Page "Theodicy" Paragraph 2

German philosopher Max Weber saw theodicy as a social problem, based on the human need to explain puzzling aspects of the world ; sociologist Peter L. Berger argued that religion arose out of a need for social order, and theodicy developed to sustain it.

Following the Holocaust, a number of Jewish theologians developed a new response to the problem of evil, sometimes called anti-theodicy, which maintains that God cannot be meaningfully justified.

As an alternative to theodicy, a defence may be proposed, which is limited to showing the logical possibility of God's existence.

American philosopher Alvin Plantinga presented a version of the free will defence which argued that the coexistence of God and evil is not logically impossible, and that free will further explains the existence of evil without threatening the existence of God.

Similar to a theodicy, a cosmodicy attempts to justify the fundamental goodness of the universe, and an anthropodicy attempts to justify the goodness of humanity.