PHIL 201 Response Essay: The Problem of Evil (Liberty University)

Write an essay of at least 1,000 words that answers the assigned questions on the problem of evil. Each individual answer must reach a minimum of 200 words. Use current MLA, APA, or Turabian format and submit the essay through the Liberty University LMS by the end of Module/Week 5.

Assessment Context

Liberty University runs PHIL 201 Philosophy and Contemporary Ideas as a foundational course in the general education core and in several online degree pathways. The course surveys major positions and figures in philosophy and examines the cultural worldviews that follow from them, with specific attention to theism, naturalism, and humanism. The Response Essay sits inside the philosophy of religion unit, where students read short selections on the problem of evil and then write a structured response. The assignment is not a research paper. It is a response essay, which means the instructor supplies questions and the student answers them in essay form rather than in numbered fragments. The essay must reach at least 1,000 words, and each answer within the essay must reach at least 200 words. Lengthy block quotations do not count toward the minimum. Outside research is encouraged but not required. The submission closes at the end of Module/Week 5. Liberty accepts MLA, APA, or Turabian, and students should pick one style and apply it consistently rather than mixing citation formats.

Learning Outcomes

Completing this response essay allows students to:

• State the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil in precise terms, distinguishing the two rather than treating them as one argument.
• Explain at least one classical theistic response to the problem, such as the free will defense or a soul-making theodicy, without caricaturing it.
• Evaluate the strength of that response against the specific version of the problem it claims to answer.
• Write a sustained philosophical argument in essay form, with a thesis, supporting reasoning, and a conclusion that follows from the premises.
• Apply a single citation style consistently and cite primary philosophical sources accurately.

Task Instructions

Read the assigned selections on the problem of evil before drafting. Answer the questions below in a single continuous essay. Do not paste the questions into the document and answer them one by one as a list. Weave the answers into an argument that moves from definition to evaluation to conclusion. Each answer must run at least 200 words. The total essay must run at least 1,000 words.

Question 1: Define the Problem

State the logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil. Explain what each argument claims and what each argument requires in order to succeed. Distinguish the two clearly. A response that treats the logical problem as a stronger version of the evidential problem, or the reverse, has not answered the question. Use the readings to support the definitions.

Question 2: Present a Theistic Response

Select one classical theistic response to the problem of evil. The free will defense and the soul-making theodicy are the two most common choices, but a response built on the concept of natural law or on a distinction between moral and natural evil is acceptable if the readings support it. Explain the response in its own terms. State what the response claims about God, about human freedom or human development, and about the nature of evil. Do not weaken the response in order to make it easier to refute.

Question 3: Evaluate the Response

Assess whether the response you presented actually answers the version of the problem you defined in Question 1. A response that answers the logical problem may not answer the evidential problem, and a response that answers the evidential problem may concede more than the logical problem requires. Identify the strongest objection to the response and explain whether the response survives it. This section carries the most analytical weight, so develop the reasoning rather than summarizing what other authors have said.

Marking Criteria

The rubric rewards accurate definition, fair presentation of the theistic response, and independent evaluation. The essay is scored against the course learning outcomes and the general education critical thinking competency.

• Definitional accuracy: The logical and evidential problems are stated correctly and distinguished from each other. The essay does not conflate them.
• Fair presentation: The theistic response is explained in its strongest form, not as a straw position. Key terms (free will, soul-making, moral evil, natural evil) are defined where they appear.
• Evaluation quality: The essay identifies a specific objection to the response and argues whether the response survives it. The evaluation follows from the definitions and the presentation rather than from personal preference.
• Essay structure: The essay has a clear thesis, moves through the questions in a logical order, and reaches a conclusion that the body supports. It is not a list of answers.
• Word count and citation: The total essay meets 1,000 words, each answer meets 200 words, and the citation style (MLA, APA, or Turabian) is applied consistently.

Example Student Response

The logical problem of evil claims that the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God is logically incompatible with the existence of evil. J. L. Mackie formulated the argument in its tightest form: if God is omnipotent, God can prevent evil; if God is omniscient, God knows about evil; if God is morally perfect, God wants to prevent evil. Evil exists. Therefore, a God with all three attributes does not exist (Mackie, 1955). The evidential problem does not claim logical contradiction. It claims that the amount and distribution of evil, particularly seemingly pointless suffering, makes God’s existence improbable rather than impossible. The distinction matters because a response that defeats the logical problem may leave the evidential problem untouched. The free will defense answers the logical problem by arguing that a world with free creatures is better than a world without them, and that God cannot actualize a world in which free creatures always choose good without removing the freedom that makes the world valuable. This response succeeds against Mackie because it shows that omnipotence does not include the power to do logically impossible things, and a world of free creatures who never choose evil may be logically impossible. The response does not answer the evidential problem, because the evidential problem does not deny that free will explains the possibility of evil; it asks why the quantity and distribution of evil are consistent with a good God.

