In the book of Jonah, the prophet is commanded by God to go to Nineveh, but he chooses to flee in the opposite direction. As a result, he faces a storm at sea and is swallowed by a great fish, symbolizing a form of divine intervention or correction. Eventually, he fulfills his mission. Can some of the difficulties or losses that believers experience in life be attributed to them having strayed from the specific purpose or calling God has placed on their lives, similar to Jonah’s situation? - Are there theological or denominational views that support or reject this idea? - How does the New Testament handle this concept, especially in the context of grace and free will? - Are there examples besides Jonah where people faced hardship because of ignoring God’s will?

The problem of **theodicy** is the answer to the question of God's justice posed by the evil plainly observable in the world: If God is all-powerful, he has the power to prevent evil. If God is all-knowing, he knows that evil is happening and how to prevent. How, then, can God be just if he does not prevent evil when he could? It's very popular to answer this with the idea of of **free will**. God could prevent evil, but he allows people to do evil because our free choice to do or not do evil is necessary in order for us to genuinely do good. In particular for us to have genuine love for God we must have a free choice with the possibility of not loving him. I'm surprised by how commonly people find this an emotionally satisfying answer to the theodicy problem; to me it doesn't help at all. When I first heard it, it seemed strikingly hollow to me. And it still does today. (Please note I'm only talking here about the emotional appeal, not the intellectual appeal.) First of all, it doesn't seem relevant to the theodicy problem. "People have free will, therefore God is justified in not stopping evil" seems like an obvious non sequitur. Free will doesn't generally justify non-intervention in our day-to-day lives. For instance, a police officer who failed to stop an active shooter could not make the excuse that doing so would have interfered with the shooter's free will, nor could the officer defend his own justice by saying that the only way for people to freely obey the law is if they also have the free uncoerced option not too. While it's certainly desirable for people to freely choose to follow the law, I don't see why one would infer from that that it's better not to enforce the law. In the same vein, I note that loving parents regularly interfere with their children's free choice in order to protect them from harm. A father who allowed his child to walk off a cliff when he could have prevented it would be arrested, and couldn't defend himself by saying that he was respecting his child's free choice. Secondly, the claim that genuine love requires the real possibility of not loving seems artificial to me. I don't think I've heard love defined that way outside of this specific context, and it does not seem to apply anywhere else in Christian theology. For instance, we believe that the persons of the Holy Trinity are all mutually loving one another. We would surely never say that the Father's love for the Son is not genuine, nor would we say that the Father might possibly not love the Son. But if neither of those is true, then it cannot be the case that genuine love requires the genuine possibility of not loving. Similarly, isn't the future we look forward to in the Resurrection a future wherein we no longer have the possibility of sinning? But surely we cannot say that in the New Heavens and New Earth we will no longer have free will. And even in popular usage, we often talk about "love" without thinking about whether there is the possibility of not loving. E.g. when I tell my mom I love her, neither of us are thinking that it necessarily entails the possibility it could have been otherwise. I'm sure free will theodicists would say that that is implicit, but it certainly isn't close to the top of mind in most situations. It's not how I *normally* think about love. I am certainly aware that it's possible to philosophize your way out of those problems. This is not intended to be a refutation of free will theodicy, I am simply explaining why it's counterintuitive to me. The solutions to these problems require complex, sophisticated arguments which sacrifice the simple satisfaction that so many people find in free will theodicy. **My question is primarily psychological:** I want to understand why the free will theodicy is appealing. Is it that people generally don't consider these objections, which appear to me to be both obvious and catastrophic? I'm skeptical of that because I don't believe I'm that much smarter than average. Or are the philosophical answers to them actually obvious and straightforward? I'm skeptical of that too because I don't think I'm that much stupider than average. I'd like to believe there is some other explanation which I'm not thinking of. For instance, perhaps there is a better framing of free will theodicy which shifts the intuition such that my objections don't seem so severe. I could imagine that might be possible without requiring too much complexity to be easily understood. **I'm not asking for an explanation that is both airtight and simple**. That's too much to ask from any theological idea. Rather, I'd like to see a simple explanation that doesn't have *obvious* holes. Or if that's not possible, then I'd like to understand the psychology a little better of those who are satisfied by free will theodicy. Perhaps the objections that seem natural to me appear forced? Or perhaps they really do find the sophisticated philosophical defenses of free will theodicy emotionally compelling even though the simple explanation isn't (except as a summary of something more complex)? ---- I apologize if this sounds like a "gotcha" question, but it is a genuine concern for me. Many people I meet put a lot of stake in free will theodicy and I'd like to understand why a little better. Also, to be perfectly clear, I don't believe free will theodicy is a useless or anti-Biblical idea. But I see it as a minor plank or supplementary to a broader theodicy, not as the primary defense of God's justice.

