"Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent...

No, it does not solve the logical problem of evil. It still reduces God to a being who must use evil for the greater good, and is unable to simply select the greater good without it. So God is then not omnipotent.

No, it does not solve the logical problem of evil. It still reduces God to a being who must use evil for the greater good, and is unable to simply select the greater good without it. So God is then not omnipotent.

I don't think so. It is true that Leibniz shows that God logically could not have created a world with as many goods as the actual world without evil. But that is not a means-end matter. It is a logical matter. It would be logically impossible to create a world with certain goods without evil. That is obvious. It is impossible to have sympathy for the poor unless there are the poor. The idea of logical possibility is central here, and the Aquinian idea that the inability to do the logically impossible does not detract from God's power.

Even if I grant you everything you state, there is yet another step, and that would involve showing that it is better to have poor people and sympathy (and other such things) than to have neither. And given that, before there were poor, God had no poor for whom to have sympathy, that would mean that God lacked that virtue previously. And, if that virtue (combined with the necessary evil) is better than not having it, then God was not perfect before. So, was God imperfect before He created the poor for whom He could have sympathy?

I think the solution to that is to say that it is not the sympathy itself that is virtuous, but the disposition to have sympathy under certain circumstances that is virtuous. Thus, God had that prior to the poor, and so God was perfect. But this quite naturally pulls the rug out from under your argument completely, so that there is no real good from the evil that exists, because the disposition for sympathy can exist without any poor, and consequently the argument against the logical problem of evil fails.

I think the answer that comes to my mind is that it became obligatory for said condition to arise, otherwise, it would not have. I would assume that at some point in order for the world to remain the best that it could be, the condition became necessary.

And since we cannot know all the ramifications of what the world would be like without said condition, we cannot explicitly say one way or the other. But if the assumptions of this argument are correct we can infer that it must have been the only way to maintain the best possible world.

Yes. I agree. It may very well be, and if Leibniz is right, it is, that it would have been logically impossible to have had the amount of good we have unless we had those poor the time we did have them. Remember, this might very well be false. We are talking about logical possibility. The question is whether God's goodness and power is consistent with evil. Not whether it is in fact true. The issue is the logical problem of evil. All that has to be shown is that it might be true: not that it is true, or even that it may be true.

This is a tough issue, one I've worked through a thousand times and still return to it often.

I think that it definetely has to revolves aroung the idea of choice, or as I have begun calling it (in my debates with myself), "influential significant choice". Significant choice would be choices that can be made to some extent freely and result in real positive or negative consqequences. Influential choice would be choices that affect others.

Could an omnipotent and good God grant influential significant choice to "others"?

Or, on the other hand, could an omnipotent and good God create "others" and not give them influential significant choice?

If such a God could give this kind of choice to others, then evil could exist which did not originate in God. Of course there would still be the question of why that God would allow this to happen...

And this all, all, all fails to mention the easiest way to disprove God as some grand creator in the first place, because who or what created God....etc...you know the rest.

Do you have a mouse in your pocket...I ain't talking about we, but you can do what you want... As long as you are defining an infinite that no one can prove anyway, why not dress it in pearls and a French Maid outfit... Talking about God is not just hogwash, but infinite hogwash...Knowledge is judgment -which we cannot have of infinites, and you are in that we, too...We cannot judge God as anything, not on the first fact or the last fact, which do not exist...

I think the answer that comes to my mind is that it became obligatory for said condition to arise, otherwise, it would not have. I would assume that at some point in order for the world to remain the best that it could be, the condition became necessary.

And since we cannot know all the ramifications of what the world would be like without said condition, we cannot explicitly say one way or the other. But if the assumptions of this argument are correct we can infer that it must have been the only way to maintain the best possible world.

And this all, all, all fails to mention the easiest way to disprove God as some grand creator in the first place, because who or what created God....etc...you know the rest.

If evil were necessary for the maximum amount of good, then God alone would not be maximally good, as He lacks evil. .

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Pyrrho;118111 wrote:

If evil were necessary for the maximum amount of good, then God alone would not be maximally good, as He lacks evil.

Sophistry, Pyrrho, sophistry! No one holds that for something to be maximally good it has to be evil. Where on earth did you get that? Have you no shame?

No one holds that for the world to be maximally good it has to have evil? Do you really mean that?

No. But that does not mean that for God to be good He has to be evil, as you know. Sophistry.

What has been alleged is that sympathy for the poor makes something better. Without the poor, God lacks sympathy for the poor. So without the poor, God isn't as good as He could be. Thus, before there were poor, God was not as good as He is now, and thus he was not maximally good previously. How is this sophistry? (I mean, of course, other than the sophistry of claiming that a world with sympathy for the poor is better than a world without poor, but that bit of sophistry was not introduced into the issue by me.)

What has been alleged is that sympathy for the poor makes something better. Without the poor, God lacks sympathy for the poor. So without the poor, God isn't as good as He could be. Thus, before there were poor, God was not as good as He is now, and thus he was not maximally good previously. How is this sophistry? (I mean, of course, other than the sophistry of claiming that a world with sympathy for the poor is better than a world without poor, but that bit of sophistry was not introduced into the issue by me.)