Talk:Problem of evil

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[edit] Logical Error in Logical problem of evil

The final statement non-existence of God is easily circumvented in the Logical argument for the Problem of Evil. The current statement does not define God as omniscient, and does classify that God must know evil to eradicate it. Since God is defined as existing in the first statement, this argument should be concluded that God is not aware of evil, not that God doesn't exist.

The Problem of Evil is only a 'problem' when you prove that God does not exist. The first statement should therefore be a definition of God, not a statement about his existence.

I'll make these changes after 24 hours if I don't receive a rebuttal.

Fenricwolf 00:48, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Free Will argument

Where does the cited formulation come from? It is very bad, so is it really from an authoritative source? To wit (I have added line numbers for reference):

1. Good and evil are products of free will (premise)

2. Thus, there can be no good nor evil without free will

3. Thus, to remove evil would be to remove free will, which would also remove all good

4. Thus, to remove all evil is to remove all good, which is evil, so therefore, free will is necessary and is a divine manifestation of God.

Criticism: Either 1 or 2 is redundant; they say the same thing, that free will is a necessary condition for good and evil. 3 does not follow from 1 and/or 2. They say that free will is necessary for good and evil, not that good and evil are necessary for free will. 3 also contains an implication of its own: "To remove evil would be to remove good." The first part of 4 follows from this implication, but only because A implies A (since it is a verbatim repetition). 4 is moreover self-contradictory; it says that to remove all evil is evil. The final part of 4, "Free will is a divine manifestation of God" doesn't follow from anything previously said. (It wouldn't even if what was previously said had made sense.) Suggestion: find an argument that is valid, or rewrite this so it doesn't look like something that tries to be a logical argument. Kronocide 03:06, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, 2 is an implication from 1. Well you could say all logical proving process is redundant (except the assumptions)...

2 is an implication from 1 as A implies A. All logical proofs are tautologies, but they are not all formally redundant. Kronocide 20:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

3 is correct: 1 says that free will "spawns" both good and evil (just as unawareness spawns both options; or 50% probability makes both options equally popular). If there is only good, we cannot say it is choosen freely. So if you remove evil, free will is no longer possible.

Whether 3 is correct or not is not the question. It doesn't follow. Your explanation is interesting, but irrelevant for the logical validity of the argument. Kronocide 20:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

4 is also correct: nothing self-contradictory! It says that a quest for power which attempts to remove all evil and leavy only good cannot be considered good. It is like saying that universalism is evil. (But then what other options for good people? Ascethism?)

Again you are reading things into the text that aren't there. 4 does not say that attempting to remove evil is evil, it says that removing evil is evil. That is as self-contradictory as f___ing for virginity, or it is at the very least highly confusing.
I'm not sure why you spend time defending this text instead of improving it, since you understand it. Trust me, it makes no logical sense. It may still make sense, but it's not an argument of sentence logic or any other proper kind, so should not be formulated and structured as if it was. Kronocide 20:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

However, the free will then opens another problem: if God is omnibenevolent, how can he create hell? If he made the world so that all paths are realized, how can he condemn people for following the "wrong" ones? And finally, if he wants all paths to be realized, then he doesn't want all people to be saints. Indeed, free will means 'we give the Earth to the people and let them rule themselves however they like, basing on whatever morals they like'. By the moment God gives free will to people, he can no longer have any wishes or longings (especially because he already knows the future). Actually it is a curiosum to say God's will is not fulfilled... Nothing could ever happen without former omniscient God's will. So assuming free will is more like a vision of dead God - deism... 83.31.15.129 00:14, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I find it interesting that one of the most well-written books ever to be issued on this topic has not once been mentioned in the entire article. I am referring to C.S. Lewis' "The Problem of Pain". This work addresses each objection raised in this topic, and the wonder is that no one, apparently, has gone to look at it. Why? (Centurion13 20:42, 31 December 2006 (UTC))

One common thread runs through many of these exhaustive discourses on God's goodness, the question of free will, etc., and that is the curious idea that God somehow knows what we will do before we do it. But as C. S. Lewis pointed out in "Mere Christianity", many theologians believe that "some things are not in Time at all", and that Christian theologians believe God is not, either. As Lewis points out:

"Another difficulty we get if we believe God to be in time is this. Everyone who believes in God at all believes that he know what you and I are going to do tomorrow. But if he knows I am going to do so-and-so, how can I be free to do otherwise?"