Throughout history, people have faced suffering, sometimes even choosing to endure pain or death for a cause they believe is greater than themselves. Soldiers in war, for instance, may face the possibility of dying because they believe their sacrifice will protect others or bring about some greater good. If I had the certainty that my death would save others or fulfill some noble purpose, I could understand willingly sacrificing myself. Jesus, had that knowledge about His own sacrifice. He knew His suffering would bring redemption. However, as an individual, I lack that certainty. I don’t have the divine knowledge Jesus had about the greater meaning behind His suffering, and yet I am still expected to endure pain, hardship, and loss. Why is it that humans are required to endure so much suffering without the kind of clarity that Jesus had? Why do we go through physical and emotional pain that often seems endless and without purpose? How can we find the strength to keep going in the absence of clear knowledge of the purpose of our suffering? Does this kind of endurance even have meaning, or is it simply part of the human experience that we must accept? How do we endure the feelings of helplessness and despair when we don't know why we are going through it all?

From [SEP](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/theodicies/#FreeWillTheo) : >#### 6. Free Will Theodicy > >With respect to the question of the justification of pain, cruelty, and other evils in relation to God, it is important to acknowledge the significant role played in theistic thought by appeal to the power of human free choice. We have seen above that many of the theodicies on offer rely on it. One prominent way to defend the goodness and other perfections of God in response to the evils of the world is to point out that, after all, God did not bring about the Rwandan genocide or the Holocaust or someone’s sexual assault. Instead, these were caused by human actions, which the theist may suggest were freely chosen by perpetrators. On the free will theodicy, God remains an absolutely perfect being even in light of the suffering in the world, because it is created beings who freely choose to harm each other (and non-human animals and the environment), and none of this is God’s direct doing. What goes wrong in our world is not the fault of God but rather the fault of the wrongdoers who use their power of free will to act badly. The free will theodicist holds that it is a great good that God gave us free will and allows us direct the course of our lives by way our own free choices (Swinburne 1998). The result of the gift of free will to the billions of people on the planet is a whole lot of bad consequences from evil choices, which God is justified in allowing because of the greater good of the gift of free will. > > Several problems face the line of thought that lays all the blame for the pain and suffering in the world on the bad free choices of created beings. One problem is this: even in cases of free actions that cause harm, if God is in control of the universe, then God at least allows the harm to be freely done to the victims by the perpetrators. God’s omnipotence indicates that God could have intervened to prevent a bad choice and could have intervened after the choice to prevent its most harmful consequences. God could cause someone who intends to rape to twist his ankle and fall to the ground, for instance, or to get violently ill, or faint, preventing the intended victim’s assault. In answer to the question of why God did not do that, there must be some good reason. Preserving the stability of natural laws is a good that is sometimes suggested here. (For relevant discussion see Swinburne 1998 and for a contrary view see Sterba 2019.) > > Another problem for the free will theodicy is that not all cases of suffering are brought about intentionally by human free choices, such as damage in the wake of hurricanes and the ravages of inherited diseases. Bad medical outcomes in surgical cases, too, do not always result from malicious intent or professional negligence. When a tornado rips through a town destroying some homes and not others, no human being freely chose for certain houses rather than neighboring ones to be destroyed, and no human being freely brought about the tornado in the first place. > > Another difficulty facing the free will theodicy is this: whereas some philosophers think that free will would be ruled out by the truth of causal determinism (the hypothesis that at each moment there is exactly one future, given the laws of nature and the events of the past), other free will theorists believe that we can act freely even if causal determinism is true. **Arguably it is crucial that the free will appealed to by a free will theodicist must be indeterminist (libertarian) in nature**. (For exploration of indeterminist accounts of free will, see Clarke 2003; Ekstrom 2000, 2019; Franklin 2018; Kane 1996; Mele 2006; O’Connor 2000.) **The free will theodicist thus must maintain that all compatibilist accounts of the nature of free agency, including those provided by Frankfurt (1971), Watson (1975), Fischer (2012), Nelkin (2011), and Wolf (1990), among others, are implausible accounts**. In citing the free will of created beings as the greater good that justifies God in permitting instances of evil or the facts about evil, the free will theodicist also needs to hold that causal determinism is, in fact, false and that we human beings do have **libertarian free will**. Without maintaining these positions, the free will theodicist lacks an explanation for the violence and cruelty in the world that shields God and preserves God’s goodness, since God could have established the initial conditions of the universe and decreed that deterministic natural laws govern all events, so that the events in the world unfolded to include none that are painful, harmful or wrong. **God could have done this even in worlds in which he created free (in a compatibilist sense) rational beings**. > > Here is an additional problem for the theodicy according to which God’s allowance of suffering is due to God’s desire to create beings with **libertarian free will** and to allow creatures to carry out their evil intentions as well as their good ones: such morally significant libertarian free will (in Alvin Plantinga’s (1974) terms)—or what Swinburne (1998) calls serious free will, which is **libertarian free will** with respect to seriously good and seriously evil potential actions—must have immense positive value, in order for it to be sensible to think that a perfect being would decide to create beings with that power. The claim that such serious **libertarian free will** is worth it stands in need of convincing defense. (This issue is addressed in detail in Ekstrom 2021.) Notice that there is a difference between a proposed causal explanation of evil and a divine justification for allowing evil. If the causal explanation for a vast range of cases of evil in our world is human free will, then still, in order to serve as a God-justifying reason for permitting those evils, it has to be a very great outweighing good for God to create beings with serious morally significant free will and not to intervene to prevent the consequences of their wrong choices. My understanding of [Calvinism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_in_theology#Calvinism) is that Calvinists believe in *predestination*. But predestination seems to invalidate libertarian free will, which is a key premise in the Free Will Theodicy. **What is the Calvinist take on the Free Will Theodicy?**

