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Unless you’re asking this rhetorically, everyone knows the classic apologetic to this question, regardless if you agree with it or not: free will. To your point about forbidding things, anything available to you always has the opportunity to be misused. The fire that warms you can also burn you, the water that sustains you can also drown you. Your objection or dissatisfaction with the answer is predicated upon the assumption that an idealized world if such a God existed, would more or less be one populated with mindless automatons who are mechanically repetitious machines of virtue, devoid of the other divine qualities that make human action meaningful, and not just lifelessly giving the Almighty his due. But that’s not some kind of argument against His existence per se, that has to do with your theology:
“To call something irrational isn’t an argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.” - Nietzsche
The existence of contradictions (whether real or imagined, known or unknown) still persists even in secular philosophy. It’s why in the Maoist dialectic of Marxism, they think “contradiction” inheres in the existence of physical matter itself, because it’s the only way to explain how organic living systems can hold incompatible stances and propositions in their mind. Because if all contiguous physical reality is consistent and without contradiction at all times, how can contradictory impulses manifest themselves, since it should be logically impossible? If I accepted your framework of understanding, I’d buy the same conclusions you’re brought to. The question is, why bother accepting that framework to begin with? I see no logical argument that demands I accept that framework of understanding. I too can point to things I believe God does that leave me feeling wanting and dissatisfied, but aren’t logically incoherent necessarily. You may think it’s a cop out and catch-all defense (no doubt people also use it that way), but I can’t understand what I can’t understand, and can only try and inform you of what I do understand.
I don’t know what kind of heavy lifting you’re expecting Aquinas to do for you here, and specifically to Epicurus’ argument; there’s nothing logically incoherent about God having morally sufficient reasons for permitting the existence of evil in the world. That’s an argument that even Protestant theologians have dispatched to my satisfaction a long time ago. That’s why the modern defense of this argument was best captured by Wesley Morriston when he said, “If God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting evil in the world, then it’s whatever these reasons are that are the ultimate grounding of morality and not the fact that He has commanded them. Either way, the divine command theory is false…” (e.g. Euthrypho’s dilemma still remains and so does the Problem of Evil.) That is an argument that’s harder to refute. This is why the Logical form of the Problem of Evil is rarely defended anymore, and philosophers have pivoted to developing the Evidential Problem of Evil. I think it ultimately comes down to a definitional move you make over semantics at bottom and there really is no explicit logical contradiction (which gets down to logical epicycles if you want to call it that, but even so, that isn’t a logical argument against the proposition. All mathematics is ultimately tautological as well, this is what Bertrand Russell struggled with in trying to “prove” his thesis, but it still doesn’t mean 2+2 doesn’t equal 4.)
Why should that be? Why can't my skin be so tough that fire can't burn it, why can't I breathe water or liquid nitrogen as well as air? There's nothing impossible about those things in principle from the point of view of a deity constructing the universe. It could be that if captured by villains and if we were in dire straits instead of getting tortured to death or enslaved we could release the soul from the body, fly away and reform freely elsewhere. Or instead of having hernias and gout, those things just wouldn't exist like zombies or ghouls. Or nobody would even be villainous, they'd be by nature against it. Or it would be impossible to steal, people having an inventory like a video game.
None of these changes necessitates making people mindless automatons. The free will argument is cope. Life isn't more meaningful just because it's fragile, the good qualities of life are impaired and reduced by fragility. Zombies and ghouls aren't needed for the good life, just like mosquitoes or cholera or cluster migraines.
The fundamental patterns of the universe are set up so that fire does burn the skin, where drinking liquid nitrogen inflicts an agonizing death, only fish can breathe water and our minds are tied to our bodies - unless we become powerful enough in complicated mathematics to alter these facts on the ground.
Sure, if those reasons exist. But we can't find them. It's a pretty sticky wicket to rest one's defence on ideas that can't be found or explained. I'd look askance at my lawyer if his defence of me was 'well there's actually a really good reason why RandomRanger is not guilty but I can't tell you and it's probably so mysterious we could never understand it but it is logically possible for such a reason to exist. Or at least nobody has proven it can't exist.'
The simpler explanation is better.
You’ve just continued to ask the same questions repeatedly in different ways. Why doesn’t God fashion his creation like it’s something out of a superhero movie? A handful of theodicies have already given answers to that. The one Catholics provide you haven’t showed to be logically contradictory; you just don’t like the answer. Agree to disagree I suppose. As I’ve alluded to already, I can take up the other end of the stick if I wanted and do what it is you’re attempting to. There are much better arguments against theism than the one you’re making that are much harder to answer, but this isn’t it.
I don’t like the answers because they're dumb. It doesn't even remotely meet the minimum standards of reasoning.
No. Free will does not require people to be born with crippling illnesses or obliterated by natural disasters, quite the opposite. Duh. There are countless impositions on free will as forced by natural constraints.
OK...
Well I also have a grand and secret reason that shows I'm right but it can't be explained to you...
No it doesn't. That's a supreme law of the universe beyond God's omnipotence? No, obviously not.
You're appealing to all these theodicies. But theodicies are cope devised by people trying to defend a position they didn't arrive at through means of reason. And whether they do it by making up words or sneering at low-status or just not considering counterarguments for even 5 minutes... it doesn't really matter.
If you think I’m being irrational just say it. It doesn’t due to just keep asserting this over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, without an argument. I understand what it is you’re saying, but you’re failing to engage the bigger point.
Theodicies adopt a range of different responses to addressing the problem of “natural” evils as I already mentioned. The first thing they demand of you is that you separate the “intellectual” problem of evil and suffering from the “emotional” problem of evil and suffering. You have to expand the scope of the problem of evil more broadly instead of treating particular events as belong to individual categories. “Natural” evils are inherently amoral. Tectonic plate shifts, and volcanic eruptions, and biological parasites aren’t intrinsically “evil,” except by the conditions human beings can be impacted by them in a life permitting universe. The second part of the problem has to do with epistemic limitations. If you want to argue that a particular act of evil or suffering is gratuitous in the moment, how are you in any position to judge the absence of a morally sufficient reason that permits of the possibility that doesn’t produce future beneficial consequences later on? You can’t, and neither can I. Every event no matter how inconsequential, sends a ripple effect throughout history whose effects may not appear until centuries down the road. You may think that’s “bullshit,” and it’s a logical “retreat to the possible,” but there’s nothing logically impossible or contradictory about that; without an argument to the contrary. And then there’s just the point in general that a lot of natural evils happen as a compound event of activity human beings are already engaged in. We build homes willingly near flood zones and reap the consequences. We willingly manufacture cigarettes and dump carcinogens into our body. Yes, you could still argue if you wanted why floods can’t just be eliminated entirely or why carcinogens have to exist at all, but there’s no logical argument that demands or requires that as a conclusion. There just isn’t. That has to do with your theology, about what you think God should or should not do.
I don't need to be literally omniscient to judge that birth defects are a bad thing with confidence. If there are any future benefits of a disaster, there could also be benefits without the disaster. Or more benefits lost because of the disaster, which is a much more natural conclusion considering the nature of disaster.
By the very same logic you could conclude that God is infinitely evil and all the good things in the world are just ways to bring about later evil in ways you can't see or comprehend. And then crow that I can't logically disprove that. But it's just made-up nonsense.
Yes, my theology is that God is not omnibenevolent and that Christianity is false. You're the one trying to defend omnibenevolence!
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