Lewis goes on to explain that this difficulty arises if we think of God as progressing along the Time-line as we do, the only difference being that He can see ahead and we can't. But suppose God were outside, above the Time-line? Then tomorrow, yesterday and today would be visible to Him in exactly the same way - all the days are 'Now" for Him. He doesn't remember you doing things yesterday, or forsee you doing them a year from now. He simply sees you doing them. In a way, He does not know what you are going to do until you do it, but then, the moment at which you finally do it is already 'Now' for Him. (Centurion13 21:28, 31 December 2006 (UTC))

Kronocide is perfectly correct - the validity of each statement is completely irrelevent - they do not follow logically from each other, and thus do not represent a coherent argument. Since this argument was flagged up a while ago has still not been acted on, I am going to attempt to formulate a more logically-sound version myself. How about the following:

  • Free will requires the potential to so anything one chooses. (premise, or by definition)
  • Thus, free will requires the potential to do evil.
  • Thus, removing the potential to do evil would remove free will.


Note that I have not changed any of the other content in the section, as I am not at all well-versed in Theology. I am simply replacing the bad logical deduction. My conclusion is not exactly the same as the original conclusion, but I think that it is actually closer to the intended result as originally described above the deduction. Branfish 21:07, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cinema

Should this be removed as original research, or is it just that there is inappropriate use of the first person? Also archived some of the older messages on this page (older than 20th August, roughly) Angus Lepper 20:12, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Defining the Evil of God

First let's start by defining Evil, then defining it in the biblical terms. Evil that which results in pain, sorrow, or distress. Okay that was easy, now on to the biblical terminology. The Hebrew word "ra'" is variouly translated as "bad," "gloomy," "ugly," "evil," "calamitous," "malignant," "ungenerous," and "envious," depending on the context. The Greek word "ka•kos'" may be defined as that which is morally evil and/or destructive; the translations are as follows: "bad," "evil," "hurtful," "injurious," and "wrong."

The bible first uses (ra') as the polar opposite of "good." This is shown with God's command to Adam not to eat from the tree of "Good" and "Bad." Further God warned Adam of the concequences for disobedience. (Genesis 2:16, 17) Therefore, it is evident that God sets the standard as to "what is good" and "what is bad or evil." Further, this account shows that is is not within humankind's perogative to set the standard for themselves apart from God.

It is interesting to note that in the bible, God is referred as being the creator of evil or calamity. (Isaiah 45:7) God's enforcing of the penalty for sin, that being death, has proved to be an evil, or calamity for humankind. This reveals that evil is not always synonymous with wrongdoing. Simply put when the administrators of justice must enforce a law they do so by penalty. The penalty is in itself an evil against to one breaking the law. For example if no penalty was given against those who break the laws and practice lawlessness there would be no justice. Sex offenders, Murderers, thiefs of everykind would constantly be free to do as they will, if it were not for Police, judges, court officials, and jailers. Do we as a society see these as evil doers or as those who enforce the law thereby protecting our own civil liberties? If we look at the situation from the vantage point of the law breaker everything these law enforcer do to them is evil and wrong. However, from the vantage point of justice what these law enforcer do is legal and right. Is it wrong to put a person into a small room, limit their freedom to the public or punish them for the crimes thay have committed by whatever means the government of this world have approved? Ofcourse I am aware, as are you that many governments and their laws and law enforcers are in fact cruel and unjust. Does this mean God is cruel and unjust? It sould be taken into account that God always gave warning, well in advance as to what He was going to do if they people continued practicing evil. This was done to give them time to change their ways,and could extend mercy. To do this was in fact undue kindness on God's part. So it is interesting that God in the postition of Law giver, Judge, and Law enforcer, must inflict "evil" against practicing evil doers, in fact seeks to extend mercy where ever possible. See the examples of the flood and also the plagues of Egypt. In both cases God allowed time for people to take advantage of the situation, to escape the intended "evil" against them.