This is not my own question. I just copied and pasted this question from someone else, which that person should have asked here. https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/120705/are-swinburne-like-free-will-rebuttals-to-divine-hiddeness-arguments-inconsisten > For me, the biggest reason to doubt God's existence is that he is so non-obvious/hidden in comparison to his power and performance of highly obvious and visible acts in scriptures (always "a long long time ago..."). > > I asked a philosophically-minded Catholic friend about this, wondering why if God wants us to have a relationship with Him and to act in morally correct ways, why does he make it so hard to even arrive at a conclusion that he exists, let alone whether we should follow and worship him. > > They responded with what is called a "greater goods" argument (similar to responses for Evil), in that "If God made it obvious he existed, then we'd be coerced into being good, which would subvert our moral free will. Coming to believe is in itself a greater good." > > Putting aside my disbelief in "libertarian free will" (of the kind that is supposed to make us theologically responsible for our choices), it seems odd to explain lack of evidence by appealing its impact on free will - if our will is free, then no matter what we know we will always have the capacity to do otherwise -- we just make choices with more or less information. > > I found a nice snippet from an IEP article that summarized my friend's point nicely (with citations to greats like Swinburne): > > > Several goods have been proposed as the reason (or part of the reason) that God allows undesirable nonbelief phenomena. One such good is morally significant free will. The idea here is that the greater awareness one has of God, the greater the motivation one has to act rightly (due to a desire to please God, a fear of punishment for doing wrong, and so forth), and therefore if God were too obvious, we would have such a strong motivation to do good that it would cease to be a true choice. This has been defended by Richard Swinburne (1998). Helen De Cruz also addresses this question, examining it through the lens of cognitive science of religion. She suggests that there is some empirical evidence for the claim that a conscious awareness of God heightens one’s motivation to do good (De Cruz 2016). > > In particular, the following line is borderline incoherent in light of broader Christian views on the nature of free will and moral responsiblity: > > >...if God were too obvious, we would have such a strong motivation to do good that it would cease to be a true choice. > > This flies in the face of much of Christian doctrine. For example, St Andrews Encyclopedia of Theology states (emphasis mine): > > >... God’s goodness and providential control over creation form a very powerful problem of evil: if God is the creator of the world and has providential control over it, it seems that God is also the source of evil and death in the created world. One attractive way to solve these tensions is to assume the existence of a robust human free will. **If humans have free will, God cannot determine what humans freely do in moral and spiritual matters**. Humans are morally responsible because they make their own choices. God is not responsible for evil and sin, because they are the doing of **humans, whose actions are not forced by God**. > > This directly contradicts the statement that there needs to be "epistemic distance" or murkiness to the reality of God for our choice to be a "true choice" -- all choices are true choices according to this theological encyclopedia. > > I also found a discussion by Trent Horn on this in relation to the reality of Hell and its relation to free will: > > > One of my arguments for why I believe Hell is eternal is that the damned make it eternal by continually sinning and rejecting God. **They just double down on their sins and continue to wallow in them and routinely choose them over God for all eternity**. And you probably know people like this who are stubborn, who are malicious, that even when they’re offered mercy and grace, they turn it down and they double down on their own sins and they find almost a sick kind of pleasure in their own sins and in their own stubbornness. And I think that that’s what Hell is, that Hell, it has a lock, but the lock is on the inside. That people choose to not unlock it, that **if you took someone out of Hell and place them into Heaven, they would curse God and march right back into Hell and consider it to be better**. > > Again, this Christian apologist is basically saying that our free will is so strong that even after learning of the true, awful reality of Hell, those people would *still* choose to sin and separate from God. > > In the same article, Trent Horn makes another telling remark: > > > So that’s true. God wants all people to be saved. But just because God wants something, it doesn’t follow that’s going to happen. God wants me to not ever commit a sin in my life. Now, that makes sense, right? Does God want Trent Horn to sin? No, he doesn’t want me to sin. In fact, Jesus says, “Be perfect like your Heavenly father is perfect.” God wants me, from this moment going forward, to not commit a sin. Am I going to commit a sin? You bet I’m going to. In fact, James 3:2 says that we all stumble in small ways. So, there are many things that God wants, and that represents his perfect will for us, but he understands that we are not puppets on a string, we are not marionettes. And so, there are things God wants for us, but **we can choose to not go along with his plan**. > > ---- > So, **Are Christian's trying to have it both ways?** > > They like free will because it (permanently) puts the responsibility on us, not God, for the evils that happen and choices we make. God cannot be held liable *no matter what he does* -- that is a key point apologist answers to God's apparent impotence in the face of evil and disbelief/skepticism. They claim that we should not sin because God wants us not to sin, but if we know he wants this "too well" then we are being compelled?! > > So much of Christianity is geared around fostering a deep feeling of the reality of God, and also a healthy "fear/respect" of him and of the possibility of hell. If freely choosing God is such a greater good, so great that God puts up with all the negatives of free will, why are churches working so hard to undermine that freedom? > > Overall, it seems like free will defense to Divine Hiddenness is a dead end, as it relies on a lack of free will that we are supposed to have according to the exact same theologians.

