Thursday, 28 April 2016

Apologetics 5

I don’t really have a problem with the problem of evil, as there are some answers even I can come up with. While this is a problem and needs to be thought about, here are some glib possibilities.

Like a parent with a child, sometime you need to let the child experience trouble in order to learn. Thus does God let mankind encounter evil.

Or how about:
God has decreed that mankind should have dominion over this world (Genesis 1:28). Well, get subduing people! You should be able to predict and prevent, if not mitigate. Currently, we can't even deal with the results.

Usually the problem of evil is the problem of omnipotent vs omnibenevolent. Typical excuses are "god can't do anything about it" (so not omnipotent) or "you don’t understand evil" (in which case we can't talk about anything) or "god doesn't care" (not omnibenevolent) or "free will!" (which means god isn’t omnipotent enough to give us free will and not commit evil?).

My answer, while glib, does at least give the "it's good for us" excuse and frames it in a way we can comprehend (parent), and covers both natural and human evil. Why aren't the Apologists using this?

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