Augustine with respect to evil.
In the world we live in, both today and in years past, humans have been faced with many decisions between doing what is considered "right"� and "wrong"�. Many times the opportunity to act in an "evil"� way will arise and it is often a struggle to make the "right"� choice in action. The problem of evil is often faced when looking at religion, posing the question, "Can there be evil in a world created by an all good, all powerful God?"� How are we to believe that God is all knowing and all-powerful while so much evil exists in the world surrounding us? If God is all knowing, She must be aware of all the evils of the world; if God is all powerful She must have the ability to put an end to the evil doing; and if God is all good then She must want to eliminate or at least prevent these evils from occurring.
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Sendan Kendatsuba
Conscience and lawIt would seem then, with all of this evil, either God does not truly exist or that She is not as knowing and powerful and many believe Her to be.
St. Augustine tries to clarify how evil and God can reasonably coexist. It is his beliefs that if God did not intend for evil to exist then She would, and could, prevent its subsistence. In view of free will however, it would seem that even an all powerful God would have the ability to stop all the evil in the world while still allowing freedom. Human beings do however posses free will and therefore have the opportunity to chose between good and evil and, are consequently responsible for their actions.
It has been said that God could have created a world in which there was no evil; a...