Final answer:
According to Fideists, evil exists because free will necessitates its possibility, a view that maintains God's non-intervention. The problem of evil challenges the notion of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good deity, but many theologians argue that evil stems from human choices within a framework established by divine will.
Step-by-step explanation:
According to Fideists, if God does exist, why does evil abound? The answer that aligns with their perspective is C) Because free will necessitates the possibility of evil. This view is supported by the argument that God prefers a world of free agents to a world of robots, indicating that evil is an unfortunate, though not unavoidable, outcome of free will. The idea is that for God to intervene would be to take away our free-will, hence God is neither responsible for evil nor guilty of neglect for not intervening.
The problem of evil is a philosophical challenge to the traditional arguments for the existence of God, especially when considering that God is traditionally described as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. The existence of evil raises questions about these attributes. Many theists have grappled with this paradox, and responses have varied, with some, like Saint Augustine, positing that evil does not truly exist but is rather the absence of good, while others point to free will as a necessary component of a morally meaningful universe.
Ultimately, the free will defense, which posits that God gives humans the choice between good and evil, is a common theological response to the problem of evil. It seeks to reconcile the existence of an all-good, all-powerful, and all-knowing deity with the presence of evil in the world by attributing moral evil to human agency rather than divine will or design. This perspective maintains that a world with the possibility of evil is better than one without the capacity for moral good that free will allows.