the Theodice problem (David Hume)?

Question

If the evil in the world is intended by god he is not good. If it violates his intentions he is not almighty. God can't be both almighty and good. There are many objections to this, but none that holds since god is ultimately responsible for the existence of evil. Besides, if only god can create he must have created evil. If somebody else (the devil) created evil, how can one know that god, and not Satan created the universe?

Answer 1

Note firstly that the problem is framed in Western thought.
In Buddhism and Hinduism the question and the answers grow out of different assumptions.

Now, assuming there is a God and that God is not unjust or capricious... (If non-existent, no problem. If existant and capricious, we're in deep doo-doo.)
.. then the pain, the suffering, the injustice, is somehow necessary, or is outweighed by good that would otherwise be lost were it suddenly eliminated.
Is such a scenario even theoretically possible?
I think so, even though I don't subscribe to it..
The Christian answer appears to suggest that the vast majority of individuals will not be saved.
But some will, and will live eternallly, experiencing and loving God of their own free will as a result.
(Yes, I know there's a free-will catch here too!)
And these are what the whole universe has been structured to produce. Worth everything else.

It sounds utterly unfair, especially if one is on the outside of the select, elect(?) band. But there's a human analogy.
Gardening. All those seeds rejected, plants thinned out, pruned or removed, new hybrids produced, others abandoned, all in order to produce the best possible garden in the eye of the gardener. Is all that "rejection" and cruelty" worth it? Gardeners say so...
If plants were sentient, they might take some convincing, except perhaps for prize specimens.

I'm not saying this *is* how it is.
As an ex-Christian atheist I hold a simpler position.
But "If God, not good" is not quite the clinching argument it has sometimes been held out to be.

Answer 2

The answer to theodicy is that if God controlled everything, we as human beings would be deprived of free will. The choice then becomes that of God offering perfect protection from every evil, or God endowing humanity with the freedom to seek out what we believe is the right path in life. This is the same dilemma faced by every parent of an adolescent; keep your child safe, or permit him/her the freedom to grow up. Sometimes teen-agers make good choices, sometimes bad. Same for everyone else. And there are natural consequences for some of those choices. There are also innocent people who suffer because of the choices other people make.

Answer 3

God gave man free will. Free will is good. I've seen a lot of protests for freedom. I've never seen one against freedom. I'm still waiting to see the 1st demonstration with people holding up signs that say "down with freedom, we want slavery". But with freedom comes evil. When you give a person free choice or free will(they both mean the same thing), you are giving them the right to do good but also to do evil. Without free will man would not be truly human. He would be a computer. Man could not truly love without being able to hate. If you were married and your husband, that you loved dearly, was killed in an auto accident and I came to you and said "don't worry, I am a brilliant scientist and I can make you a husband exactly like your dearly departed, so much so that if I didn't tell you it was just a computer you would never know the difference", most people would say "I don't want a computer that is programmed to love me, I want some one who will love me because he chooses of his own free will to love me". With out free will there is not such thing as love. But free will requires that you give a person the opportunity to do good or evil and as a result you have evil in the world. God is responsible for the FACT of evil. He's not responsible for the ACTS of evil. The people who choose, of their own free will, to perform those acts are responsible for those.

Answer 4

Evil is a negation. It cannot be created, because it is an abstraction (and a relative one at that). And who defines what is "good" or "evil"? Does the government have a right to outlaw foods that are bad for us, censor television that might have a negative psychological impact, or search us without reasonable cause for our own protection?

Answer 5

Silver has a good answer.


Also consider this----At one time there was only God--so there was no evil. When God created creatures with freewill choice--so as not to make them mindless robots--the possibility of evil coming forward existed. God decided that He would fully judge and fully dispose of sin and evil for all eternity, so that it could not be a continued problem.
So sin must be allowed to manifest itself in all its forms. But once it has exhausted itself---end of days--it will be fully judged and righteously punished. Evil is not a deed or collection of deeds--it is a principle. God also made provision so that anyone entangled in sin and evil could choose redemption, with all of the effort being God's not theirs. So in a nutshell He does it all for you, leaving you without excuse if you miss the boat. But if you are anti-theist and brainwashed into hating God and all religions, then you allow yourself to be convinced that you want nothing to do with God, and you will simply not give God a chance. Who can you blame but yourself. I care about you, whether you know it or not, and wish you would just give God, not me, a chance. You have nothing to lose.

Answer 6

"...What if God was one of us?
...Just a stranger, one of us,
Tryin' to make His Way, Home.
Like a Holy Rolling Stone,
Or like the Pope maybe in Rome..."

Maybe He's evolving, in the form of each of His children, and only becomes perfectly almighty & good when (we are) fully realised.

Perhaps theology is, in some ways, homocentric?

Answer 7

first of all..evil isn't a "thing".. like a rock, for example. you can't have a jar of evil..rather, evil is something that occurs, like.. running. evil has no existence of its own - it is really a lack in a good thing.

so when God created, it is true that all that existed was good. one of the good things that God made was creatures who had the freedom to choose good. in order to have a real choice, God had to allow there to be something besides good to choose. so God allowed these free angels and humans to choose good or non-good [evil]. God didn’t want a race of robots who did not have a free will. God had to allow the possibility of evil for us to have a true choice of whether to worship God or not. if we never had to suffer and experience evil, would we truly know how wonderful heaven is?

God did not create evil, but he allowed it. if he hadn’t allowed evil, we would be worshipping him out of obligation, not by a choice of our own free will

Answer 8

Hmm

Wait untill I can answer "What is god" - Then i can tell you ...

"If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Cheers

Answer 9

Define what is good.