List pages on the Problem of Evil on this site by Vexen
This page
... will show that as free will can exist without evil, God intentionally created suffering and evil and does not wish to stop it, so is immoral, not all powerful, or does not exist.
The Free Will Defence
To justify the existence of evil and suffering, despite God being all powerful and benevolent, it is said that free will is of such high worth that it is worth the risk of us using it to create evil.
The argument against god
God, as all powerful, chose to create evil. God chose to create suffering, pain, misery... and it made it so that we could choose to accept these things and if we made bad choices these things could happen to us. It also made it more than possible for us to do evil and create suffering ourselves, it made it likely. But the existence of evil is not required for free will.
1. Our nature
Life being "unfair" is a symptom of pain or suffering, of inadequacy or feelings or even sinful emotions such as greed. God created these emotions, we do not choose to accept them, they are inherent in our nature. God could have created us so that we do not feel these emotions, that they simply don't exist. It would eliminate a lot of evil, and would not take away our free will.
The fact that God has created our nature and instincts to be geared towards sin and imperfection means that it wants us to chose evil over good. It has created evil, and created us so that we will mostly "choose" it.
2. Suffering is optional
Suffering is not required for free will. When someone commits a crime or otherwise causes suffering, why does the victim suffer? The victim has not chosen evil, they are merely the unfortunate victims of some one else's choice. If justice or morality exist, and come from God, then only those acts that are evil should be punished. When someone is a victim, God itself should put the crime right, and avoid the innocent suffering. The person responsible for the evil may still suffer punishment or retribution, but why does the victim need to suffer?
This transmission of the effects of one person's bad choices to another's experience is unnecessary for free will. In a society where there are no victims, punishment would be unnecessary. If our nature was geared towards good, there would be no need for punishment to be used as a terror tactic to reduce crime.
That punishment is necessary means that God cannot be all-powerful. It is not an effect of free will that we should suffer the consequences of each other's bad choices, it is an effect of a universe operating under a different, amoral sense of justice, and not under the care of an all-powerful, just God.
3. Evil is not required for free will
Free will is the ability to make choices. This means... we must have options. What these options are is irrelevant. A saint, Jesus, Muhammad, etc, had free will. These people also did not (perhaps) ever commit a sin. Nevertheless it is ludicrous to say that because a person does not choose evil that they have no free will. In other words, it is possible for a person never to accept evil, and still have free will. This means that we could have a nature that never wills transgression, and we could still have free will. There are many millions of choices and paths you can take in life, there is no requirement for "cause evil" to be an effect of them. Free will still exists without it.
4. Heaven is proof that evil is not required for free will
"heaven is a place exists where there is free will, but no evil. This means that the evil and suffering which exists is not necessary for free will. This means that the free will theodicy is not valid. God could make the Earth and everywhere else the same as heaven, with the same free will, the same hope of meeting God in heaven, but without suffering or evil. "From "Free Will in Heaven & the Problem Of Evil" by Vexen Crabtree
5. Evil does not have to cause suffering
When a person chooses evil, God could rectify the real life effect of it, and simply let the perpetrator feel its effect. There is no need for evil to manifest outside of a person's own choices. Evil, in short, could be chosen, but not realized. There is no reason for evil to cause suffering. If we had a choice between doing something good or bad, if we chose bad, why does it cause suffering? Why must it? It seems we could chose bad, and for it to have no effect other than to prevent us feeling that we did good. That is enough for free will, punishment and forgiveness. It seems more forgiving than allowing "evil begets evil". This lack of separation of evil from its effects shows that God is not interested in justice or preventing evil.
Conclusions
We know that God wants evil to exist, we can infer this from its existence. As a benevolent God is both incapable of causing evil, and is all-powerful, this means that:
By Vexen Crabtree 2002 Jan 14