A soul-making theodicy takes a different route. John Hick argued that God permits evil because a world without suffering and danger cannot produce the virtues that make human beings mature moral agents. Courage requires danger, compassion requires suffering, and perseverance requires difficulty (Hick, 1966). A world designed for soul-making is not a world designed for comfort. The strength of this response is that it addresses natural evil as well as moral evil, which the free will defense struggles to explain. The weakness is that it appears to justify suffering that produces no growth, such as the death of a young child or the prolonged suffering of a person with dementia. The evidential problem exploits exactly this weakness. A response that answers the logical problem may still leave the evidential problem standing, and the essay should say so rather than treating the free will defense as a complete solution. I find the free will defense more defensible against the logical problem, but I do not think either response fully answers the evidential problem in its strongest form.

Where the Logical Problem Fails

The free will defense has a specific logical structure that many introductory responses miss. Alvin Plantinga argued that God’s omnipotence does not include the ability to actualize a possible world in which free creatures always choose good, because the actualization of such a world depends on what those creatures freely decide (Plantinga, 1974). This move does not say that evil is good or that God permits evil for a hidden reason. It says that the set of possible worlds containing free creatures and no evil may be empty, and if it is empty, then God cannot actualize one without contradiction. Mackie’s argument assumes that omnipotence can do anything, including the logically impossible, but classical theism has never claimed that. The logical problem therefore fails against a carefully stated free will defense, and most philosophers of religion now treat the logical problem as defeated. The evidential problem remains live, and that is where the essay’s evaluation should concentrate.

What the Rubric Actually Rewards

A common student question concerns whether the essay should defend God or critique the theistic response. The prompt does not require a particular conclusion. It requires a clear argument. A student who concludes that the free will defense fails can score at the highest level if the reasoning is sound and the response is presented fairly. A student who concludes that the response succeeds can also score at the highest level under the same conditions. The rubric penalizes two moves: presenting a caricature of the response and then knocking it down, and asserting a conclusion without tracing the reasoning that supports it. Students who define terms precisely, present the response in its strongest form, and identify a specific objection tend to score well regardless of which side they take. The word minimum exists because these three moves take space. A 200-word answer to the evaluation question is thin; a 400-word answer that develops the objection is stronger.

Conclusion

The Response Essay tests whether a student can do philosophy in writing rather than write about philosophy. Defining the problems clearly, presenting a theistic response without weakening it, and evaluating whether the response answers the version of the problem it targets takes more than summarizing the textbook. The essay should read as an argument, not as a set of answers pasted together. Students who plan the essay around a single thesis about which problem the chosen response actually solves, and which problem it leaves open, produce stronger work than students who treat the three questions as separate mini-essays. The 1,000-word minimum is a floor, not a target; a tight 1,200-word essay with a clear through-line beats a padded 1,500-word essay that repeats the definitions three times.

References

• Hick, J. (1966). Evil and the God of love. Macmillan.
• Mackie, J. L. (1955). Evil and omnipotence. Mind, 64(254), 200–212. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/LXIV.254.200
• Plantinga, A. (1974). God, freedom, and evil. William B. Eerdmans Publishing.
• Tooley, M. (2023). The problem of evil. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/

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PHIL 201 Response Essay: The Problem of Evil

The Problem of Evil and the Free Will Defense

The existence of evil raises a serious challenge to belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good God. The logical problem claims that God and evil cannot coexist; the evidential problem claims that the amount and severity of evil make God’s existence improbable. Plantinga’s free will defense offers a strong reply to the logical problem, but it does not fully answer the evidential problem, particularly where natural evil and apparently pointless suffering are concerned. Therefore, the free will defense succeeds as a defense of logical consistency but remains incomplete as a theodicy.

Defining the Problem of Evil

The logical problem of evil argues that the following claims cannot all be true: God is omnipotent, God is omniscient, God is wholly good, and evil exists. J. L. Mackie presents the argument in its clearest form: if God is omnipotent, God can prevent evil; if God is omniscient, God knows evil exists; if God is wholly good, God wants to prevent evil. Evil exists, so Mackie concludes that such a God does not exist (Mackie, 1955). The argument requires a genuine contradiction. It succeeds only if no possible world contains both an all-powerful, all-good God and evil.

The evidential problem differs in both its claim and its burden of proof. It does not say that God’s existence is logically impossible. Rather, it argues that the scale, intensity, and distribution of suffering provide strong evidence against God’s existence. William Rowe’s version focuses on apparently pointless evil: suffering that serves no discernible greater good and that an omnipotent, good God would have reason to prevent. The evidential argument succeeds if it shows that God’s existence is unlikely given the evil observed in the world, not if it proves that God and evil cannot both exist (Tooley, 2023).

The distinction matters because the two arguments demand different responses. A theist may defeat the logical problem by showing one possible way in which God and evil can coexist. However, that achievement does not settle the evidential problem. The evidential problem asks whether the actual pattern of evil, including extreme and apparently useless suffering, fits what a good God would be expected to permit. A response may therefore explain why evil is possible without explaining why so much evil occurs.

