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

God, while having ultimate authority, chooses not to deploy it over our free will.

Did God tell you this himself? Or, where did you acquire this information?

God did not tell me this, no. I could very well be wrong. Through my understanding of the word of God and through my own logic I have deduced this. If free will does not exist, or better yet, If we were not given at minimum 1 free will decision to choose to follow God or not, be it something that took be place here on earth or be it something that took place long before we broke into the world, then I become a very confused person. I'm not even saying we have to have free will now, here, on this earth. My belief though is that we made a decision. Now the decision may have been mutual or that decision may have always been known but that doesn't preclude the fact that we made it

this also does that mean that those who made the opposite decision are doomed or something like that so don't misunderstand me.

God left gaps, not for evil, but, yes, evil does occur at times in those gaps. By the same token it is possible to do "good things" in those gaps.

No? What if an omniscient being knew the best way to use it's power for good was to not use it in some instances? This is not possible?

To me, free will does explain evil. Evil occurs whenever someone chooses to do something other than what is right despite the fact

Any God who allows such things is evil.

When you say "we made the decision", who exactly are you referring to? I don't remember making any such decision. Did I forget that I made the decision?

To make that plausible, you need to tell us a story in which it would be the case that it is better to not bother helping people than to help them. Keep in mind, with humans, we often do not know enough or have enough ability to help, and so it may be that for us, leaving some things as they are is better than us messing around with them. But that does not give us any reason to suppose that God should not be fixing things, or that God should have made a world with the problems in the first place.

Indeed, when we judge a craftsman qua craftsman, we judge him by the products he makes. With an imperfect world, the only logical conclusion is that, if it is made, it is made by an imperfect being. A perfect craftsman would only make perfect things.

But you have already said that free will exists in a perfect heaven. Therefore, having free will does not explain evil.

God's allowing something evil to occur, means that God is evil?

when I say we made the decision I'm talking about our spiritual selves. The us that(IMO) will exist after we leave this body(die) and perhaps(and IMO did) existed before we were born. Now of course the problem arises well if the "we" made the decision before we were even born, whats the point of coming to earth or being born, why not just divvy things up right then and there? My only answer is that I believe it must have something to do with coming to a knowing of God or a point of discovery in some way. Or perhaps there are joys that can be experienced through "life as we know it" that cannot be experienced any other way.

If you can stop some evil from occurring, without any harm to yourself or others, and you do not, then that is evil.

...

I will ask you a similar question that I asked xris: without the blueprints for how something is supposed to be created how can you judge if it is not created perfectly? What you call imperfections may very well be the exact way they were designed.

and I also stated that while this is true, it may be that case that in heaven, while having free will, no one chooses to do evil.
My contention is that here on earth if everyone chose not to do evil then there would therefore be no evil.
And already explained that IMO only free will beings are capable of evil so hurricanes and earthquakes are neither evil nor good for they have no intent

Yes. (Assuming we are speaking of a being that is both omnipotent and omniscient, of course.)

If you can stop some evil from occurring, without any harm to yourself or others, and you do not, then that is evil. With people, very often they are unable to do so, because they don't know about it (not being omniscient), or lack the strength or power to act adequately (not being omnipotent).

This, by the way, is the ordinary way of thinking of things.

.

...


But does that make me evil, or just my inaction evil? On the same note, how many evil acts does it take before I become evil? Even if I saved the child, would I, then, be good? If I do one good act and one bad act, am I some sort of morally neutral? What if God has done 1,000,000,000,000 good things, but has only done 1,000,000,000 evil things. Is God good or evil?

You believe I, through my "spiritual self", made a decision before I was born?

If God stopped X from being crippled in an auto accident, then that would prevent X from receiving a certain amount of love and sympathy because of his injury. And the lack of that would make the world less good than a world that had those goods. Of course, the evil of being crippled would be necessary for those goods. So the question would be whether the world would be better is X were not crippled, but, of course, there would not be the resultant goods of love and sympathy; or whether the world is better with the injury and the resultant sympathy and love. These would be, of course, value judgments. On God's part, and on ours.

There are several things that could be said, but I will focus on one point. Reasoning as you have done, I might decide to go out into the world and break people's kneecaps with a baseball bat, in order to cripple them, so that they may receive sympathy that they would not otherwise receive. So, do you think that I am a good man if I do such things?

No, since I do not think that the sympathy would compensate for the broken knee caps. But there might be other goods I know nothing about which I would know nothing which might result from the broken keecaps, and about which an onniscient God would know. And those goods might be compensating goods. Of course, this is where faith comes in. And Alexander Pope's, "Whatever is, is right". (Of course, in any case I would not think you were a good man for breaking someone's knee-caps, for neither your motive nor your intention would be to do good).

What if I broke the kneecaps for the sake of the sympathy that would be generated, not for some "sadistic" purpose? And what if I reason as Alexander Pope, and figure that I must not be mistaken if I am able to succeed at the task?

What if I broke the kneecaps for the sake of the sympathy that would be generated, not for some "sadistic" purpose? And what if I reason as Alexander Pope, and figure that I must not be mistaken if I am able to succeed at the task?

I know this was directed at kennethamy but I would say you would still be mistaken. Something is right because it's right and something is wrong because it's wrong. Now something can be wrong and not be (subjectively evil) but nothing can be right and evil. and what is wrong is objectively evil(meaning an ethically unjustifiable intent or motive) when it pertains to intent or motive.
So in this case while you may have justified in some way that it's OK to brake peoples kneecaps, I would say that anyone objectively viewing the situation would say you "ought" not do that.

Could you elaborate on how something can't be right and evil Because I dont believe that is always the case. The mere fact that something is evil doesnt mean it cant be right or just for someone or something else. People are often indirectly affected by circumstances that are malevolent for some but beneficial for others.