I am wondering what people mean by God having omnibenevolence. I see it having a couple meanings; one being God loves all, which I agree with. Another one is if God is all good, which obviously He is. He created the morality and is above it. He decides what is good and what is bad. Or people good mean He is infinitely kind. Kindness according to the oxford dictionary is > "the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate." I would argue that God is not infinitely kind, otherwise there would be no hell. or perhaps people mean something completely different. What's the general consensus? edit: i probably just don't understand something

My understanding is that the concept of Hell can have multiple interpretations. Some see it as a temporary purgatorial state or as a state of separation from god. My question focuses on Christian beliefs where Hell is characterized as a place of eternal conscious torment. Do Christians holding such beliefs see the idea of infinite torment in response to finite sin as generally compatible with that of a loving, just, or benevolent creator? Is there a consensus on how to reflect on this issue? What bothers me about the idea of eternal punishment is that it would actually be better for a person to die as soon as they are baptized, since that would drastically reduce the possibility of being sentenced to Hell. The person might end up in Heaven anyway, but getting a few comparatively fleeting conscious moments in exchange for a higher risk of infinite pain looks to be an insanely poor deal. (For the sake of argument, we may ignore the denominations which believe that damnation is pre-determined)

When asked "*If there is an omnipotent and good God, why is there suffering in the world?*", the most common response Christians 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.*". I think one of the most serious problems with that response is that suffering predates free will by hundreds of millions of years. Which all beings have free will? I don't think anybody would seriously argue that non-human animals have free will, in the sense that they should be held responsible for their actions. And human beings have existed for, let's say, two million years. But which all animals are capable of suffering, at least feeling physical pain? It's hard to tell, the general consensus seems to be that it is birds and mammals and perhaps octopuses. The latest common ancestors of birds and mammals existed 300 million years ago. Now, many people think that the ability to feel pain has evolved separately in birds and mammals, so that would push the number of years suffering has existed to lower, but we are still talking about hundreds of millions of years. So, for hundreds of millions of years, there was suffering in the world, but there was no free will. How do the proponents of the "free will" theodicy explain that?

I understand that a form of this question would have been previously asked, however I think I have a slight difference with regard to a solution to this problem, with regard to God. The problem of evil is a question that potentially dismisses the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God, on the grounds that how can that God exist in the world when the evil of man and the suffering of humans and animals within our world exist and not only because of the actions of those animals and humans, there are natural disasters outside the control of man that cause suffering. Why does this God allow that to happen when God has the power to prevent it? My response to the Epicurean problem of evil is: why would God create a world without evil in the first place, because if so, there would be nothing to reward the inhabitants of that world who have lived a just and moral life and whose actions tried to limit the amount suffering that their actions caused within that world to others, etc? Is the Epicurean problem of evil (a.k.a. the [Epicurean paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurean_paradox)) a dumb question with regard to God, not just from the Christian perspective but also from the perspective of all world religions? Why would God begin with heaven first, when heaven is a place free from evil? How can you reward behaviour within heaven with a better life after your presence there?

It's accepted by most Christians nowadays that only the original documents are inerrant, therefore the modern Bibles are bound to have contradictions because of copyist errors and translation errors. And we can see that in numerous verses with at least numerical discrepancies. So we can never compare them with the original. So, I have two main questions: - Why did God allow that? We do not have the original texts anymore, so we can never see this supposed inerrancy, and that can put heavy discredit on the Bibles we have today, one can wonder what else there is wrong without us being able to know, isn't that counter-productive to Christianity? He supposedly intervened on the writing and canonization, but didn't on the copies and translations, He could at least make someone lock up the original documents in secure vaults (even an angel), but chose not to, and as a result we ended up with only the fallible texts at the end, why? That goes against God's nature of being the most responsible being who is deeply concerned with having his message understood. - How can this be reconciled with [Matthew 24:35](https://www.bibleref.com/Matthew/24/Matthew-24-35.html) ? My reasoning goes like this, since we don't have the autographs, we don't have the inerrant words of Jesus written down to us, so they don't exist anymore, they "passed away" at least barely. Or, we can accept that in regard to Jesus' words, at the bare minimum, are written down to us without error (this requires a strong dose of faith, but that's what religion is supposed to look like either way). God simply wanted His infallible words to be lost forever, and I want to know why.

