Word Count: 1260In “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion,” Philo is a skeptic whobelieves, to some extent, that God is incomprehensible, but draws carefulconclusions about Him based on experience. Philo discusses what can beinferred about God’s nature based purely on empirical evidence from the world.He challenges the idea that it is possible to infer God’s nature based onobservation of the universe. He uses two concepts to prove his ideas: Epicurus’old questions and four circumstances that lie behind the evil that humans andanimals experience.Epicurus’ old questions are the following: “Is he willing to prevent evil, butnot able?” This means that God wishes he could stop the bad things fromhappening, but he doesn’t have the power to. This would imply that he lacksability and is not omnipotent, which is problematic when discussing the all-powerful God of the Christian faith. The second question is, “Is he able, but notwilling?“ Meaning God has the power to stop these bad things, but he is notwilling. This would imply that he himself is evil, or at least without the good andloving intentions that Christianity believes He has. The third question is “Is heboth able and willing? Whence then is evil?” This implies that God has both theability and the willingness to prevent evil.These questions pose an intellectual challenge because they imply that anall-good, all-powerful God cannot exist while there is evil in the world, and thereis currently evil in the world. This is especially a challenge to Christians believing1