Evil can then be thus put into two different catagories. That of unjustified evil and that of justified evil. For something to be justified it must be within the limits of the law; be that legislative law of governments or divine law or both (being only if the legislative law of the land does not contradict divine law.) Therefore, the arguement is brought into the realm of justice, that of law and order. For that we need to define Justice. Then, both kinds of Evil can be defined. I can only give to a start. Justice is the maintenance, or administration of what is right, in a fair and impartial way and according to a standard.

There are of course questions, such as why does God allow unjustified evil to exist? If God is Almighty, Benevolent, and All-knowing why does He not just remove such obviously unbenificial evil from this world? These questions are not addressed here, see Theodicy discussion: The Biblical Explaination of the problem of evil. This was just to give some perspective on the definition of Evil. As it is so very clearly distorted and blurred. Here is a question for you as a reader of this: Can we honesty attribute our own cruel and unjust works of evil to God? I hope this in some way improves the article of Wikipedia and add some useful insight. As always I invite all to examine and critique what I have written here. Truth-Seeker 24.150.46.62 22:34, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

You say 'These questions are not addressed here' - yes they are. Have you read the article? 84.70.185.115 23:19, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move part into Theodecy?

I suggest at least some of this article, e.g. the responses to the arguments against God, be moved to Theodecy - and preferably improved, as a lot of it reads like unsourced 'original research'. 84.70.185.115 23:17, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed pov simplistic "solution" from introduction

Removed this:

However, the problem can be solved by looking at it this way: - Is there such thing as cold or darkness? The answer is no. Cold and darkness are the absence of heat and light. Using this example, we can say that evil and suffering is the lack or absence of good.

This is obviously very simplistic. Example:

"The fact that a cellar is dark would disprove the existence of a man with an all-powerful torch who wanted light at all costs."
"But dark is just the absence of light" (has no bearing on the above argument)

If a citation were provided the removed sentence could be an illustration of some of the less than satisfactory arguments, but it certainly has no place in the introduction. -- Chris Q 13:07, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

But the question isn't "Why isn't good everywhere?", it's "Why is there any evil at all?" (added anonymously by 66.167.147.167)

[edit] god or God?

Should the spelling by god or God? In some sections it's god and in some it's God. - jlao04 08:44, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

It was God and Gods until [this edit] where someone decided they were both not proper nouns. His edit only affected the introduction, which seemed to bug him for some reason. I don't mind whether its "god" and "gods" or "God" and "Gods", but would object to any POV differentiation. -- Chris Q 11:04, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
I think it should be "a god" and "gods" generally and "God" for the Judeo-Christian god specifically. It is both a common noun and a proper noun. Kronocide 16:14, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RE paragraph at "Challenge cannot be proved false"

(newbie alert)

It seems to me that this rebutal to a challenge to the POE (Problem of Evil) is not logical for this reason: It is not necessary for a challenge to a proof (here, the POE proof) to be falsifiable. What is under test here is the POE: does it, in fact, prove its conclusion. The challenge points out a potential problem with the proof. If the proof cannot prove its conclusion without merely assuming things that are in doubt (e.g., that humans are capable of judging God), then its proof fails.

Moreover, it could be argued that if the challenge cannot be falsified, as paragraph suggests, that must mean that the assumption (that man can judge God) cannot be proved to be true. (Since one way to prove the challenge is false, would be to prove the assumption is true. But since the challenge is not falsifiable, then there must be no way to prove the assumption is correct.) If that is so, we know that POE cannot succeed in its proof.

What is the correct way to handle, what seems to me, something that needs to be corrected?

-- Davrids Tuesday, 2006-12-12 T 23:44 UTC


Well I tried what I though was a well cited edit, but got reverted.

Did I do something wrong with my edit?

Here is what I added:

vvv

But this conclusion (the Ignorance of Man Challenge is unfalsifiable) leads directly to the total debunking of the problem of evil. Since the Challenge cannot be proved false, there must be no way to prove the assumption, that man is capable of judging God. (Because the assumption, if proved, would falsify the challenge, which, as we just saw, cannot be falsified.) Since that unprovable assumption is essential to the problem of evil, the problem of evil is also unprovable.

