(July 9, 2023 at 11:50 am)FlatAssembler Wrote: When you ask them why would an omnipotent and good God allow evil in the world, the most common response Christians (and I imagine Muslims, but I am not sure about that) give is something along the lines of: "Suffering is a necessary consequence of free will, and it is more important to God to allow free will than to eliminate suffering. All the suffering is ultimately caused by free will.". What do you think, what is the most effective response to that?
I think one of the best responses to that is: "Suffering has existed for hundreds of millions of years before free will, unless you will claim non-human animals have free will and should be held responsible for their actions.". I have started a thread about that on Christianity StackExchange. Honestly, the responses I received there are so ridiculous that I think my time would be better spent elsewhere.
Well suffering is most definitely a feature of having free will, I'm not sure it's really "necessary" in the proper sense but just by having free will you are made able to suffer. Any life form that does not have free will, does not suffer, at least not in the human sense of suffering. And it's not like, "John used his free will to stab another person and caused that person suffering", it's more like, suffering is simply part of free will. It's a package deal. Of course, why an omnipotent God couldn't design free will without the capacity for suffering remains to be seen.
"Imagination, life is your creation"
