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(3) This requires that God remain hidden, otherwise, freewill would be compromised. (4) God created an epistemic distance (such that God is hidden and not immediately knowable), in part, by the presence of evil in the world, so that humans must strive to know him, and by doing so become truly good. Evil is a means to good for three main reasons:
One standard of sufficient reason for allowing evil is by asserting that God allows an evil in order to prevent a greater evil or cause a greater good. [145] Pointless evil, then, is an evil that does not meet this standard; it is an evil God permitted where there is no outweighing good or greater evil. The existence of such pointless evils ...
In Judaism, yetzer hara (Hebrew: יֵצֶר הַרַע , romanized: yēṣer haraʿ ) is a term for humankind's congenital inclination to do evil.The term is drawn from the phrase "the inclination of the heart of man is evil" (Biblical Hebrew: יֵצֶר לֵב הָאָדָם רַע, romanized: yetzer lev-ha-adam ra), which occurs twice at the beginning of the Torah (Genesis 6:5 and ...
…it is possible that one thing in relation to another may be evil, and at the same time within the limits of its proper being it may not be evil. Then it is proved that there is no evil in existence; all that God created He created good. This evil is nothingness; so death is the absence of life. When man no longer receives life, he dies.
Epicurus was not an atheist, although he rejected the idea of a god concerned with human affairs; followers of Epicureanism denied the idea that there was no god. While the conception of a supreme, happy and blessed god was the most popular during his time, Epicurus rejected such a notion, as he considered it too heavy a burden for a god to have to worry about all the problems in the world.
This still leaves the question of why God set out those people's lives (or the negative choice of deeds) which result in Hell, and why God made it possible to become evil. In Islamic thought, evil is considered to be movement away from good, and God created this possibility so that humans are able to recognize good. [ 43 ]
However, Edwards' theology presumes a God whose vengeance and contempt are directed toward evil and its manifestation in fallen humanity. To Edwards, a deity that ignores moral corruption or shows indifference to evil would be closer to the deity espoused by dystheism, that is, evil, because justice is an extension of love and moral goodness.
Plantinga writes in God, Freedom, and Evil that J. L. Mackie has presented the objection that God, being omnipotent and omnibenevolent, would easily be able to create the best of all possible worlds. He reasons that such a world would be one in which all humans use their free will only for good – something they do not do.