Immanuel Kant was thinking of this result when wrote in "Failure of All Theodicies,"

"We can understand the necessary limits of our reflections on the subjects which are beyond our reach. This can easily be demonstrated and will put an end once and for all to the trial [that is, the trial of God before the tribunal of reason]."

(As quoted in [http://www.designinference.com/documents/2003.04.CTNS_theodicy.pdf Making the Task of Theodicy Impossible?)

^^^

I can add another citation if that's the problem.

Or maybe "total debunking" should be less assertive??

Please advise.

(I have moved this discussion to this talk page as I believe it is of general interest) -- Chris Q 08:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Did I do something wrong with my edit? -- Davrids Saturday, 2006-12-16 T 14:34 UTC

Basically firstly it was original research. Secondly, showing that an argument is not falsifiable obviously shows that it gives us no scientific understanding of whether a problem is right or wrong. -- Chris Q 07:36, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your response. Leaving your first point alone for now, it is true that the challenge cannot be shown to be false. But, since that is true, doesn't showing that an assumption in the problem of evil (POE) cannot be shown to be true, also mean we have no scientific understanding of whether the conclusion of the POE proof is correct?
I see that this is a sort of circular argument. You might say
"Nobody lives next door because we never hear or see anything"
a counter argument might be
"We don't fully understand what hearing and seeing is. Maybe someone lives there and makes ultrasonic sounds and is visible in ultraviolet."
Someone might point out that:
"That is not falsifiable, and goes against our assumptions of physical existence".
I don't think you would gain much by saying. "It is impossible to prove that there are not people living there who can not be seen or heard by humans. It means your argument that nobody lives next door is unfalsifiable and therefore cannot be proved and may be false!"
Basically this type of argument could be applied to any theory; the idea that gravity is caused by invisible imps is not falsifiable! -- Chris Q 08:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


All of that is true, but misses my point: If we take the time to show that a challenge (it is not a theory) to a proof cannot be proved false, is it not more important that a premise necessary to the proof cannot (or has not) been proved?
The unproved premise here in question is that humans are smart enough to criticise the actions of any god which could have created them. Without proving that, the POE is fatally flawed. -- Davrids 16:27, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
It depends whether it is considered to be a reasonable challenge. You could have a proof:
All cats are animals
Ginger is a cat
Therefore Ginger is an animal.
You could use the same argument against a premise here, that you cannot prove that Ginger is not something that appears in every way to be a cat to humans, but is really something else. This is not falsifiable (in that every test can be claimed that any test is unable to differentiate Ginger from a cat), but would not be considered a reasonable challenge. -- 88.105.122.128 14:26, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


The atheistic POV present in the preceding paragraph ignores the problem that an unfalsifiable challenge presents to the POE. The problem (as seen by a theist) is this: if the challenge cannot be shown to be false, that means that the thesis it challenges also cannot be shown to be true. To a theist, this would seem to be a fatal flaw in the POE.


There is atheistic POV in, "Another problem with the argument from human ignorance," because it lables the unfalsifiable _attribute_ as a "problem" (in a "host of difficulties").
That atheistic POV also asks a challenge to meet the qualifications of an argument of a proof when it is _not_ an argument of a proof. The challenge merely asks that a weakness in the POE proof be corrected before its conclusion is accepted.
For the theist, it doesn't matter whether we have any scientific understanding of whether the challenge is right or wrong. He is not trying to prove that his challenge is correct, he is only asking that the POE proof use no unproven or unprovable assumptions. What matters here to the theist is, whether the correctness of the proof contained in POE can be shown. That's what the article is about, after all.
Wouldn't it be more NPOV to show both the atheist and the theistic viewpoint of what an unfalsifiable challenge means?


