The Problem of Evil, Free Will, and the "Greater Good"

[Venom7513]

I think you have to look at the whole system. Is the system good and for the best? This is the question when it comes to ultimate benevolence.

This is brilliant, or maybe I'm just an idiot. I never thought of it from that angle. In proposition II I set up a bi-conditional relationship between "An omnibenevolent beings will X" and "X is good."

While it is necessarily true that if omnibenevolent being wills X, then X is good. I can't think of a good reason that X is good implies that God wills X. In fact, the more I think about it, the more absurd it seems. An omnipotent being need not will every good thing. After all, is it not unreasonable for there to exist multiple good options in a given scenario. Furthermore, under this assumption no one but the omnibenevolent being could do good!

That being said, I think an important aspect of omnibenevolence is a certain acting for the "greater good," but this "greater good" is not equivalent to all good; rather, it is a subset of good.

This completely demises my paradox. Thank you for your insight!

Anything which requires humans to do anything or be part of is not.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this, but I will try to answer the objection anyway. The reason I used the atypical wording of means and ends rather than actions is to avoid trivial conflicts within the definition of omnipotence (Can an omnipotent being do X such that he can not do Y? If so, then he can not do Y; therefore he is not omnipotent. If not, then he can not do X; therefore, he is not omnipotent.).

This argument fails to note that there are some things that by their very nature can not be done. If omnipotence is to include these actions, then it is not even self-consistent; however, if the domain the word could somehow be limited to only that which is doable, the definition would hold water. Now, it is obviously impossible to enumerate a set of every doable thing; however, we can prove that a given thing is in the set by demonstrating that it can be done. For instance, I can lie. Therefore, lieing must be able to be done.

Alas, this restriction still fails to take into account the subject's relationship to an action that he or she may be preforming. For example, I am very good at not being God. To solve this problem we need only insist that actions be predicated. An easy way to do this is to separate ends from means.

An end refers to a goal state (or set of potential states depending on the context) of a suitably restricted portion of the universe. In my paradox I used the idea of stopping a gun. Whereas a means refers to a process of achieving the ends (smiting the shooter, stopping the bullet, etc). This separation ensures that a beings status does not lead to a trivial contradiction.

Can God make a box into which he can not look? No, but no one can make a box into which God can not look.

Finally, you idea of "requiring humans" only stipulates the means not the ends. I can think of no end that requires humans.

Where did you find anything which might support this assumption?

To be frank, the dictionary. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the purpose of this statement is not to restrict an omnibenevolent being; rather it is to concisely define the nature of good. If the omnibenevolent being doesn't do good, who does?

As I mentioned in another post, the flaw in my reasoning stems from the idea that God does every good thing. I apologize for my inaccuracy on that point.

Argumentation is worthless. Show me the physical evidence.

The other day on the news I saw a story of a man who shot another man. There was another guy who could have stopped him, but didn't and was charged as an accessory to murder.

In this case, A is the guy who shot the other guy, B is the guy who could have stopped him, E is the killing of the man who was shot. E' is the stopping of the killing of the man who was shot, and G is still any simultaneously omnipotent and omnibenevolent being.