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Notes -
Which religion or culture do you think has the most satisfying solution to the Problem of Evil? Not just, “why does pain exist” but “why do diseases and catastrophes kill innocents”.
I don’t think Christianity nails it. A person is left either believing everything is God’s Will, or believing that a Perfect Being created Satan / disasters when he did not have to. It seems to me a much better alternative would be to state that there is a sovereign evil force, which does not originate from God, who is the cause of not just natural ills like disease and disaster but also ignorance, temptations, etc. This is more satisfying because we keep God purely good and wise, although we do this at the expense of his omnipotence. Ultimately any good explanation should be understood by a child, have a layer of complexity that an adult can appreciate, and allows a person to handle the existence of evil in an optimal way (either aversion or acceptance depending on scenario) while still loving God as before.
The Problem of Evil isn’t just “why does evil exist” it’s “how to reconcile the existence of evil with the existence of a benevolent, Omnigod (omnipotent/omniscient)”. I think it’s intractable and so it’s a good argument against the existence of said God.
A similar problem from a nondual perspective is why does the Universal Self experience itself as separate selves that go on to hurt each other? Darwinism explains most of this after the original dissociation, but that dissociation still needs an explanation. I’m not sure we’ll ever find it but I’m not sure it’s truly intractable either.
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