Editing Problem of evil (section)

===Evil===
A broad concept of [[evil]] defines it as any and all pain and suffering,<ref name="Todd Calder">{{cite web |last1=Calder |first1=Todd |title=The Concept of Evil |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/concept-evil/|website=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |date=26 November 2013 |publisher=Stanford University |access-date=17 January 2021}}</ref> yet this definition quickly becomes problematic. [[Marcus George Singer|Marcus Singer]] says that a usable definition of evil must be based on the knowledge that: "If something is really evil, it can't be necessary, and if it is really necessary, it can't be evil".<ref name="Marcus G. Singer2004">{{cite journal |last1=Marcus G. Singer |first1=Marcus G. Singer |title=The Concept of Evil |journal=Philosophy |date=April 2004 |volume=79 |issue=308 |pages=185–214 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3751971 |publisher=Cambridge University Press|doi=10.1017/S0031819104000233 |jstor=3751971 |s2cid=146121829 }}</ref>{{rp|186}} According to philosopher John Kemp, evil cannot be correctly understood on "a simple hedonic scale on which pleasure appears as a plus, and pain as a minus".<ref name="John Kemp">{{cite journal |last1=Kemp |first1=John |title=Pain and Evil |journal=Philosophy |date=25 February 2009 |volume=29 |issue=108 |page=13 |doi=10.1017/S0031819100022105 |s2cid=144540963 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/philosophy/article/abs/pain-and-evil/F3FF667D770E68BE6A9A56A345FBB7D6 |access-date=8 January 2021}}</ref><ref name="Todd Calder"/> The [[National Institute of Medicine]] says [[pain]] is essential for survival: "Without pain, the world would be an impossibly dangerous place".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Committee on Advancing Pain Research, Care, and Education |first1=Institute of Medicine (US) |title=Relieving Pain in America: A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention, Care, Education, and Research. |url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92525/ |website=NCBI Bookshelf |publisher=National Academies Press (US) |access-date=21 February 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=Reviews |journal=The Humane Review |date=1901 |volume=2 |issue=5–8 |page=374 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aCUKAAAAIAAJ |publisher=E. Bell}}</ref> 
 
While many of the arguments against an omni-God are based on the broadest definition of evil, "most contemporary philosophers interested in the nature of evil are primarily concerned with evil in a narrower sense".<ref name="Calder 2007">{{cite journal |last1=Calder |first1=Todd C. |title=Is the Privation Theory of Evil Dead? |journal=American Philosophical Quarterly |date=2007 |volume=44 |issue=4 |pages=371–381 |jstor=20464387 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20464387}}</ref> The narrow concept of evil involves moral condemnation, and is applicable only to moral agents capable of making independent decisions, and their actions; it allows for the existence of some pain and suffering without identifying it as evil.<ref name="Eve Garrard">{{cite journal |last1=Garrard |first1=Eve |title=Evil as an Explanatory Concept |journal=The Monist |date=April 2002 |volume=85 |issue=2 |pages=320–336 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27903775 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.5840/monist200285219 |jstor=27903775 |format=PDF}}</ref>{{rp|322}} Christianity is based on "the [[wikt:salvific|salvific]] value of suffering".<ref name="Taliaferro">{{cite web |last1=Taliaferro |first1=Charles |title=Philosophy of Religion |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-religion/#ReliEpis |website=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Sanford University|access-date=7 December 2020|page=3.1}}</ref>

Philosopher Eve Garrard suggests that the term evil cannot be used to describe ordinary wrongdoing, because "there is a ''qualitative'' and not merely a ''quantitative'' difference between evil acts and other wrongful ones; evil acts are not just very bad or wrongful acts, but rather ones possessing some specially horrific quality".<ref name="Eve Garrard"/>{{rp|321}} Calder argues that evil must involve the attempt or desire to inflict significant harm on the victim without moral justification.<ref name="Todd Calder"/>

Evil takes on different meanings when seen from the perspective of different belief systems, and while evil can be viewed in religious terms, it can also be understood in natural or secular terms, such as social vice, egoism, criminality, and sociopathology.<ref name="Rorty"/> [[John Kekes]] writes that an action is evil if "(1) it causes grievous harm to (2) innocent victims, and it is (3) deliberate, (4) malevolently motivated, and (5) morally unjustifiable".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kekes |first1=John |editor1-last=Bar-Am |editor1-first=Nimrod |editor2-last=Gattei |editor2-first=Stefano |title=Encouraging Openness: Essays for Joseph Agassi on the Occasion of His 90th Birthday |date=2017 |publisher=Springer |isbn=9783319576695 |page=351 |chapter=29, The Secular Problem of Evil}}</ref>