Deuteronomy 20:10-18 ESV > 10 “When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. 11 And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. 12 But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. 13 And when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword, 14 but the women **and the little ones**, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves. And you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you. 15 Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. 16 **But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes**, 17 **but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded**, 18 that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God. Joshua 6:20-21 ESV > 20 So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown. As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted a great shout, and the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they captured the city. 21 **Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword**. It's undeniable that a plain reading of these passages suggests that God commanded the complete annihilation not only of the adult inhabitants of Canaanite cities but also their children. Slaughtering children is universally recognized as a profound moral evil. If a group of soldiers were to invade our city, break into our homes, and kill and slaughter everyone, including babies and children, our fundamental moral instincts would undoubtedly recognize it as an egregious atrocity. In light of this, how can such actions be reconciled with the concept of a loving God? If under any other circumstances, our moral compass would unequivocally condemn the slaughter of children as profoundly wrong—arguably the epitome of wrongdoing—why should the slaughter of Canaanite children be viewed as an exception? How could such a command be considered the most loving, just, and benevolent action that God could have taken? To encourage objective answers, I'm primarily interested in exploring theodicies found in Christian literature (please provide references where applicable). --- **Note**: My question has been prompted by recent discussions on YouTube, namely, [William Lane Craig Defends the Canaanite Slaughter](https://youtu.be/WjsSHd23e0Q) and ["It's Horrific" | Reviewing WLC's Defense of the Slaughter of the Canaanites w/ Akin and Rauser](https://youtu.be/lhZtIvgbi9M) . --- **A related passage from Psalm 137** > 8 O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! 9 **Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!** I thank @NigelJ for the suggestion.

Previously, I inquired on https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/100110/61679 . Now, I would like to shift the focus to Christian responses to the **Evidential Problem of Evil**. For an in-depth exploration of this argument, a comprehensive article is available at [The Evidential Problem of Evil | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://iep.utm.edu/evil-evi/) . I'll provide a short version with the gist of William Rowe's formulation of the argument, followed by a longer version with multiple excerpts from the original article for those seeking deeper insights. ## Short version > 1. There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some > greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. > 2. An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without > thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad > or worse. > 3. (Therefore) There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. (Rowe 1979: 336) ## Longer version > Evidential arguments from evil seek to show that the presence of evil in the world inductively supports or makes likely the claim that God (or, more precisely, the God of orthodox theism) does not exist. A variety of evidential arguments have been formulated in recent years, but here I will concentrate on one very influential formulation, namely, that provided by William Rowe. **Rowe’s version of the evidential argument has received much attention since its formal inception in 1978, for it is often considered to be the most cogent presentation of the evidential problem of evil**. James Sennett (1993: 220), for example, views Rowe’s argument as “the clearest, most easily understood, and most intuitively appealing of those available.” Terry Christlieb (1992: 47), likewise, thinks of Rowe’s argument as “the strongest sort of evidential argument, the sort that has the best chance of success.” It is important to note, however, that Rowe’s thinking on the evidential problem of evil has developed in significant ways since his earliest writings on the subject, and two (if not three) distinct evidential arguments can be identified in his work. Here I will only discuss that version of Rowe’s argument that received its first full-length formulation in Rowe (1978) and, most famously, in Rowe (1979), and was successively refined in the light of criticisms in Rowe (1986), (1988), (1991), and (1995), before being abandoned in favour of a quite different evidential argument in Rowe (1996). > > **An Outline of Rowe’s Argument** > > In presenting his evidential argument from evil in his justly > celebrated 1979 paper, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of > Atheism”, Rowe thinks it best to focus on a particular kind of evil > that is found in our world in abundance. He therefore selects “intense > human and animal suffering” as this occurs on a daily basis, is in > great plenitude in our world, and is a clear case of evil. More > precisely, it is a case of intrinsic evil: it is bad in and of itself, > even though it sometimes is part of, or leads to, some good state of > affairs (Rowe 1979: 335). Rowe then proceeds to state his argument for > atheism as follows: > > 1. There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some > greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. > 2. An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without > thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad > or worse. > 3. (Therefore) There does not exist an omnipotent, omniscient, wholly good being. (Rowe 1979: 336) > > This argument, as Rowe points out, is clearly valid, and so if there > are rational grounds for accepting its premises, to that extent there > are rational grounds for accepting the conclusion, that is to say, > atheism. > **The Factual Premise** > > Criticisms of Rowe’s argument tend to focus on its first premise, sometimes dubbed “the factual premise,” as it purports to state a fact about the world. Briefly put, the fact in question is that there exist instances of intense suffering which are gratuitous or pointless. As indicated above, an instance of suffering is gratuitous, according to Rowe, if an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented it without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse. A gratuitous evil, in this sense, is a state of affairs that is not (logically) necessary to the attainment of a greater good or to the prevention of an evil at least as bad. > > **Rowe’s Case in Support of the Factual Premise** > > Rowe builds his case in support of the factual premise by appealing to particular instances of human and animal suffering, such as the following: > > **E1: the case of Bambi** >> “In some distant forest lightning strikes a dead tree, resulting in a forest fire. In the fire a fawn is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering” (Rowe 1979: 337). > > Although this is presented as a hypothetical event, Rowe takes it to be “a familiar sort of tragedy, played not infrequently on the stage of nature” (1988: 119). > > **E2: the case of Sue** >> This is an actual event in which a five-year-old girl in Flint, Michigan was severely beaten, raped and then strangled to death early on New Year’s Day in 1986. The case was introduced by Bruce Russell (1989: 123), whose account of it, drawn from a report in the Detroit Free Press of January 3 1986, runs as follows: >> >> The girl’s mother was living with her boyfriend, another man who was unemployed, her two children, and her 9-month old infant fathered by the boyfriend. On New Year’s Eve all three adults were drinking at a bar near the woman’s home. The boyfriend had been taking drugs and drinking heavily. He was asked to leave the bar at 8:00 p.m. After several reappearances he finally stayed away for good at about 9:30 p.m. The woman and the unemployed man remained at the bar until 2:00 a.m. at which time the woman went home and the man to a party at a neighbor’s home. Perhaps out of jealousy, the boyfriend attacked the woman when she walked into the house. Her brother was there and broke up the fight by hitting the boyfriend who was passed out and slumped over a table when the brother left. Later the boyfriend attacked the woman again, and this time she knocked him unconscious. After checking the children, she went to bed. Later the woman’s 5-year old girl went downstairs to go to the bathroom. The unemployed man returned from the party at 3:45 a.m. and found the 5-year old dead. She had been raped, severely beaten over most of her body and strangled to death by the boyfriend. > > Following Rowe (1988: 120), the case of the fawn will be referred to > as “E1”, and the case of the little girl as “E2”. Further, following > William Alston’s (1991: 32) practice, the fawn will be named “Bambi” > and the little girl “Sue”. > > Rowe (1996: 264) states that, in choosing to focus on E1 and E2, he is > “trying to pose a serious difficulty for the theist by picking a > difficult case of natural evil, E1 (Bambi), and a difficult case of > moral evil, E2 (Sue).” Rowe, then, is attempting to state the > evidential argument in the strongest possible terms. As one > commentator has put it, “if these cases of evil [E1 and E2] are not > evidence against theism, then none are” (Christlieb 1992: 47). > However, Rowe’s almost exclusive preoccupation with these two > instances of suffering must be placed within the context of his belief > (as expressed in, for example, 1979: 337-38) that even if we > discovered that God could not have eliminated E1 and E2 without > thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad > or worse, it would still be unreasonable to believe this of all cases > of horrendous evil occurring daily in our world. E1 and E2 are thus > best viewed as representative of a particular class of evil which > poses a specific problem for theistic belief. This problem is > expressed by Rowe in the following way: > > - (P) No good state of affairs we know of is such that an omnipotent, omniscient being’s obtaining it would morally justify that being’s > permitting E1 or E2. Therefore, > > - (Q) It is likely that no good state of affairs is such that an omnipotent, omniscient being’s obtaining it would morally justify that > being in permitting E1 or E2. > > P states that no good we know of justifies God in permitting E1 and > E2. From this it is inferred that Q is likely to be true, or that > probably there are no goods which justify God in permitting E1 and E2. > Q, of course, corresponds to the factual premise of Rowe’s argument. > Thus, Rowe attempts to establish the truth of the factual premise by > appealing to P. > > > **The Inference from P to Q** > > On what grounds does Rowe think that P is true? Rowe (1988: 120) states that “we have *good reason* to believe that no good state of affairs we know of would justify an omnipotent, omniscient being in permitting either E1 or E2” (emphasis his). The good reason in question consists of the fact that the good states of affairs we know of, when reflecting on them, meet one or both of the following conditions: either an omnipotent being could obtain them without having to permit E1 or E2, or obtaining them would not morally justify that being in permitting E1 or E2 (Rowe 1988: 121, 123; 1991: 72). > > This brings us, finally, to Rowe’s inference from P to Q. This is, of course, **an inductive inference**. Rowe does not claim to know or be able to prove that cases of intense suffering such as the fawn’s are indeed pointless. For as he acknowledges, it is quite possible that there is some familiar good outweighing the fawn’s suffering and which is connected to that suffering in a way unbeknown to us. Or there may be goods we are not aware of, to which the fawn’s suffering is intimately connected. **But although we do not know or cannot establish the truth of Q, we do possess rational grounds for accepting Q, and these grounds consist of the considerations adumbrated in P. Thus, the truth of P is taken to provide strong evidence for the truth of Q** (Rowe 1979: 337).

