The Epicurean Paradox Refutes Classical Theism
The Epicurean paradox points out the contradiction between the existence of evil in the world and the supposed existence of a god who is omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), omnibenevolent (all-loving), and omnipresent (present everywhere). The Epicurean Paradox is one formulation of the problem of evil.
Most of the world’s monotheistic religions (e.g., Islam, Judaism, Christianity) describe their gods as having the four attributes described above. This is generally known as classical theism.
As for what philosophers mean by “evil,” it is just a general term of art to describe things we consider to be really bad. In moral philosophy, evil is separated into two general categories: moral and natural.
Examples of moral evil are torture and murder — some very salient examples would be the various acts of mass murder and genocide that have occurred throughout human history. Examples of natural evil would be things like earthquakes, tsunamis, pandemics, famines, etc. — which are capable of killing hundreds of thousands or millions of people over a short span of time. Natural evil also includes the more banal, but still horrible facts of reality (e.g., that we all die and suffer; that many animals are forced to kill other animals to survive; the sheer fact that parasites, predators, and pathogenic organisms exist).
