Explore relationships

Problem of evil

Philosophical question Part of a series on thePhilosophy of religion Religious concepts Afterlife Apophatism Cataphatism Eschatology Enlightenment Intelligent design Liberation Miracle Mysticism Religious belief Reincarnation Religious faith Scripture (religious text) Soul Theological veto Vitalism Theology Conceptions Anthropopathism Brahman Demiurge Divinely simple God Form of the Good Holy Spirit Maltheist Occasionalism Pandeist Personal Process-theological Summum bonum Supreme Being Unmoved mover Existence Beauty Christological Trilemma Resurrection Consciousness Cosmological Kalam cosmological Contingency Metaphysical Degree Desire Experience Existential choice Fine-tuned universe Knowledge Love Mathematics Miracles Morality Mystical idealism Natural-law Necessary existent Seddiqin Nyayakusumanjali Ontological Anselm Gödel Meinongian Modal Mulla Sadra Pascal's wager Reason Proper basis and Reformed epistemology Responses to the problem of evil Teleological Natural law Watchmaker Testimony Historical events Historical personages Trademark Transcendental Challenges 747 gambit Atheist's wager Creator of God Evil Evil God Fate of the unlearned Free will God of the gaps Hell Hitchens's razor Incompatible properties Inconsistency Nonbelief Noncognitivism Omnipotence paradox Poor design Russell's teapot Theories of religion Acosmism Agnosticism Animism Antireligion Atheism Creationism Dharmism Deism Divine command theory Dualism Esotericism Exclusivism Existentialism atheist Christian Feminist Fundamentalism Gnosticism Henotheism Humanism Christian religious secular Inclusivism Monism Monotheism Mysticism Naturalism humanistic metaphysical religious New Age Nondualism Nontheism Pandeism Panentheism Pantheism Perennialism Polytheism Process Secular Shrine Theory Shendao shejiao Spiritualism Shamanism Taoic Theism Transcendentalism Philosophers of religion Ancient and medieval Anselm of Canterbury Augustine of Hippo Avicenna Averroes Boethius Gaudapada Al-Ghazali Gaunilo of Marmoutiers Pico della Mirandola Heraclitus King James VI and I Marcion of Sinope Maimonides Adi Shankara Thomas Aquinas William of Ockham Early modern Augustin Calmet René Descartes Blaise Pascal Desiderius Erasmus Baruch Spinoza Nicolas Malebranche Gottfried W Leibniz William Wollaston Thomas Chubb David Hume Baron d'Holbach Immanuel Kant Johann G Herder 19th-century Friedrich Schleiermacher Karl C F Krause Georg W F Hegel Thomas Carlyle William Whewell Ludwig Feuerbach Søren Kierkegaard Karl Marx Albrecht Ritschl Afrikan Spir Usman dan Fodio Ernst Haeckel W K Clifford Friedrich Nietzsche Harald Høffding William James Vladimir Solovyov Ernst Troeltsch Rudolf Otto Lev Shestov Ernst Cassirer Joseph Maréchal John Henry Newman Contemporary George Santayana Bertrand Russell Martin Buber Sergei Bulgakov René Guénon Paul Tillich Karl Barth Pavel Florensky Emil Brunner Rudolf Bultmann Gabriel Marcel Reinhold Niebuhr Charles Hartshorne Mircea Eliade Frithjof Schuon J. L. Mackie Walter Kaufmann Martin Lings Peter Geach George I. Mavrodes William Alston Antony Flew Kurt Gödel Graham Oppy J. L. Schellenberg Paul Draper William L. Rowe Dewi Z Phillips Alvin Plantinga Anthony Kenny Nicholas Wolterstorff Richard Swinburne Robert Merrihew Adams Ravi Zacharias Peter van Inwagen Cornel West Loyal Rue Herman Philipse Kai Nielsen Jean-Luc Marion William Lane Craig Ali Akbar Rashad Yujin Nagasawa Alexander Pruss John Hick Related topics Criticism of religion Ethics in religion Exegesis Faith and rationality History of religions Natural theology Religion and science Religious philosophy Theology vte Part of a series onTheodicy Key concepts Absence of good Augustinian theodicy Best of all possible worlds Divine retribution Evolutionary theodicy Free will Irenaean theodicy Moral evil Natural evil Problem of evil Theodicy and the Bible Notable figures Adams Saint Augustine Hick Saint Irenaeus Leibniz Maimonides Maistre Malebranche Malthus Plantinga Swinburne Thomas Works Dialogue between a Manand His God (c. 1664 BC) De libero arbitrio voluntatis (388–395) The Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190) Théodicée (1710) An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) St Petersburg Dialogues (1821) Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1837) The Problem of Pain (1940) A Grief Observed (1961) When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1981) vte The problem of evil, also known as the problem of suffering, is the philosophical question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with the notion of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.

Use + to expand a branch. Click a topic name to open its summary.