God is spirit and those who worship him, must worship him in the spirit and in the truth. He can see everything and everyone but none nor nothing can see him. As Jesus said; no one has seen God. In the holy Qura’n, it says; he can see everything and everyone, but none can see him.

In the three religions, he is the almighty, the all powerful, unseen, , all knowing, he is the beginning and the end. He none can see him, but he can see everyone and everything. He is spirit; he is the originator and the creator. He is the source of love, mercy, kindness, and compassion. He is the absolute positive force in the universe, he says be and it is. You know God through his attributes and through your spirit. You can commu8nicate with h9m when you are elevated spiritually and you get to the level of XP. He is the one who delivered the Israelites and saved Jesus Christ from his enemies, he is the one who revealed the holy Quran to Prophet Mohammad. To whom, we all will go back. He is the judge. He is the one who created life and death. He is the one who would condemn the unbelievers in the day of judgment.

He is Allah, Adonai, Jehovah, Ya-Howa, or the father. The three religions agree that one God created the world, maintains and sustains it; this idea is named monotheism or the belief in one God.

What do they say about God??

Darwin saw his discoveries in Galapagos islands confirming divine design , or the universe must be the work of God.

The famous astronomer Frod Hoyle, who was an atheist, After he saw the nuclear structure of carbon and oxygen which is critical to the existence of life , he said ; the order of the universe is not an accident but it is a put up job.

The famous British mathematical Paul Davies said that it is hard to imagine that the thousands of carefully arranged atoms in the DNA molecules could have come about randomly

Cleanthes is a natural theologian who said, the magnificent mechanism of the universe must be the result of a very great intelligent designer.