A novel solution to the problem of evil

A much better argument can be found in an old Dilbert strip: Things progress from simple to complex. What if God is not in our past, but our future?

Which brings me to Charles Stross´ "Eschaton" super-AI: http://www.amazon.com/Iron-Sunrise-Singularity-Charles-Stross/dp/044101…

Obviously bad things in out past and present will not be sorted out by the Eschaton, because that is beyond its light cone, and while time travel is possible, altering the past before the emergence of the Eschaton would threaten its existence.
Twisting time after this event (the singularity) is allowed, since this means the Eschaton can terraform worlds light-years away and send the surplus population of an overcrowded Earth there as long as no photons from there/then get here before the singularity. :)

My favorite explanation for the problem of evil goes like this:

God, being good and all, does not only create the world where there is the most good, but also all other possible worlds where good outweighs evil. So there is somewhere, in an alternate universe maybe, a perfectly good world (Heaven?), but there are also a near infinity of worlds with various quantities of evil. We are in one of those.

This explanation generally does not go over too well with Christians, since it takes away at our "specialness" and "uniqueness". I like it because it makes God look like less of an ass or idiot than most other explanations for "natural" evil.

"this world is the creation of a good God, who risks giving freedom to human beings and the natural world"

Where's the risk for "God"? I'm quite sure we're the one's taking all the risk in that narrative.

Funny how God seems to value the free will of criminals over that of their victims.

The natural world, of course, is not imbued with free will. It is imbued with chaos. Natural disasters are not evil. They are random phenomena.

Whether or not the Creator is good and caring goes in and out of fashion. God in the Bible does not say God is good. God in the Bible says the creation is good.

As Eli said after discovering Roger Bate who solicited Phillip Morris to fund himself and Africa Fighting Malaria as a distraction for the World Health Organizations campaign against tobacco:

It is truly difficult to understand someone as evil as Roger Bate, it is hard to understand why anyone with self respect would associate with him and surely, Roger Bate's existence is a strong argument against that of a just God.

nature has free will? erm, on a moment's reflection I guess that's equivalent to saying that God wrote the laws of physics, then stood back and let the chips fall where they might.

Which is good if you like both physics and the concept of God. Less so if you think God directly intervenes in every last thing that happens.

Of course Nature has free will, they published MBH 98 didn't they??

no, Mann had that arranged by his trick of predestination.

When Tokyo was hit by an earthquake in the 1920s, an exile Russian suggested that God was ten light years distant, since it had taken two decades for God to respond to the prayers during the Russia-Japanese war.

This is an explanation that gets God off the hook! The time lag rules out any micromanaging of the daily lives of mortals. Of course, this means that the calls for prayer are pretty meaningless...

The free will argument fails because it lacks imagination. An all-powerful god could have figured out a way to create a world in which free will could exist without evil. He most certainly could have created a world without natural evil.

In essence, the "free will" argument boils down to "god is lazy/unimaginative".

Perhaps we've got it all the wrong way round?

God is our enemy, a god of chaos spite and destruction, "A God who smirks and says, "The joke's on you!" as Nadelman* put it. All that old-testament stuff, fauning to it and trying to win it's affection obviously failed. We were just too stupid to see the pattern; all the blood sacrifices, all the prayers, merely tickled it's warped sense of humour.

Of course the most parsimonious position is that there is no god. I prefer to believe in Russell's orbiting tea-pot. ;)

As an ex-Catholic (ex for some 30 years now) it's amazing how difficult it was to write the stuff about an evil-god. What they sow young they sow deep.

*Nadelman's God by T.E.D Klein.

"What they sow young, they sow deep."

Easy to desensitise yourself. Just talk about god, whenever you do, as she. Instant distancing from ye olde bearded patriarchal authority figure. Works a treat.

Speaking of evil, full funding for Nehemiah Scudder's presidential campaign has now been guaranteed. Don't like the gubmint? You can create a church and donate the money you'd otherwise pay in taxes directly to your church.

"A Supreme Court divided along ideological lines said Monday that ordinary taxpayers cannot challenge government programs that use tax breaks to direct money to religious activities.

The court ruled 5-4 in favor of an Arizona scholarship program for private schools that has mainly benefited religious schools in offering a dollar-for-dollar reduction in the income tax bill of people who participate...."
http://www.freep.com/article/20110405/NEWS07/104050343/Taxpayers-can-t-…

See, here's how it works -- the church benefits everybody because everybody who is anybody belongs and the rest are going to hell anyhow, and nobody needs those roads and schools and other gubmint stuff if they are Right With God.

So remember, don't send your check to the gubmint.
Send it to the right religion.

Nehemiah Scudder in 2012.
The last President anyone will need.