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He was responding to the common practice of describing sexuality or disbelief as evil, and his claim was that when the word evil is used to describe the natural pleasures and instincts of men and women, or the skepticism of an inquiring mind, the things called evil are really good. [62]
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 ...
The absence of good (Latin: privatio boni), also known as the privation theory of evil, [1] is a theological and philosophical doctrine that evil, unlike good, is insubstantial, so that thinking of it as an entity is misleading. Instead, evil is rather the absence, or lack ("privation"), of good.
A common meaning of the phrase is that wrongdoings or evil actions are often undertaken with good intentions; or that good intentions, when acted upon, may have bad consequences. [1] An example is the introduction of Asian carp into the United States in the 1970s to control algal blooms in captivity.
The first saying God, being above good and evil, produces impartially the effects to which we call good and evil. The second saying there’s an equal and independent power that produces evil. Lewis says that he doesn’t think the doctrine of the Fall answers whether it was better for God to create or not to create.
The full title of the work is Quare bonis viris multa mala accidant, cum sit providentia ("Why do misfortunes happen to good men, if providence exists"). This longer title reflects the true theme of the essay which is not so much concerned with providence but with theodicy and the question of why bad things happen to good people. [1]
The theodicy argues that humans have an evil nature in as much as it is deprived of its original goodness, form, order, and measure due to the inherited original sin of Adam and Eve, but still ultimately remains good due to existence coming from God, for if a nature was completely evil (deprived of the good), it would cease to exist. [50]
According to this tradition, "evil, though real, is not a 'thing', but rather a direction away from the goodness of the One"; [11] evil is the absence of good, and accordingly, it is technically wrong to say that God created evil, properly speaking. Rather, he created a world which was imperfectly good.