The Problem of Evil

[sharplittleteeth]

It's a classic problem: if God is good, why is there evil in the world?

Theologians have tied themselves in knots for centuries trying to answer that one. But the solution is simple. You just need to look at the evidence first, and then create your theories from that. Rather trying to do it the other way round.

As you read this, a chimpanzee is devouring a baby monkey, while its mother shrieks helplessly from a nearby tree. An orca is tossing a terrified seal into the air, in preperation for eating it.

This is nature, we say. We're not supposed to make moral judgements. But this is just a way of sidestepping the truth: nature is rich in suffering and fear.

And if there is good in this world (which there is) it is there because we made it. It is our creation, not the gift of some absent master.

Comments

[mr-e-cat.livejournal.com]

free will is the answer most often posited on this point.

everything must be a choice otherwise what is the point. People must choose to do either 'good' or 'evil'.

I think the harder question to answer is 'What is good and evil' and how much of what we think is good or evil is linked to societal rules or structures.

[strang-er.livejournal.com]

i tend to look at it in either of two ways - that if there is a supreme being of the sort we think of as 'God', then if it is all-powerful and omnipresent, then to my reasoning it would have to be neither benevolent nor malevolent, but sort of morally neutral (like nature itself, or, perhaps more accurately, *as* nature itself). On the other hand, if it is belevolent and just and compassionate, then it seems to me that there must be some limit to its influence in that respect, perhaps only being able to work *through* people's conscience and better nature, as the inspiration for the more humane, compassionate sentiments and actions of people. Either way sounds more likely to me than a being that is both all-powerful and all-compassionate, which doesn't really match up with the observed world around me (though i'd give half a plausibility point to the 'we cannot comprehend the mind of God' argument, though for me if something is that alien and incomprehensible, then trying to understand it logically is as pointless as assigning human values of 'good' and 'evil', 'compassion' and 'justice' etc).

One thing i do know is that, whether or not there is a supreme being, and if it is all-powerful but neutral or all-compassionate but of limited power, or even if it is incomprehensible in human terms, the result to my mind is still that anything we'd call 'good', 'just', 'compassionate' etc is a strictly DIY affair.