Free Essay on the Philosophical Significance of the Presence of Evil in Our Lives

Pain is a universal human experience meaning that every human being suffers pain at least once in their lives. Pain is defined as the unpleasant expressive or sensual experience associated with damage to the tissue or damage that is described in tissue terms. Even though pain is said to be universal, it is also a complex one since the way that people respond to pain is determined by their society or culture. A specific situation where a human being suffers needless pain is when they are suffering from a disease such as cancer or HIV/AIDS. A person suffering from HIV/AIDS goes through a lot of pain because of HIV-related complications. Take an example Kelvin, a 15-year-old from Nepal who died from HIV-related complications and he was in a lot of paid. Kelvins mother described how he suffered from severe and persistent abdominal pains, head ache, diarrhea, and vomiting. People who suffer from HIV/AIDS die a painful death even when they are using antiretroviral because their immune system is weak hence they are prone to fall sick each now and then (Abel, 2004).

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The pain suffered by HIV patients can be categorized into acute and chronic pains. Acute pain results from biological response to diseases or tissue damages and may last less than a month. The pain can be continuous or episodically depending on what the person is going through. Abdominal pain may result to recurrent pain while pain from the damaged tissue may be continuous unless when the patient has patient has taken medicine to reduce pain.

My Response

Stating that "God would not let this happen to me, so there is no God would be wrong because it would mean that we only accept God whenever everything is going well for us while we forget him when a little difficulty arises. The reality of evil does not prove that God does not exist in fact it proves the opposite. The reality of evil proves that God exists and that people have a choice of doing good or bad, and each choice that they make has a consequence. When people do good, God rewards them by doing good to them too while when they do evil, God punishes them through the pain. The reason why God would permit pain to happen to a person is when that person has deviated from God's ways and hence God wants to remind them of their ways. To say that something is evil is to mean that one is making a moral judgment, so it does not make any sense outside the concept of the moral standard. Evil is as a result of our feeling that we have committed something that makes us feel guilty. A person feels guilty because they know that they have offended a supreme being who oversees all our activities. That Supreme Being that we all feel guilty because we have wronged is God hence the presence of evil does not show the absence of God. Rather, it shows that God exists and is the one who judges and punishes us if we do good or evil. A person who does evil is punished by getting pain and suffering while a person who does well is rewarded well. However, people who are punished can redeem themselves by repenting and asking for forgiveness from God (Abel, 2004).

Role of Faith and Reason in Practical Life

Faith and reason are considered to be sources people use to justify their religious beliefs such as existence of evil and the existence of God. Some people may agree with one thing because they have faith while others may agree with it because they have a reason to belief in that. Philosophers agree that reason and faith do not conflict so long as reason is properly employed and faith is properly understood. Despite this, faith can also differ with reason in a way because faith believes without seeing while a person who believes with reason must see something and agree with it first. For example, a person who believes that it is good and evil, or there is God must have a good reason as to what makes them belief in such. People who belief because of faith does so because someone told them to and hence do not need to have evidence to proof what they belief in (Abel, 2004).

Between faith and reason, I think reason provides people with a more satisfactory understanding of our place in the world including the reality of evil. This is because reason gives proof as to why something happens or why something is the way it is. In the above case, it shows that a person who suffers pain and then starts thinking that there is no God lacks faith, and since they do not have a reason, they end up questioning the very existence of God. A person who has faith would understand that there must be a reason as to why God is making them suffer and then pray hard that God will show them the reason (Abel, 2004).

References

Abel, D. (2004). Fifty Readings Plus: An Introduction to Philosophy. New York : Mcgraw-Hill.