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problems much greater than the one we're solving and so are usually not accepted. Before explaining these solutions I should point out that the problem of evil only exists for those who believe all three of the propositions stated above. If you do not believe one of them then there is no problem. Any two can be logically coherent. It is only the combination of all three that seems to entail a logical contradiction.

Clearly, one solution is to deny the truth of proposition one. If God is not omnipotent then he may simply be unable to eliminate evil. This solution was suggested by the 19th century, English philosopher, John Stuart Mill. You can see how it perfectly solves the problem. Evil exists, at least in part, because of God's inability to eliminate it. You can probably also see why many religious believers reject it.

A second solution is to deny the truth of proposition two. Perhaps God is not Omni-benevolent; that is to say perhaps God is partially evil. This solution was offered by our old friend, David Hume. According to Hume, if you were going to infer the existence of God based on the existence of the universe you would have to infer that God is partially evil. After all, the effect of God's work is partially evil. A variant of this solution goes back to early Christianity. In the first and second centuries of Christianity there was a sect called the Gnostics who believed that the universe was actually created by an evil god. It was only later than a second, good, God sent Christ to redeem the world. Needless to say many Christians then, as now, deny the validity of this solution.

A third possible adequate solution is to deny the existence of evil. This may sound like a very strange thing to say or do. How can we deny that evil exists? Well, according to some philosophers, such as St Augustine, evil is not really a thing at all. The problem of evil arises from thinking of it as such. What is evil then? Evil is the absence of something; that is, evil is a privation. The very nature of created things is to be imperfect. Since the universe was created by God, it follows that it is imperfect. That is, it lacks something it should have. But this "lack" is not a thing to be contended with. It is the absence of goodness that's the problem. Is this just a question of semantics? Perhaps. While it may solve the logical problem of evil to say that disease is just the absence of health, it probably doesn't make the sick person feel any better. We should probably

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