Many attempts were made to resolve the problem of god and evil, though many of them failed to succeed, whereas others even denied the existence of the problem. Mackie was always interested in the problem of evil and thus he created his own solutions to main three propositions regarding god. They are the following:
1. God is omnipotent meaning the he is the most powerful
2. God is omniscient meaning that he knows everything
3. God is omni-benevolent meaning he is all-good (Mackie 1955)
Nevertheless, Mackie made an effort to present his point of view regarding the problem. For the first argument Mackie claim that evil evils exists in the world as well good and it means that evil is surely good. But if evil exists for good in the world, it means that God isn’t omnipotent in his position. Thus Mackie assumes that God isn’t able to make good without evil. According to Mackie good and evil are counterpart properties and they are interrelated. It means that they aren’t absolute, but relative and comparative.
For the second argument Mackie assumes that “ evil is needed to get to the good; evil is a necessary means to the good”. (Mackie 1955) It seems that evil is surely needed and good can’t exist without evil as it will be restricted in power. Therefore the God isn’t able to make good come about without evil happening. Furthermore, Mackie thinks that human beings caused the evil, because they voluntarily had chosen evil and had done nothing to escape from it. This claim has both positive and negative moments.
Firstly, it is apparent that human beings have free will, though their free will has resulted in evil creation. However, Mackie asserts that it is better to live in the world where human beings are provided with free will rather than in the word without it. The third claim also suggests that God’s power is restricted and he is unable to provide people with free will without evil happening. It means that the God is neither omnipotent, not omni-benevolent and nor omniscient. (Mackie 1955)
