The Problem of Evil (XXVII)

[wiploc]

You are positing a unviverse that has no ability to cause human suffering.

A universe that doesn't cause suffering isn't the same as one that can't.  I can cut off my finger, but I don't.  God can flood the world again, but he doesn't.  

If an all-powerful god was totally against suffering, then there would be no suffering.

It is not apparent that having a universe with a set of natural laws can avoid natural events that can cause suffering.

So your god can't do magic?  It's not that he lacks the will to prevent suffering, but rather that he lacks the ability?

Something as simple as gravity kills an awful lot of people. Wind and water kills people. Where do you draw the line between what "ought not be" and what is permissible for God to allow to happen? 

"Ought" and "permissible" don't come into it.  An omnibenevolent god would choose not to have any suffering.  An omnipotent god could effect that without compromising any other of his other goals.  

Also, there is a bluring of the line between free will and suffering at the hands of nature. People decide where to be and live, people decide how to construct homes and vehicles, and people decide what to do in every particular situation facing them. It is not like there is no safe place. There are many places on the planet that provide protection from serious natural disasters. 

I don't believe anywhere is safe from disaster.  Anchorage doesn't have much problem with locusts, but it does have the earthquakes.  

In any case, if we had a magic-throwing god protecting us, we could safely live anywhere.  

I do not think that omnibenevolence requires intervention to save human life. That would put safety at the top as the greatest good. I think there are at least two things higher than that: 1) There is the greater good of free will and 2) there is the greatest good of each person's knowledge of God. It is not obvious that a universe that achieves these could also be a universe where there is no suffering from natural causes.

There are two ways to style that argument. 

If we say that evil is suffering (and only suffering) and that god is more interested in free will and knowledge than in fighting evil, then god is not omnibenevolent. 

You can just say that if you want, "My god is not omnibenevolent.  The PoE is correct that tri-omni gods can't coexist with evil, but that doesn't rule out my god because my god isn't omnibenevolent." 

Or we can say that evil isn't just about suffering.  Suffering is evil, but so is not having free will, and so is not knowing god.  The thing is, a tri-omni god would have all three.  He would be smart and powerful enough to have all three if he wanted to, and he would want to.