Does God exist? Most religions affirm God’s existence. Some radical philosophers reject the existence of God because of the existence of evil. What is evil? Evil refers to that which causes harm, disharmony, stress, and suffering. Evil can be understood in three senses: natural evil, moral evil, and metaphysical evil. Natural evil is that evil that is caused by earthquakes, storms, diseases, floods, landslides, hunger, etc. Natural forces are the source of natural evils which lie beyond the control of humans. Moral evils are based on human action and conduct. Theft, violence, forgery, murder, greed, etc are moral evils. These are inflicted upon one man by another. The concept of metaphysical evil goes beyond the world of concepts and seeps in as an inherent quality that exists as a force in the universe. This category of evil is dealt with primarily under the problem of evil in discourses within philosophy.

Christian theology speculates the problem of evil question through book one of the bible known as the Genesis. The story talks about how God created a perfect world in which he created the first humans- Adam and Eve. They were sent to the Garden of Eden. God commands them to avoid eating ‘a forbidden fruit’ of a certain kind. They disobey God’s commands and consume the fruit. This act of defiance, known as ‘the fall’, is marked as the entry point of all evil and wrongdoing in the world. Following this, they are expelled from the Garden of Eden and are subject to pain, suffering, and misery. This is known as the doctrine of the original sin. Some thinkers suggest that it is the free will of Adam and Eve that brought rise to evil in the world. Here, God is considered as a moral being who created human beings while entrusting upon them, free will. Thus, this autonomy leads man to either choose God or evil. And if free will did not exist, life would be merely mechanical, mundane, and mediocre.

Some thinkers believe that evil deters a man from acting in wrongful ways. It can also discipline a man through punishment. The meaning of good and God are best understood when contrasted with the notion of evil. When a man undergoes a period of struggle and hardships, a reformed man erupts. Evil can thus be seen as a necessary condition for the ‘good’ to exist.

The problem of evil is commonly seen as the problem of how to resolve the coexistence of God and evil in the same world. The understanding that the two cannot be reconciled comes from a perspective that holds God as completely contrary to evil. The suffering caused by metaphysical evils or natural evils is beyond the control of man. Hence, looking for resolutions for these types of evils is beyond human capacity. While some thinkers see evil as a necessity for goodness, it is commonly believed that it is the duty of every man to eradicate evil from the world