Board index ‹ The Problem of Evil and Suffering

[Mammal Man]

No, this would be squarely laid at the feet of an omniscient/omnipotent God.

If God is all powerful and doesn't want to see the little girl suffer like this then he'd foresee it coming and adjust it.

Your argument against this came down to:

"There are always pros and cons. We can’t assume that every case of evil can be eliminated without possibly eliminating a great good."

Which follows that because God hasn't stopped it, that it has some great good attached.

This leads me to believe one of the following to be true:

1. God is omniscient and omnipotent and doesn't care about the girl's suffering, or is not a loving god.
2. God is not omniscient nor omnipotent and can't help her.
3. There is some unseen greater good to the girl's suffering that we can't see.
4. There is no God.

Of these, 1 and 3 would seem to be a God that is at best apathetic and at worst sadistic.

Unless you have another option, which one of these is it?

[jimwalton]

> No, this would be squarely laid at the feet of an omniscient/omnipotent God.

Oh my, this is a vile distortion of logic and theology. The Bible is clear that the horrors perpetuated by humanity are because humanity rebelled against God, went their own way, and themselves made human living a horror.

> If God is all powerful and doesn't want to see the little girl suffer like this then he'd foresee it coming and adjust it.

So God should stop all suffering? He'll have to take control over everyone's bodies so we never stumble, never slip and fall, never have accidents, and never get injured. Science will cease to exist because cause and effect will become meaningless. That bridge in Miami that fell on those motorists and killed four of them (https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/vi ... 7086403921). God's fault, or the people who designed or assembled the thing? If God were to stop all suffering, we could jump off of cliffs without concern because God wouldn't allow us to get hurt.

Not only would he have to control our bodies, but he's have to drive our cars for us. You'll blame God if someone goes through a red light on slips on a snowy road.

People will be able to stab each other with knives and shoot each other with guns. God will not allow people to suffer.

But God will also have to control our minds. That way we won't misinterpret what people say, or say anything that could be misconstrued. Not only have we taken away science and all cause-and-effect, now you have take away our humanity. We're just robots. We don't mean anything we say because God made us say it so no one was suffering.

What exactly is it you want God to "adjust"—everything? Then you have just negated life. Some things? Well, where are you going to draw the line, and then some people are still going to be upset they weren't on the list. This is absurd. I'm not sure you thought through your position.

And so your points are also absurd. Are you claiming that if God doesn't stop all suffering He isn't God? I already showed that doesn't make a shred of sense. Does it mean he isn't loving unless he stops all cause and effect and makes us robots? That doesn't make sense.

You so glibly conclude that God is either not all-powerful or not all-good, but you haven't through through what you're asserting. Instead, God can both be all-powerful and all good and still allow a certain amount of suffering as part of a cause and effect world and people's behaviors governed by their own free will. And since it's absurd to think that God should just stop it all, there are things that an all-powerful and all-loving God can do: help people through their suffering, bring some good out of some of it, rally people to help those who are in need, give us enough intellect and reason and insights into science to create mechanisms to minimize such suffering, along with medical know-how to alleviate pain, medicate illness, and cure diseases and do surgery on people.