Reflections on the Problem of Evil

Evil is defined in Islamic Philosophy as the negation or the absence of Good, and since good is synonymous with existence, and the contrary of existence is given as non-existence, therefore evil would be equivalent to non-existence, and absolute-evil would be identical to absolute non-existence ; now all contingent/possible things that can be conceived, fall in either one of the following four categories : 1) purely-good, 2) primarily or predominantly good, 3) primarily or predominantly evil and 4) purely-evil ; things that are purely-good are completely free from corruption and evil, and things that are purely-evil are pure-nothingness and hence cannot exist, whereas things that are primarily evil also cannot exist because the greater evil in them overcomes the lesser good ; it means that things that are evil or that are said to be evil are those that fall under category (2) and are primarily or predominantly good and evil only accidentally, such as the existence of the entire physical cosmos ; these things are such that the greater good that they produce would not emanate from their existence unless a certain measure of evil also emanates from them, and therefore to expect these things to exist without that lesser evil emanating from them is equivalent to demanding these things to be other than what they are, which is impossible, because nothing can be other than itself as that implies a conjunction of contraries. The non-creation of things that are primarily-good, in order to avoid the lesser evil that they produce, would have resulted in the non-production of the greater good, and the foregoing of the greater good to avoid a lesser evil is equivalent to producing greater-evil, therefore the creation of such things was better and more wise than their non-creation, in fact their non-creation would have been contrary to the benevolence and justice of God since that would have involved sacrificing a greater good for the avoidance of a lesser evil. Moreover to ask or expect the physical world to be absolutely free from all evil is tantamount to demanding the world to be something other than itself, which is impossible, since if the world were to be absolutely free from evil it would not be what it is, but be something else such as paradise ; such a wish is similar to asking for the sum of the angles of a triangle which is 180 degrees to be, equal to the sum of the angles of a square which is 360 degrees, without the triangle becoming a square, which is absurd, because a triangle is a triangle precisely due to the sum of its angles being 180 degrees and if this sum were to be 360 degrees then it would not be a triangle but would be a square ; similarly to ask the world to be free from all evil is to ask the world to be something other than itself.

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