A renowned Christian who believes in evolution is [Francis Collins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins) : > Collins also has written books on science, medicine, and religion, including the New York Times bestseller, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. After leaving the directorship of NHGRI and before becoming director of the NIH, he founded and served as president of The BioLogos Foundation, which promotes discourse on the relationship between science and religion and **advocates the perspective that belief in Christianity can be reconciled with acceptance of evolution and science, especially through the idea that the Creator brought about his plan through the processes of evolution**. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Collins to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. In fact, Francis Collins is a well-known advocate of the concept of [Theistic Evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_evolution) : > Francis Collins describes theistic evolution as the position that > "evolution is real, but that it was set in motion by God", and > characterizes it as accepting "that evolution occurred as biologists > describe it, but under the direction of God". He lists six general > premises on which different versions of theistic evolution typically > rest. They include: > > 1. The prevailing cosmological model, with the universe coming into being about 13.8 billion years ago; > 2. The fine-tuned universe; > 3. Evolution and natural selection; > 4. No special supernatural intervention is involved once evolution got under way; > 5. Humans are a result of these evolutionary processes; and > 6. Despite all these, humans are unique. The concern for the Moral Law (the knowledge of right and wrong) and the continuous search for God > among all human cultures defy evolutionary explanations and point to > our spiritual nature. However, evolution via natural selection is a process that is inherently plagued with suffering. This suffering emerges from the relentless competition for resources, mates, and survival in an environment where only the fittest prevail. Organisms endure hardships such as hunger, disease, predation, natural disasters, mass extinctions, and territorial disputes as they strive to pass on their genes to the next generation. While natural selection drives adaptation and diversity, it does so through a mechanism that often entails pain and struggle. The evolutionary arms race perpetuates a cycle of suffering as organisms continually evolve to outcompete one another, leading to ever more sophisticated strategies for survival, but also escalating levels of conflict and suffering. I find it quite challenging to harmonize the picture of evolution with what the Bible reveals about God's ideal and desire for animals: Romans 8:19-22 ESV > 19 **For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God**. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, **in hope** 21 **that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God**. 22 **For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now**. Revelation 21:1-4 ESV > Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 **He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away**.” Isaiah 11:6-9 ESV > 6 The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, > and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; > and a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze; > their young shall lie down together; > and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, > and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. 9 **They shall not hurt or destroy** > **in all my holy mountain;** > **for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord** > **as the waters cover the sea.** Isaiah 65:25 ESV > **The wolf and the lamb shall graze together**; **the lion shall eat straw like the ox**, **and dust shall be the serpent's food.** **They shall not hurt or destroy** **in all my holy mountain**,” says the Lord. How can the tremendous amount of suffering inherent in evolution be reconciled with the concept of a loving God from a Christian evolutionary standpoint? --- *Note*: I came up with this question while reflecting on recent discussions on the problem of evil: - https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/100110/61679 - https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/100129/61679