The problem of evil argument can only be shown not to be true by saying that one of the premises is wrong. In this case the challenge is to the idea that evil exists, i.e. in affect saying that there is no evil and everything is perfect, but we see "evil" because of our lack of understanding. I know that this is the belief of some mystics, but if introduced should be phrased as such rather than in a round about way.
Our Lord God . . . is at the center of everything, and he does everything. And I was certain that he does no sin; and here I was certain that sin is no deed, for in all this sin was not shown to me . . . . For a man regards some deeds as well done and some as evil, and our Lord does not regard them so, for everything which exists in nature is of God's creation, so that everything which is done has the property of being God's doing. -- Julean of Norwich [1].
Of course if you argue that there is no evil this goes against the teachings of many religions, and this should be mentioned too. -- Chris Q 08:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)



This seems to be a straw man. Whether evil exists or not is moot in this challenge.
No, it is not a straw man. Consider the possibilities. The argument that people cannot judge good is not falsifiable, but never the less must be true or false. If it is false, then the proof stands anyway.
If true, then there are these logical possibilities:
God is Good and acts accordingly so that there is no evil, but we perceive it though ignorance.
We are wrong in judging God to be good, and there is evil.
We are completely wrong, and God is not good, but for some other reason there is no such thing as evil.
Most people arguing that we cannot judge good and evil would assert the first possibility.
Basically the argument stands that if God is good (whether or not we can determine it) and all powerful then there would be no evil (whether or not we can determine it


In my rush to respond before going out of town, I neglected to ask whether you meant to say what this seems to say.
“Whether or not we can determine [evil],” seems to allow the possibility that humans cannot correctly judge evil. This is very close to saying that we do not know that the premise is true, that humans can correctly judge the actions of God. And since this unproven premise is necessary to POE, it seems that we must acknowledge that the conclusion of POE remains unproven.
It seems unlikely that you meant that. Did I misunderstand? -- Davrids 23:44, 28 December 2006 (UTC)


The premise challenged here is the one that states that humans are capable of judging the actions of a god capable of creating them. It doesn't matter that most presentations of POE fail to state this premise. It is still there and still needs to be proved before POE can be scientifically considered valid. -- Davrids 16:27, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


Thanks for considering my long reply. -- Davrids 06:12, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
No problem -- Chris Q 08:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


I still think that the NPOV can be improved by _neutrally_ stating the challenge is not falsifiable and then stating what that means to the atheist and also to the theist. -- Davrids 16:27, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I disagree, because the falsifiability is itself a response to the challenge. In any case, the logic of the argument stands, so the only way to counter it is to show that a premise is wrong. There is no advantage to saying that a premise is falsifiable but then continue to assume that it is true. -- 88.105.122.128 14:26, 21 December 2006 (UTC) (Chris Q)


No, there is another way to successfully challenge a proof.
One can insist that an included premise _must_ be proved.
We have seen no proof for the premise that humans have the capability of judging the actions of any god capable of creating them.
Indeed, the very arguments that show that the challenge is not falsifiable, also show that the challenged premise _cannot_ be proved.
Even if this were not so, the POE proof is still unproven theory because it does not have the necessary proof of its challenged premise.


The question of whether evil exists is moot. It doesn't matter whether it exists, or if it doesn't exist, or, as you argue, "if God is good (whether or not we can determine it) and all powerful then there would be no evil (whether or not we can determine it)."
What matters in this challenge, is whether or not the challenged implicit premise in the POE proof has been proved. To argue against some other position, is to argue against a straw man.


_This_ is the challenge's position: The proof is, and will remain, unproven until the challenged premise has been proved. A NPOV requires that the challenged premise be proved.
Merely assuming as correct, a premise that requires God to not exist, is circular.
For instance: "I assume that I can correctly judge God. God, if he does exist, cannot be wrong, and he says that he cannot be correctly judged by man. But I can correctly judge God. Therefore, God is wrong and, thus, does not exist."
Every presentation of POE assumes the premise that humans can correctly judge God, and so, merely assumes that God does not exist. Every proof that assumes its conclusion, is invalid. Therefore, the POE proof is invalid.
If the atheist really wants to test the proposition that the God of the Bible exists, he may not just assume, as true, things that contradict that proposition.
Those are the reasons the theist would not agree that his challenge to the POE premise is comparable to your example challenge to, "Ginger is a cat."


The atheistic POV of the paragraph in the article exists. It assumes that this challenge can be dismissed for being a non-falsifiable theory.
A balancing theistic POV is that the challenge is not even a _theory_ and, so, doesn't need to be falsifiable. In fact, the theist is _glad_ his challenge cannot be proved false, because it shows the challenged premise cannot be proved to be true. Thus, POE is just unproven theory.


