In the article “Evil and Omnipotence” by J.L. Mackie, Mac

On the other hand a philosopher named Peter Van Inwagen questions Mackie’s article with the core thesis that God created free creatures, but some of these creatures abused their freedom and turned away from God, resulting evil to enter the world. Van Inwagen addresses the problem of natural evil first: Earthquakes and tornadoes are not evil “per se” but rather the evil arises from the suffering and death that they cause. Van Inwagen then goes on to further address a question concerning the magnitude of evil: "Why doesn’t God protect His creatures from the worst effects of their separation from Him? Van Inwagen replies by claiming that protecting us from the worse effects would be a form of deception. Furthermore, he believes that it would reduce our existence to something worse than meaningless. After that, Van Inwagen questions the problem of duration and asked the question “Why has God allowed the age of evil to persist for thousands and thousands of years?” Van Inwagen is uncertain about how to reply to this question; however he offers a number of possible responses like, perhaps God wants the final community of those in union with him to be rather large and diverse. Subsequently, Van Inwagen considers some questions of distribution. Van Inwagen questioned God and asked him why the innocent suffer and the wicked prosper? Van Inwagen admits that there are horrors that occur in the world that seem to have no explanation. Well if this is true then why does God allow his creatures to live in a world where such horrors take place? Van Inwagen responds to this by stating “because that is a natural consequence of their separation from Him”. Furthermore, it is part of God’s plan of atonement that we recognize that chance horrors occur to innocent people as a consequence of our separation from Him. Finally, we can consider a more general objection that arises for Van Inwagen’s theodicy. If the theodicy is true then God is violating the following moral principle “it is wrong to allow something bad to happen to X without X’s permission in order to secure some benefit for others.” In the text Van Inwagen considers the following case with Alice. Suppose God allows a horrible accident to occur to Alice. Suppose that the only good that results from this event is that the accident, along with a large number of other chance horrors, which causes various people to realize that they live in a world where chance horrors occur and that this is a natural consequence of their separation from God. Presume that Alice did not need to be made aware of this fact, because she was already full

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