The following is a more succinct presentation of the **Logical Problem of Evil** based on the original presentation found in the introduction of the article [Logical Problem of Evil | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy](https://iep.utm.edu/evil-log/) : > **Logical Problem of Evil** > > The existence of evil and suffering in our world seems to pose a serious challenge to belief in the existence of a perfect God. If God were all-knowing, it seems that God would know about all of the horrible things that happen in our world. If God were all-powerful, God would be able to do something about all of the evil and suffering. Furthermore, if God were morally perfect, then surely God would want to do something about it. And yet we find that our world is filled with countless instances of evil and suffering. These facts about evil and suffering seem to conflict with the orthodox theist claim that there exists a perfectly good God. The challenge posed by this apparent conflict has come to be known as the problem of evil. > > This article addresses one form of that problem that is prominent in recent philosophical discussions–that the conflict that exists between the claims of orthodox theism and the facts about evil and suffering in our world is a logical one. This is the “logical problem of evil.” > **Formal argument** > 1. God is omnipotent (that is, all-powerful). > 2. God is omniscient (that is, all-knowing). > 3. God is perfectly good. > 4. Evil exists > 5. If God is omnipotent, he would be able to prevent all of the evil and suffering in the world. > 6. If God is omniscient, he would know about all of the evil and suffering in the world and would know how to eliminate or prevent it. > 7. If God is perfectly good, he would want to prevent all of the evil and suffering in the world. > 8. If God knows about all of the evil and suffering in the world, knows how to eliminate or prevent it, is powerful enough to prevent > it, and yet does not prevent it, he must not be perfectly good. > 9. If God knows about all of the evil and suffering, knows how to eliminate or prevent it, wants to prevent it, and yet does not do so, > he must not be all- powerful. > 10. If God is powerful enough to prevent all of the evil and suffering, wants to do so, and yet does not, he must not know about > all of the suffering or know how to eliminate or prevent it—that is, > he must not be all-knowing. > 11. If evil and suffering exist, then God is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good. (from 8-10) > 12. God is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not perfectly good. (from 4 and 11) > 13. God is omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good. (from 1-3) > > There is no way that (12) and (13) could both be true at the same > time. These statements are logically inconsistent or contradictory. > > Statement (13) is simply the conjunction of (1) through (3) and > expresses the central belief of classical theism. However, > atheologians claim that statement (12) can also be derived from (1) > through (3). [Statements (5) through (11) purport to show how this is > done.] (12) and (13), however, are logically contradictory. Because a > contradiction can be deduced from statements (1) through (4) and > because all theists believe (1) through (4), atheologians claim that > theists have logically inconsistent beliefs. They note that > philosophers have always believed it is never rational to believe > something contradictory. So, the existence of evil and suffering makes > theists’ belief in the existence of a perfect God irrational. What are Christian responses, in terms of defenses and theodicies, to this specific presentation of the Logical Problem of Evil? Do they specifically challenge certain premises or steps in the argument's reasoning process? Answers that provide detailed insights into the challenged steps of the argument would be greatly appreciated.

