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Problem of evil
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===Deny problem exists=== [[Theophrastus]], the Greek Peripatetic philosopher and author of ''Characters'',<ref name="Sonia Pertsinidis">{{cite book |last1=Pertsinidis |first1=Sonia |title=Theophrastus' Characters: A New Introduction |date=2018 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9781351997812}}</ref> a work that explores the moral weaknesses and strengths of 30 personality types in the Greece of his day, thought that the nature of 'being' comes from, and consists of, contraries, such as eternal and perishable, order and chaos, good and evil; the role of evil is thereby limited, he said, since it is only a part of the whole which is overall, good.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Theophrastus |editor1-last=van Raalte |editor1-first=M. |title=Theophrastus Metaphysics: With Introduction, Translation and Commentary |date=2018 |publisher=Brill |isbn=9789004329218 |page=31}}</ref> According to Theophrastus, a world focused on virtue and vice was a naturalistic social world where the overall goodness of the universe as a whole included, of necessity, both good and evil, rendering the problem of evil non-existent.<ref name="Rorty"/>{{rp|xv}} [[David Hume]] traced what he asserted as the psychological origins of virtue but not the vices. Rorty says: "He dispels the superstitious remnants of a [[Manichean]] battle: the forces of good and evil warring in the will"; concluding instead that human beings project their own subjective disapproval onto events and actions.<ref name="Rorty"/>{{rp|282}} ====Evil as illusory==== A modern version of this view is found in [[Christian Science]] which asserts that evils such as suffering and disease only {{em|appear}} to be real but, in truth, are illusions.<ref name="Millard J. Erickson 2007, page 445-446">Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, Second Edition, Baker Academic, 2007, pp. 445β446.</ref> The theologians of Christian Science, states Stephen Gottschalk, posit that the Spirit is of infinite might; mortal human beings fail to grasp this and focus instead on evil and suffering that have no real existence as "a power, person or principle opposed to God".<ref name= Gottschalkp65>{{cite book|first=Stephen |last=Gottschalk |title=Christian Science |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r-FYQv75w7kC |year=1978|publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-03718-2|pages=65β69}}</ref> The illusion theodicy has been critiqued for denying the reality of crimes, wars, terror, sickness, injury, death, suffering and pain to the victim.<ref name= Gottschalkp65/> Further, adds Millard Erickson, the illusion argument merely shifts the problem to a new problem, as to why God would create this "illusion" of crimes, wars, terror, sickness, injury, death, suffering and pain; and why God does not stop this "illusion".<ref name="Millard J. Erickson 1998 446β47">{{cite book|first=Millard J.|last=Erickson|title=Christian Theology|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8Z5zBQAAQBAJ |year=1998|publisher=Baker Academic|isbn=978-0-8010-2182-4 |pages=446β447 }}</ref>
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