I keep getting drawn into this topic in various threads that aren't quite on topic with this, so I thought I would start a new thread and open it up to the community to see if there is any other answer to The Problem of Evil other than "free will".
So basically the problem goes: "Why did God create a world that would be filled with evil?" We can call "evil" just any negative thing. Death is evil. Crime is evil. Pain is evil, etc.
The typical answer is: "He didn't, we made evil when we Fell".
Then the response to that is: "So why didn't God just make us Good from the start so that we wouldn't ever 'Fall'?"
And the typical answer is: "Because if He did that, we wouldn't have free will, and we would be nothing but puppets/robots."
If I've misrepresented either side of this argument, let me know, and I'll edit the OP to reflect it. This seems about right though.
Also, if anyone has a different answer to The Problem of Evil, feel free to argue that too. I just know that at least 90% of my answers are going to be "free will" so I'm getting out ahead of it.
So now my response is, "If always doing good means you don't have free will, then God doesn't have free will because He always does good". But maybe somehow God is an exception to the rule somehow.
So then what about once you're in Heaven? You have free will, you'll never sin again. Why not start people off that way? But maybe you need to go through a process, it can't be instantaneous.
So then what about babies that pass away? They go to Heaven without ever enduring any earthly, spiritual process. Without ever choosing to follow God here on Earth. Once there, they get the perfectly sinless nature and never do evil. They go through their entire existence without ever sinning once, but they still have free will. Of course, it would be ridiculous to think that God is incapable of letting that baby grow up in Heaven with his perfect nature in tact. Surely God isn't incapable of maturing an immature being if He can create a fully mature being from dust. So I hope no one is going to answer that babies stay babies in Heaven forever.
So, the alternate proposed process that God could follow is thus:
- Create a being that is not mature enough to be held accountable for his choices/actions.
- Bestow upon that being the infinitely good nature that allows it to never sin without controlling its will.
- Mature that being into a fully mature, intelligent being that has free will but never sins.
Now honestly, it seems like I shouldn't have to go so far. God isn't omnipotent, in my opinion, if He can't just do all of this instantly. But whatever argument you have that pushes it to this point, let's just skip to here instead of dragging it out over the course of pages and pages.
Now if God followed this process, for every single being He ever created, including Satan and all the fallen angels, then the universe would have no sin in it whatsoever, and free will could still abound. Free will isn't what limits God's ability to create beings that aren't puppets/robots. So the question is, if God can avoid ever allowing evil to exist, why did He want it to exist in the first place? If anyone ever does something, it is either because they
want to, or because they
need to. So since God didn't need to create evil (albeit indirectly) why did He
want to create evil (again, indirectly)?