1. What is the main argument?
This is a simplistic way to represent the structure of the argument (at least as we've discovered so far in this excerpt). This is a deductive argument, where the truth of the premises is meant to establish the truth of the conclusion necessarily. You may have different ways of outlining the bare structure of the argument, but it should amount to something fairly similar. My conclusion is only tentative. At this point he seems to want to conclude several things, one of which is that God does not exist (go back to the first paragraph and read it carefully). I chose the irrationality claim, because in rational discourse, a charge of irrationality is quite serious indeed.
The chain of reasoning should be fairly easy to follow. God's existence is assumed in premise 3 (and that would be uncontroversial to the theologian). With that and premise 1 we have it that He is in fact wholly good and omnipotent. Given that fact, it follows from premise 2 that evil does not exist. But premise 4 claims that evil does exist. This is the contradiction Mackie is referring to: evil exists and evil does not exist. And it is considered irrational to believe a contradiction. At this point in the article, it seems, according to Mackie, that the only premise to reject is premise 4 - God exists; otherwise you are irrational.
2. Are there any terms that need defining?
Most of the terms are clarified and justified by Mackie. However, there are several that you should have been sensitive to:
Contradiction
Proves (to prove something is to provide a rigorous, formal demonstration)
Proposition (do you really know what that means here?)
3. Are there any objections to the reasoning or premises?
The reasoning is solid up to the way I state the conclusion. What actually follows from the given argument, as I represented it, is a contradiction. I think Mackie can easily get to the conclusion that belief in God is irrational with additional clearly stated premises concerning rationality. See if you can work that out.
So we can't object to the reasoning. Mackie thinks the only way out of the contradiction is to reject the premise "God exists." There are other ways to go:
You could object to some other premise. For example, you might try rejecting the premise that "Evil exists," though that might be difficult to justify.You could take issue with Mackie's way of using any number of terms: e.g.,
'wholly good' or 'omnipotent.' Either might allow you to reject, say, premise 2.
In fact, those are the very three points that Mackie claims the theologian cannot consistently hold, and yet must. However, all this is just thinking about the introduction of a much longer article. So you would need to keep reading to sufficiently analyze the argument. Since Mackie seems to be aware of the possible problems in his argument, you should be on the lookout for further justification in the full article. But this is a good start on critically analyzing Mackie's argument.
4. What is the issue?
The existence of God and the irrationality of belief in God.
5. Does the author present counter arguments?
Nothing serious in this excerpt.
6. Are the premises well supported?
Not fully. This is just the beginning of the argument. You would have to test the rest of the article
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