The contemporary atheists have maintained the belief in the existence of evil to inflict serious criticism on religious beliefs. They believe a contradiction to exist between the belief in the existence of evil and the belief in the existence of a God with an infinite power and supreme goodness, in that it is not possible to believe both in the existence of God and the existence of evil at the same time. Simply put, the logical problem of evil is as follows: God is omnipotent; God is omnibenevolent; yet evil exists. According to J.L. Mackie, this set of propositions is contradictory, thus, one must not believe in such a God, and this is how he concludes that God does not exist. In response to J.L. Mackie, Alvin Plantinga has put forward the idea of possible worlds. He then argues that God’s infinite power does not include some worlds, and that these are the worlds in which humans choose goodness over evil while having freewill. Through this argument, Plantinga seeks to demonstrate that not only there is no explicit contradiction between a theosopher’s beliefs and the existence of evil, there is also no implicit contradiction between them either.

The problem of evil is challenging the belief in the omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good God. In its logical sense and deductive form, it claims that there are some pointless evils and myriads of lifedisorderliness with the existence of which God’s existence and his positive attributions are inconsistent. Needless to say, the reliability of this argument is based on the trueness or at least probable trueness of the concrete statement. Nevertheless, some philosophers like Swinburne have tried to deny the statement by the answers such as Greater goods theodicy. This article tries to look closely at atheists' logical argument and their alleged concrete statements, and then examine the Swinburne’s defense and its difficulties.

The argument based on the existence of evil in the world, as an atheistic argument against the existence of God, has two versions: logical and evidential. In this article, we have merely dealt with the first version that attempts to prove a logical inconsistency in the theists’ set of beliefs. Many hold that the traditional logical problem of evil has found a definite answer through Plantinga’s free will defense. However, in recent years, John Schellenberg has claimed a new logical problem of evil. He holds that Plantinga’s free will defense would not refute this new version. In the present paper, without any concern for fully criticizing Schellenberg’s new problem of evil and without any intent for completely representing Plantinga’s free will defense, we have challenged Schellenberg’s claim about the immunity of his version to Plantinga’s free will defense. Through undermining one of the central premises of his argument, we prove that this version is also vulnerable to plantinga’s solution.

The problem of evil has a long history in philosophical thinking, and is one of the most important and challenging issues among philosophers and theologians, which in the most pessimistic case, leads to deny God, and in the most optimistic case, claims that there has been a violation of certain attributes of God. For example, evil, and especially the excessive evil, rejects absolute power of God and God's merciful benevolence. The purpose of this writing is to study the logical problem of evil and to solve it from the perspective of the two Islamic and Western thinkers, Morteza Motahari and John Hick. Marteza Motahhari believes that the wisdom and interest of God is dominant over the system of being and that evil is “ relative and non-existent” and concludes at the end that evil is based on good and leads to good. The two are "inseparable", and of course, there are benefits to evil. John Hick also believes in the mighty creator who created the best possible universe, while Hick's view is that he is evil and develops the theory of "cultivating the soul, " and the purpose of God is to create evil, to uplift human beings and He introduces his spiritual growth and makes it an agent of perfection. But, for him, talking about an unsolved problem and an “ unknotted knot” in the name of evil is vain; and finally, for him, the reasons of the existence of evil is "mysterious", in other words, unconscious and beyond comprehension.

The problem of evil has been a challenging issue throughout the history of religious and philosophical thought. In the past, thinkers would rely on evil to undermine divine omnipotence, wisdom, and justice. Nowadays, however, this problem has become a shelter for atheism. The problem of evil is of two types: logical and evidential. In the logical problem of evil, the claim is that the existence of evil is not consistent with the existence of Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnibenevolent God, whereas, in the latter, evils are considered as evidence for undermining theism. This article, using analytical methods, studies the first problem from Avicenna's viewpoint. Since this account of the problem is rather new in Islamic culture, Avicenna did not address it explicitly. Still, perhaps one can derive his opinion from the content of his views on the attributes of God. In Avicenna's philosophy, God is a pure actuality who has the necessary causal relationship with the world and is purified from the human and bodily characteristics. According to Avicenna, God's power and will are not only concretely, but also conceptually, the same as God's knowledge. Moreover, all three of them are limited to the present world. Therefore, God’s Omniscience and Omnipotence encompass only the beings of this world, not the many possible worlds we can imagine. Also, Omnibenevolence puts its actions beyond moral judgments. Accordingly, there remains no room for the logical problem of evil in Avicenna’s system of thought.

