Since Evil & Suffering Exist, A Loving God Cannot ...?

The Problem of Evil (and God)

A visual explanation by "What is" Media. We create simple explanatory videos for important and complex topics.

---script---

The presence of evil, pain and suffering in our world is the most persistent argument raised against the belief in God. Usually it goes something like this...

An all-knowing God would know evil exists.
An all-loving God would want to prevent evil from existing.
An all-powerful God could prevent evil from existing.
But evil does exist.

Now given that the fourth proposition would appear to be undeniable, it can be inferred that one of the other three must be false, and thus there cannot be an all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful God. Or, to put it another way, if God does exist, He must be either "impotent, ignorant or wicked". Checkmate, or at least some people think that.

However, not too long ago, an American philosopher named Alvin Carl Plantinga put forth a new proposition that is intended to demonstrate that it is logically possible for such a God to create a world that does contains evil. This is how he summarised his defense: A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. CS Lewis would agree saying, imagine a wooden beam became soft as grass when it was used as a weapon, and the air refused to obey me if I attempted to set up in it the sound waves that carry lies or insults. But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and in which, therefore, freedom of the will would be void; nay, if the principle were carried out to its logical conclusion, evil thoughts would be impossible, for the cerebral matter which we use in thinking would refuse its task when we attempted to frame them. Continuing his defense Plantinga says "As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God's omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good."

So, even though God is all-powerful, it is possible that it was not in his power to create a world containing moral good but no moral evil; therefore, there is no logical inconsistency involved when God, although wholly good, creates a world of free creatures who chose to do evil.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky writes in The Brothers Karamazov:

"I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the worlds finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that theyve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened."

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• free
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• cs
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• omnipotent
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[onslaught147]

Well um, what about heaven? This claim supposes that along with free will, comes evil. So if heaven has no evil, than it has no free will? Or does heaven have free will, but therefore has evil with it? If God can create heaven without evil, and with freewill, than the question becomes, why allow evil on Earth? If you say free will answers the question of evil, than you also disprove your own notion of heaven.

[Jaxomy]

Err, you're leaving out a lot of evil. Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Tornadoes, and other natural disaster's are the direct result of God' creation. Does this mean the planet has to have the choice between good and evil too, and the planet is choosing to be evil?

[sweetsweatyfeet]

@masterkeep Absolute free will IS an illusion unless you have special immunity to external forces (stimulae)---and you don't. All you offered is the usual assortment of fallacious, baseless assertions theists are prone to.

Prophesies themselves are vague. Many historical events can (and often are) interpreted as fulfillment. Others are self-fulfilling causing followers to act to carry them out. Even the Jews see them as stories and embellishment made up to to look like fulfillment.

[MrOdsplut]

Irenaeus' theodicy pwns this one.

[masterkeep]

@sweetsweatyfeet You haven't thought this through very well. Richard Dawkins [an atheist] rightly points out that free will is an illusion if there is not God, for we are just reacting to stimulus. Only if you believe in a creator do you have reason to expect that you have free will. I also see that you cannot answer against my proof so you attack elsewhere. These "ancient texts" predict several events beforehand proving their veracity. Omniscience wins.

[sweetsweatyfeet]

@masterkeep There is no rebellion just ancient texts spouting absurdities of zero credibility. The "cause and effects" depicted within are falsehoods; a product of superstition and credulity that fueled the mentalities who inhabited the iron age middle east. Omniscience doesn't exist. Human free will is subject to our natural attributes and to forces that act on us us. Free will pertains only to our capacity to think, to logically predict and act based on a desired outcome.

[masterkeep]

@sweetsweatyfeet No, all of nature followed our rebellion and as a consequence is subject to futility.  Free will does not remove consequences. You don't understand cause and effect - the choice is the cause, the effect is the knowledge of what will happen. It is like reading the results in a book - my reading about something that happened didn't change it, neither does it just because the "book" was read before it happened.

[deyz112]

"So, even though God is all-powerful, it is possible that it was not in his power to create a world containing moral good but no moral evil; therefore, there is no logical inconsistency..."

There's a logical inconsistency right there...

[footballsoccer358]

God's Glory Forever and ever.

[Megaritz]

Some people are more predisposed to commit evil acts than others, due to their genetics and brain chemistry. Even if we grant that free will exists, doing good comes more naturally and easily for some people than for others. Other people have a tendency towards anger issues, aggression, selfishness, and violence. We might say some are more strongly *tempted* to sin than others. If God existed, he could have made us free to sin, and with some sources of temptation--but not *as* strongly tempted.

[mikefromwa]

This whole debate seems to be little more than an exercise in mental masturbation, driven by people who are desperately trying to defend the notion that their imaginary god could be real. What a pointless waste of time.