TY - JOUR AB - 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. AD - University of Texas at San Antonio AU - Chen, Xunwu DO - 10.5840/forphil20101525 KW - God; good; evil; toleration; omnipotence LA - en M1 - 2 M3 - Article PY - 2010 RN - Baird, Forrest E., and Raeburne S. Heimbeck, eds. Philosophic Classics. Vol. 6, Asian Philosophy. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006. Dilley, Frank B. “William L. Rowe: Can God Be Free?” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 58, no. 3 (2005): 201-203. doi: 10.1007/s11153-005-0152-1. Habermas, Jürgen. Between naturalism and religion: philosophical essays. Translated by Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008. Habermas, Jürgen. Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity. Edited by and Eduardo Mendieta. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. Habermas, Jürgen. “Religious Tolerance: The Pacemaker for Cultural Rights.” Philosophy 79, no. 1 (2004): 5-18. Heyd, David, ed. Toleration An Elusive Virtue. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. Hugo, Victor. Les Misérables. Translated by Charles E. Wilbour. New York: Modern Library, 1992. Jordan, Jeff, and Daniel Howard-Snyder, eds. Faith, Freedom, and Rationality: Philosophy of Religion Today. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996. Josephson, Eric, and Mary Josephson. Man Alone: Alienation in Modern Society. New York: Dell, 1962. Mackie, J. L. “Evil and Omnipotence.” In Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael L. Peterson, 263-264. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Mencius. “The Essence and Substance of Mencius (Mengzi Zheng Yi).” In Completed Works of Teachers (Zhu Zi Ji Cheng), vol. 1, edited by Jiao Shun. Beijing: Unity Publishing House, 1996. Peterson, Michael L., ed. Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pike, Nelson. “Hume on Evil.” Philosophical Reviews 72, no. 2 (1963): 180-197. doi:10.2307/2183103. Reitan, Eric. “Does the Argument from Evil Assume a Consequentialist Morality?” Faith and Philosophy 17, no.3 (2000): 304-317. doi:10.5840/faithphil200017318. Rowe, William L. Can God Be Free? Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004. Rowe, William. “Evil and Theodicy.” Philosophical Topics 16, no. 2 (1988): 119-132. Scanlon, Thomas. The Difficulty of Tolerance Essays in Political Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511615153. Wainwright, William. “Jonathan Edwards, William Rowe, and the Necessity of Creation.” In Faith, Freedom, and Rationality: Philosophy of Religion Today, edited by Jeff Jordan and Daniel Howard-Snyder, 119-133. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996. Wainwright, William. Philosophy of Religion. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1999. Williams, Bernard. “Toleration: An Impossible Virtue?” In Toleration An Elusive Virtue, edited by David Heyd, 18-27. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. SN - 1426-1898 (paper) 2353-7043 (online) SP - 335–353 ST - God and Toleration T2 - Forum Philosophicum TI - God and Toleration UR - http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=54527571&lang=pl&site=ehost-live http://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=forphil&id=forphil_2010_0015_0002_0335_0353 VL - 15 ID - 14 ER -