The Free Will Defense

The free will defense responds to the logical problem by appealing to morally significant freedom. It holds that God created human beings with the capacity to choose between good and evil. Genuine freedom requires the real possibility of wrongdoing; a person who could only choose good would not be free in the morally relevant sense. Moral evil, then, results from the misuse of human freedom rather than from God directly causing wrongdoing.

Alvin Plantinga develops this response most carefully. He argues that God’s omnipotence does not include the power to do what is logically impossible. God may be unable to create free creatures who always freely choose good, because their choices would no longer be free if God determined them in advance. Plantinga therefore argues that it is possible that every possible world containing significantly free creatures also contains some moral evil (Plantinga, 1974). The defense does not claim to know why God allowed each particular evil. It claims only that God and evil are logically compatible.

The free will defense rests on several important claims. First, free will is a great good because it makes love, responsibility, moral growth, and authentic relationships possible. Second, God values this good highly enough to accept the risk that free creatures will misuse their freedom. Third, evil is not something God creates as an end in itself; it is a consequence of creaturely freedom. Finally, God’s goodness does not require God to prevent every possible evil if preventing it would remove a greater good.

The defense is strongest when it addresses moral evil, such as murder, cruelty, theft, and oppression. These acts depend on human choices. If human beings can freely choose compassion, justice, and sacrifice, they must also be able to choose selfishness and violence. The free will defense therefore explains why a good God might permit the possibility of wrongdoing without making God responsible for each wrongful decision.

Evaluating the Free Will Defense

The free will defense answers the logical problem effectively. Mackie’s argument assumes that an omnipotent God could create free creatures who never choose evil. Plantinga challenges that assumption. If free choices cannot be controlled without destroying freedom, then God may lack the power to guarantee a world of free creatures without evil. The issue is not whether God can perform a logical contradiction; classical theism has never claimed that God can. The defense shows that the premises of the logical argument do not lead necessarily to atheism.

The response also avoids a common misunderstanding. It does not say that evil is good or that suffering has no moral weight. It says that a world containing free moral agents may be better than a world containing only programmed beings who always do what is right. Freedom carries risk. A world in which people can love, forgive, and act justly is also a world in which they can betray, injure, and exploit others. The free will defense treats that risk as a necessary condition of genuine moral agency.

However, the defense faces a serious objection: natural evil. Earthquakes, diseases, genetic disorders, and natural disasters cause immense suffering without depending on any human choice. A child may die from cancer, or a community may be destroyed by a flood, even when no person freely chooses the event. The free will defense explains evil caused by human decisions, but it does not directly explain suffering caused by natural processes. If God could create free beings without allowing childhood cancer, then the defense has not shown why such suffering exists.

A defender might extend the argument by appealing to natural laws. A stable world requires regular natural processes. Gravity, weather systems, biology, and physical laws make human action and scientific understanding possible, but those same processes can produce disasters and disease. This extension has some force. A world without natural regularity would likely be unpredictable and unsuitable for rational life. Nonetheless, the reply does not explain why the laws produce suffering of such magnitude or why God does not prevent particularly horrific cases.

The stronger objection concerns the evidential problem. Even if the free will defense defeats Mackie’s logical argument, it does not show that the actual amount of evil is justified. The evidential problem asks why God permits suffering that appears to produce no moral growth, protect freedom, or serve any greater good. Examples include prolonged pain in infants, severe dementia, and disasters that kill thousands without obvious moral benefit. The free will defense may show that some evil is compatible with God, but it does not show that every evil, or even most evil, is compatible with a perfectly good God.

Conclusion

The free will defense provides a persuasive response to the logical problem of evil because it identifies a plausible good, morally significant freedom, that may require the possibility of wrongdoing. Plantinga’s argument shows that God’s omnipotence does not include the ability to make free creatures always choose good. For that reason, the existence of moral evil does not logically contradict the existence of an all-powerful, all-good God. However, the defense does not fully answer the evidential problem. Natural evil and apparently pointless suffering remain difficult to explain through human freedom alone. The free will defense therefore succeeds as a defense of God’s logical consistency, but it leaves unresolved the question of whether the actual pattern and extent of evil are consistent with divine goodness.

References

Hick, J. (1966). Evil and the God of love. Macmillan.

Mackie, J. L. (1955). Evil and omnipotence. Mind, 64(254), 200–212. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/LXIV.254.200

Plantinga, A. (1974). God, freedom, and evil. William B. Eerdmans Publishing.

Rowe, W. L. (1979). The problem of evil and some varieties of atheism. American Philosophical Quarterly, 16(4), 335–341.

Tooley, M. (2023). The problem of evil. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/

Wyman, R. (2019). The free will defense and the problem of natural evil. Religious Studies, 55(3), 359–374. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412518000467