The article's paragraph needs NPOV. -- Davrids 17:36, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
I am beginning to think that the section "Challenge cannot be proved false" is rather pointless. The point of the argument of the problem of evil is that the following cannot all be true.
  • God exists
  • God is completely good.
  • God is all powerful.
  • God is all knowing (at least with regard to the consequences of His/Her actions).
  • Evil exists.
The falsifiability of an objection to a premise is not a big deal, as the argument ONLY shows that there is a contradiction if all are true. In this way it is particularly aimed at certain religions that claim all of the above as pert of their beliefs. If you look at the premises it is hard to see how any of them can be proved falsifiable, so why is that one singled out. Add to this the fact that that section has no citations and I think there are grounds to delete it.
Note that if any of the above are false then the argument falls and the other points cannot be determined. For example:
  • God does not exist. Points 2, 3 and 4 are meaningless and point 5 may or may not be true.
  • God is not completely good. All the other points could be true or false as God would not necessarily avoid evil.
  • God is not all powerful. Some other cause may or may not cause evil.
  • God is not all knowing. He/She might have had good intentions but messed up creation so that evil was an unforeseen consequence.
  • Evil does not exist. This may or may not be because of a good God, who may or may not be all powerful, all knowing, etc.
-- Chris Q 07:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


As you say, in any _reductio ad absurdum_ argument, if an impossibility is produced from a set of premises, one or more of those premises must be false. If we can prove as true, all the premises except one, then we know the unproven premise must be false.
Unfortunately for the validity of POE, this has not been achieved.
In POE, there are at least two unproven premises, as was shown above. One unproven premise is stated. This is, "God exists."
The second one is unstated and, thus, often ignored. But still must be examined.
That premise supposes that non-omniscient humans are as smart as an omniscient god. This is _absurdum_ on its face.
So here is one more possibility to add to your list:
  • God exists, is all knowing, is all powerful, is all good, and his actions cannot be correctly judged by any being that is not all knowing.


Actually this statement disproves itself. If a being cannot correctly judge God or God's actions then they cannot even determine if God is All Good, All Powerful or All Knowing. It's all assumptions. -- [MDH] 19 January 2007

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 152.216.7.5 (talk) 21:29, 19 January 2007 (UTC).


This is true, if you mean the statement does not prove itself to be a truth. If the statement were presented as a truth, it would then be necessary to provide proof of its correctness.
But it is not presented as a truth. Instead, the statement is presented as a _possibility_.
This possibility has not been successfully excluded from reality by the Supposed Problem of Evil. That is the result of this discussion.
I predict (if I have not here proved) that POE will never be able to correctly exclude this possibility.
(Possibly, someone will challenge me to produce proof that this possibility is more than just possibility. Such a discussion is not relevant to whether the POE proof is valid.)


The Problem of Evil is a major liability to atheism. -- Davrids 20:24, 28 January 2007 (UTC)


Fortunately, there are religions which do conform to this possibility.


I support your removal of the paragraph because it was citation-less and POV. -- Davrids 03:24, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Improper redirect

Searching for the problem of pain (in all lowercase) redirects to Problem of Evil. Instead it should redirect to The Problem of Pain (the C.S. Lewis book). I tried to change it, but it doesn't seem to be working. Perhaps someone more savvy can fix it. --kidbritish 23:46, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion: argument from world creation

This is against teologies saying "there is no God in THIS world, because he wants to preserve your free will".

Assume people have free will (and I'm actually not gonna agree with this, but let's assume it anyway).

World could be constructed in another way and people would still have free will. Example: if you play dice, you could have got a 6 instead of 1, as a one-time exception being a part of world laws. This still wouldn't make you unfree.

Having another world order affects your will, but it is still free. As in the above example: you could be more willing to keep playing if your results were better.

Note, the overall probabilities of your life actions shifted a bit (and multiplying this experiment, they could be shifted a lot). You are more towards one direction, even more: your character could change - whilst still being free.

Now, a better example: God knew how world would look like when he created it. He knew what would be the effect of human free will. But was him tied by a destiny? Of course, not. He could have created completely another world, so that human free decisions in it would be other; and would be in better proportions. So that less people would be surprised by hell.