One of the most prominent and compelling philosophical responses to the logical problem of evil is Alvin Plantinga's free will defense. However, Michael Almeida, a critic of this defense, argues that while the free will defense has effectively addressed many versions of the logical problem of evil, there are versions, such as those presented by John Mackey, which can be referred to as the logical problem of evil redux. Almeida, who shares Plantinga's beliefs as a theist and incompatibilist, specifically focuses his critique on one of the most controversial assumptions underlying this defense: the notion of universal transworld depravity, which Plantinga claims is an inherent characteristic of all creatures. According to Almeida, this assumption is untenable because absolute divine foreknowledge, influenced by a perspective akin to Molinism, enables God to actualize a morally perfect world without conflicting with human free will. Almeida believes that we can address this problem and defend the existence of God, but it is not the aim of this article to present his solution

One of the famous defenses to the logical problem of evil is called the defense of “human imperfect knowledge” or the limitation of human cognitive abilities in distinguishing between good and evil. According to this theory, since it is basically impossible to prove the existence of absurd evil in the world, therefore, the form of the logical problem of evil is not valid. The present article, reflecting on the effectiveness of the theory of the imperfect knowledge, has come to the conclusion that if the meaning of evil in the case of the logical problem of evil is absurd evil, then this defense, as explained in the text of the article, can invalidate the case of the said problem. But if evil is meant merely pain and suffering, then the mentioned answer cannot be complete and comprehensive. In order to completely and comprehensively reject the logical problem of evil, there is no escape from entering into the discussion about the concept of divine omnipotence. In addition, this answer, even if it is a comprehensive answer, ultimately makes the existence of God probable and cannot reject the minimal claim of the logical problem of evil that the existence of God is doubtful. To negate this doubt, other answers to the problem of evil should be used. Of course, this does not mean that the "probability of the non-existence of God" is superior to the "probability of the existence of God". Rather, by the way, the defense of imperfect knowledge can also rule out this claim of the evidential problem of evils.

In a new formulation of the logical problem of evil, J. L. Schellenberg attempts to develop a new version of the logical form of the problem of evil through the logical inconsistency of the conjunction of three theistic claims with the existence of evil. Schellenberg, by appealing to three commitments of theism: Unsurpassable Greatness (UG), Ontological Independence (OI), and Prior Purity (PP), adopts two approaches the Modeling and the Motivation to demonstrate the inconsistency of the conjunction of these theistic claims with the existence of evil. To pursue this aim, Schellenberg develops his argument by adding supplementary propositions to the four claims. Therefore, what is shown from the conjunction of the three theistic claims and additional propositions is that there is no evil in the world, whereas this is logically inconsistent with the existence of evil in the world.This paper through an analytical-critical approach aims to show Schellenberg’s argument is not sound. To show its falsity, this paper has focused on premise (8) as the central premise of Schellenberg’s argument. By showing its falsity, it would also be vulnerable to the free will defense. In addition to Gellman’s critique over premise (8), this paper also poses a dilemma over (8) to show Schellenberg’s argument is not sound and it cannot avoid Plantinga’s rebuttal.

There are numerous ideas regarding the nature of evils and the cause of its emergence and the division of evils as well as the dependence on natural evils on moral evils. Considering the idea of FazelQooshchi that there is no proof regarding the negativity of evil and only a number of inductive evidences have been provided instead, the author has sought to demonstrate the negative nature of evils via critically discussing the major ideas and analyses of evilnot as an existential negation versus the existential positivity a la MullaSadrarather as an example of philosophical secondary intelligbilia. This is to say that although evil does not have an objective extension it does certainly have a source of abstraction in the outside world. Moreover, the current essay offers a multidimensional analysis of the problem of evil based on philosophy, theology and religion in order not to submerge in the methodological exclusivism. Thus the author attempts to depict a geometry of evils and offers an explication of the causes of their emergence as a non-existential and negative phenomenon and finally proves the divine stature of the Necessary Being based on the theory of punishment, atonement and the means of nearness.

This paper attempts to present the Taoist understanding of evil. In the Taoist tradition, especially in Tao Te Ching, evil is divided into two categories: causal evil and consequential evil. Causal evils are those evils that are said to be the causes of other evils; consequential evils are those that are said to be the consequences of the causal evils. Causal evils originate from human will, and cause suffering. This means that evil is not equal to suffering. Lao Tzu does not clearly talk about natural suffering. He regards all evil and suffering as resulting from human actions that are not in accordance with Tao, which is the source of all life. Therefore, the way to overcome evil is to follow Tao, to actualize wu-wei in life.