Arguments from evil, such as the [logical problem of evil](https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/100110/61679) or the [evidential problem of evil](https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/100129/61679) , aim to demonstrate that certain forms of suffering in the world are either unnecessary or gratuitous. Advocates of this argument contend that if it's conceivable to imagine a world with slightly less suffering without sacrificing any greater good, then an all-powerful, all-knowing, and wholly good being would prevent such instances of unnecessary suffering. For instance, proponents might argue that if a deer, like Bambi, endured one less second of agony in a wildfire in which it got caught without affecting any greater purpose, a benevolent deity would intervene to spare that needless second of suffering. Even if one nanosecond of suffering could be spared without compromising a greater good, it would be spared. However, skeptics point to the plethora of suffering and evil worldwide, both in nature and society, suggesting that for sure at least one instance of suffering must be gratuitous. Or at least that's the abductive argument they purport to make: that at least one instance of suffering could have been prevented, but it wasn't, therefore a wholly good God cannot exist. This motivates my question: Are Christians theologically committed to the belief that every iota of suffering and evil in the world necessarily serves a profound purpose, and that no suffering or evil is without justification, not even a nanosecond of it? **Clarification**: I'm interested in an overview of theological responses to this question.

OK, so to start, I searched this topic on the exchange and found no answers that were satisfying. I am not questioning God, I just have a hard time coming to terms with why bad things happen to the innocent. For instance, a mother through no fault of her own can't afford to feed her babies and has no means to do so except strip or other unsavory actions. Or, a young person who by all observable means did nothing to deserve developing an addiction to heroin. Even with charity, and the good things Christians do, people will inevitably fall through the cracks. How is this fair? I know that God given free will plays a part, but if God saw the way these people, for better or for worse grew up, how can he still put them through unspeakable hardship, when they did nothing to deserve it? I feel this question doesn't need references to prove what I am saying, all you have to do is look at the state of the world. These things happen on a daily basis. I ask because, I feel bad for these people and it is causing my faith to falter. I apologize if this doesn't meet the standards of the community, I did my best to adhere to them.

In essence I'm asking that if there was nothing after death, but we believed that God existed, would there be any reason for us to worship God. It then seems like humans are coerced into worship, which is immoral. You may say that life is a gift from God, but a lot of people who go through hardships (torture, abuse, etc.) will disagree.

Okay so I've heard the argument that humans are the one who let evil in the world but at one point there was only God before he stated his creation process, so there was all good. God created the laws of the universe and the way it works, he created free will in the way me and you understand it. Why would he create a universe with the capacity for evil to be in it? He can see the future so he knew the end product already when he started his creation process. He could see that hell would be created and people would be sent there to spend eternity. If you had a blank slate to create your own universe and the laws of the universe why make there even a possibility for evil to exist? At one point there was nothing, only good so all good. He created the capacity in this universe for evil and since he is omniscient he would know the outcome. How could you be all loving and create this existence with the possibility for there to be evil. You may say where there's good there has to be evil but that is because we are human and that is the way we understand things, there has to be a negative to a postlitive, but that is a law of the universe that was created by God and he knew the byproduct of that. I always see the same response to this and it comes down to Adam and Eve. But when God created Adam and eve he could see the future and what they would become and they would release evil into the world (the evil he created). I feel as if god either isn't all loving, all powerfull, or Christianity has lost touch of God's true word and what he is about. I do believe in God but I don't think he is Christian or has any sort of book he tried to get to us considering that basic contradiction in my eyes. I'm not trying to insult anyone's faith but I have my priest, my religious friends, and my family and they all seem stumped on the question and just chalk it up to "there's things that we aren't supposed to understand" and I feel like that's just such an easy cop out when people are so sure in their beliefs

**To clarify**, I'm not asking why God allows evil. I believe there are sufficient arguments for that. What I would like to know is: how can a righteous God **tolerate** evil without it affecting His nature as righteous? Are there any arguments for that, and is there any supporting evidence from the Bible to provide a basis for that belief? This question is based on a few passages: > Genesis 15:16 (NASB) : 16 Then in the fourth generation they will > return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete." This verse makes it clear that God tolerates evil, at least to some degree. > Psalm 5:4-5 (NASB) : 4 For You are not a God who takes pleasure in > wickedness; No evil can dwell with You. 5 The boastful will not stand > before Your eyes; You hate all who do injustice. This verse indicates that no evil can dwell with God. Righteousness cannot dwell with unrighteousness. However, what is the significance of God tolerating sin outside his dwelling as opposed to inside it? Not to mention that the omnipresence of God is taught in several places in scripture. Ex. > Psalm 139:7-10 (NASB) > > 7 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your > presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed > in Sheol, behold, You are there. 9 If I take up the wings of the > dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, 10 Even there Your > hand will lead me, And Your right hand will take hold of me. I bring in this verse not to ask a second question but to show that even though evil is not in God's dwelling, it is still within the scope of His presence. This is to emphasize the question: how can a righteous God tolerate sin (for any duration of time) without being evil? Let me make the distinction more clear. **Why God Allows Evil:** This question concerns theodicy, which seeks to identify any conflict between a benevolent, omnipotent God and the evil and suffering in the world; in other words, it asks why a God who is good and powerful will allow evil to exist. **Why God Tolerates Evil on Earth:** This question focuses primarily on the evil that continues on earth, which means that God will allow or have some tolerance. Connecting to the broader question of why God permits evil, this question narrows the focus to understanding why God continues to tolerate its presence within our world.

From what I understand, the author, a conservative Rabbi, challenges the traditional Biblical view of God’s ‘OMNI’ attributes in his publication. If this is the case, is a God who is less than all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving worthy of our wholehearted trust and worship?”