The problem of evil the Gifford lectures delivered in the University of St. Andrews in 2003 - Van Inwagen, Peter (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Originally published: Oxford: Clarendon, 2006
Includes bibliographical references and index
Detailed Contents; Lecture 1. The Problem of Evil and the Argument from Evil; Lecture 2. The Idea of God; Lecture 3. Philosophical Failure; Lecture 4. The Global Argument from Evil; Lecture 5. The Global Argument Continued; Lecture 6. The Local Argument from Evil; Lecture 7. The Sufferings of Beasts; Lecture 8. The Hiddenness of God; Notes; Works Cited; Index
The vast amount of suffering in the world is often held as a particularly powerful reason to deny that God exists. Highly accessible and carefully argued, Peter van Inwagen's book maintains that such reasoning does not hold, and that suffering should not undermine belief in God. - ;It is generally supposed that the fact that the world contains a vast amount of suffering, much of it truly horrible suffering, confronts those who believe in an all-powerful and benevolent Creator with a serious problem: to explain why such a Creator would permit this. Many reflective people are convinced that the