I don’t know. Feel free to assume my answer, and make your point, though.
I would think that the first mother who witnessed her child eaten by a mountain lion (or killed in an earthquake) perceived some evil, even without the Light of Divine Revelation.
Sorry, I meant “truth” cannot be comprehended “fully” without Divine Revelation. As human we tend to think of the “good” as what is applicable to ourselves and our desires. However, we can come to some idea of absolute truth using reason alone by knowing good and evil, truth and fallacy, life and death.
You are right! Evil exists because of ignorance. If we could see everything as God sees it we would never choose evil because we would know it is not in our own interest. But our ignorance is not a mitigating factor because we know it is wrong to harm others.
Evil exists because of the temptations from “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” But it is Satan, himself, who is the source of evil in the world as Genesis implies. True, that our ignorance is not " mitigating factor" but it is not ignorance, itself, that causes us to choose evil, but a desire to be like God, IOW, to say “no” to the God who created us and “yes” to our desires. Adam and Eve ate from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
I agree with the source of temptations but when people sin many (or even most) of them are not making a conscious decision to reject God. If they don’t believe in Him they don’t desire to be like Him!
True that it’s usually not a conscious decision to reject God. However, people choose evil (thought, word & deed) directly through their own free will (assuming full knowledge of the action) or indirectly because of a misinformed or malformed conscience. The question is how responsible or culpable are they? And how would God judge them if they died in their sin? Those are rhetorical questions because we don’t really know how God will judge according to His Justice and His Mercy. But I would think that God gives us every possible chance to choose to do good and to find Him in our lives.I agree with the source of temptations but when people sin many (or even most) of them are not making a conscious decision to reject God. If they don’t believe in Him they don’t desire to be like Him!
Whether or not our ignorance is a mitigating factor for our guilt (I think it must be, but we can argue that separately), by your statement, ignorance is the reason for evil, not free will.
O.k., so “ignorance is bliss” as they say.
We know that evil exists in this world. But it’s true that we can’t evaluate it objectively, from God’s perspective, or understand someone else’s suffering subjectively from that person’s perspective. But God’s presence invades the whole world and each of us individually. We are His children. He makes good from evil and doesn’t give us more than we can handle with His grace.