My 2 cents:
Evil
In the intellectual battle for the minds of man, of the three modalities of non-belief—materialism, skepticism, and cynicism—it is the cynic that poses the first challenge. It is the cynic that raises the question of the existence of evil when he asks, “Why does God allow evil?” This question has been around for centuries; it is a question on which much of philosophy’s cynicism since the Enlightenment has been founded. Consider this from Pierre Bayle:
(Historical and Critical Dictionary, quoted in Evil in Modern Thought, Susan Neiman)
“God is either willing to remove evil and cannot; or he can, and is unwilling; or he is neither willing nor able to do so; or else he is both willing and able. If he is willing and not able; he must then be weak, which cannot be affirmed of God. If he is able and not willing; he must be envious, which is contrary to the nature of God. If he is neither wiling nor able, he must be both envious and weak, and consequently could not be God. If he is both willing and able—the only possibility that agrees with the nature of God—then were does evil come from?”
In any argument with the cynic, believers must deal with the question: “If there is a God and God is good, why did He create a world that is so evil?” The presence of evil in the world has always been a mystery to mankind. Different people at different times rationalized the mystery in different ways. The primary way to deal with evil has always been through religion. However, despite man’s continuing supplication to the creative power, evil continues to exist. The religious answer is: God does not create evil, persons do! This answer does not convince the cynic because the rejoinder usually is, but why does God allow people to create evil? What is needed to help counter the cynics arguments is a practical answer that seems plausible. I, of course, do not know why God allows evil, but I have arrived at an answer to counter the cynic’s argument that seems possible and plausible to me. I am not a theologian, but I can read the dogmas and I can’t find in what follows anything that is prohibited by Catholic dogma.
To address the question of evil, we must first define it. I view evil in three modalities: personal evil (sin); social evil (injustice such as bigotry, slavery, tyranny) and natural evil (tragedy such as earthquakes, tornadoes, plagues). The question now is: why does God allow: sin, injustice, and tragedy? I begin by addressing personal evil in this thesis. Social evil and natural evil must be addressed separately. Let us first consider the existence of personal evil, sin. God is the realm of possibility, meaning that all things that are possible reside in the Mind of God. Evil is a possibility. However, an act is not evil until a possibility is actualized and in the case of personal evil, it is the person that actualizes the possibility (gives in to temptation) that creates the evil, in the form of a deliberate sin. God’s desire is to eliminate the possibility of evil, He must first allow the possibility to be actualize it in a way that is separated from His Being so that evil in no way exists in Him. And if evil remains a possibility and not an actuality, it doesn’t exist. Consequently, the method God chose to eliminate evil was to create a scenario whereby, when we are confronted with a choice of good or evil, we reject the evil thus eliminating its actuality (existence) and we eliminate evil bit by bit apart from God. Hence, the answer to another question, why did God create us? God created us to eliminate evil.
God provided an example in the scriptures in temptation in the desert when after forty days of hunger Jesus was tempted three times and refused the temptation thus setting an example for humans to follow when tempted with a choice. For example, God imagines the possibility of a sin of adultery that can only be actualized by a pair of humans. “Imagining the possibility” is not evil; the possibility only becomes evil if the possibility is actualized when adultery takes place. If a pair of humans when confronted with the temptation to commit adultery, choose not to do so, they prevent the actualization of evil and effectively eliminate the possibility of that specific possibility of evil. Hence, a finite bit of a possibility of evil has been erased from the Mind of God. Given the repetition of all the specific occasions of sin that have confronted mankind and were actualized as evil will in some later repetition of that same specific occasion of sin not be actualized until all the possibility of sin is eliminated from the Mind of God. Personal evil will be eliminated through the existence of parallel worlds and the multiple lifetimes that they entail. For only when each person is given a second chance to be confronted with each temptation then and only then can each possibility of a single act and consequently all evil will be eliminated. The world gets successively better with less evil with each passing of a parallel lifetime.
I make no claim as to the truth of what I write, I merely present a possible and plausible argument to counter the cynic’s questioning God allowing evil to exist. Countering the materialist and the skeptic requires separate answers.
Yppop
A fascinating post with some excellent ideas which deserve the attention of anyone who is confused by the existence of evil - although the suggestion that there are parallel worlds and multiple lifetimes seems more akin to Buddhism than Christianity!