I found Hick’s argument that justifies the presence of evil in our world and uses that justification to point to God’s existence to actually be more coherent than Rowe’s opposite stance. However, I found what I thought to be a flaw in Hick’s explanation. Hick argues that evil is essentially a byproduct of good, that is exists because good exists, which I completely agree with. Good and evil can only exist because of the relativity they provide. I do have a problem with Hick’s assertion of a definitive good and evil, which he explains on pages 44-45. Hick presents a world in which all is “good” in order to prove a point about the necessity of evil. However, using his previous argument that good and evil are relative, we cannot assume that what is good in our world would be good in this utopia that he has fathomed. When I wake up in the morning, I think it would be awful, an injustice, if I missed a meal that day, and that it would be good if I had a nice juicy steak for dinner. A starving person wakes up in the morning and thinks that it would be awful if they didn’t eat for the third straight day and good if they got their hands on anything to eat. Good and evil are relative, and they rely on our perception of the world. If our world was altered, so would our perception of good and evil, and thus there will always be good and evil whether or not a God does or does’t exist. So in the world that Hick proposes, perhaps something that we view now as “semi-good” would become evil, in light of the much “better” things that are occurring.