Forum Philosophicum

Volume 15, Issue 2, Autumn 2010

God and Toleration

The enduring debate on the question of whether an omnipotent, omniscient God exists amid the existence of evils in the world is crucial to understanding religions. Much recent discussion has taken an approach in which the focal question is whether we can cognitively—for example, logically, evidentially, and the like—and rationally justify that God’s full power and full goodness cannot be doubted amid the existence of evils. In this paper I argue that we can reasonably assume that God exists in an evil-afflicted world if he chooses to do so and if he tolerates evils. We can reasonably argue that he does exist in an evil-afflicted world because he chooses to tolerate evils for whatever reasons. I would like to make a stronger claim: he tolerates evils in order to give humankind a chance to grow in knowledge of good and evils by combating evils, which implies that his toleration of evils imposes a task on humankind to combat evils.