Then why there is so little God in this world? Why doesn't he help us a little, for example in the XXth century?

And well, if you keep saying it's because he wants to hide and wants to keep the number of believers lower... because he wants to keep a fair amount of evil... then I'm going to fulfill this desire of him. ;) I don't think anything could happen against God's will; so whatever I finally do must be already a subject of his plans and the result of some earlier will of him.

Actually, I believe God's precepts should be treated like the ancient virtue, like some kind of a tip, a guide-post how to live well and what to do to succeed in life. But I can't agree they are so strict and absolute that breaking them means your condemnation and eternal hell: is man only a mistake of God? does he not love us enough, also those who follow other ways?

83.31.15.129 00:35, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Theodicy vs Defense (or maybe a Challenge)

The introduction to this article is incomplete. It says that a "proposed solution" to the problem of evil constitutes a "theodicy." This is not correct, and the distinction is important. Alvin Plantinga ("God, Freedom, and Evil," 1977) distinguishes between a "defense" and a "theodicy." A defense merely seeks to show that the claims of any argument from evil are not sufficiently substantiated, such as the idea that a 3-0 God (Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnibenevolent) is inconsistent with the existence of evil. With a defense, the goal is merely to show that these three attributes of God, combined with the existence of evil and premises asserting that an all-good God would prevent all evil, are not logically inconsistent, such that they generate a logical contradiction. The way to do this is to show that the premises of such "logical" or a priori arguments from evil are not necessarily true. If this is the case, then they cannot show that the mere concept of God is inconsistent with the existence of evil. This is different from a theodicy, which comes from the Greek words "theos" and "dikaes" and means "to justify God," where one is concerned to offer an actual reason for why God allows evil. Thus a defense merely seeks to show that certain premises in the a priori argument from evil are not necessarily true, whereas a theodicy attempts to explain the existence of evil. Timm001 03:16, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying and the distinction you make is real. If this defense shows that the POE argument is not complete, then it is not necessary to justify why God might allow evil.
Still, I would have called this action a "challenge" since it challenges the correctness of the argument. "Defense," instead, suggests that something is being defended (at least to me).
I'm quibbling, though.
You might consider this substitution for the sentence:
"Some question the logical validity of this dilemma. Others suggest a theodicy (a reason why such a god would allow evil)." Davrids 04:47, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] evil in heaven - removed sentence.

I have removed the following sentence:

Critics of this argument note that there is evidence in these religious traditions that free will and evil might both indeed exist in heaven.

This sentence does not add anything, the text already says: What about those in heaven - they are free, yet some claim that no evil would ever happen in heaven.

The heaven example is in any case a weaker example, the strong one being why couldn't God create beings that were like Himself. One could argue that if there were evil in Heaven it would be an even stronger indication that God was either not all good or not all powerful. -- Chris Q 07:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Strange assumption..

From where comes the assumption that a god must be "all-good"? It doesn't come from the basis of the Abrahamic religions (ie scripture) So is that really an idea we could argue that a god MUST be? Its' not, and many religious people don't believe god is only good, but rather that he is in and behind everything due to his supposed omnipotence.


I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. Isaiah 45:7

Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it? Amos 3:6

Doesn't sound like scriptures support this modern idea (it hasn't been around for very long.) of a god who is "all-good"... The base of the Abrahamic religons (the O.T) doesn't support it at all, it contradicts it. And I can't find anything supporting it in the Qur'an or the N.T either.


And what is this:

"Actually this statement disproves itself. If a being cannot correctly judge God or God's actions then they cannot even determine if God is All Good, All Powerful or All Knowing."

I agree that no being could determine such but not that is disproves itself. Or does something always have to be proven to be true? (I'm not saying that particular statement you referred to is true, however, but lets assume so for sake of argument.) Wasn't (for example) the theory of gravity true before it was written? Or did gravity work differently before the theory was written? No, it did not, it worked exactly the same way, and when we humans are all gone: It will continue to work the same way it always has, without us. (This is of course, assuming that the theory of gravity is correct, which I'm pretty sure we all do, as evidence suggests so.)

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