I’ll tell you what really lights a flash of fury in me, though, the child shot in the head by his father, the shaken baby, the shattered skull and violent brain hemorrhage brought on by parents. I don’t get mad at God for this, for I am sure his righteous rage is directed in the exact same direction as mine, and that his pain over the same actions runs deeper than I can comprehend in this case of the incomprehensible. I wonder that anger over the problem of evil would be much better directed at the evil themselves. Then again, we are required to forgive all men. Doh, so much for a neat solution.

but the article of most interest to readers here might be the last two links on that outline.

I kind of take the David Paulsen approach in these, but with a less philosophic eye. Enjoy.

Actually see Alma 30:44 where Alma lays out three traditional defenses of the existence of God: from personal experience, from scriptural witness and the cosmological argument. The latter is especially interesting in view of the current state of the science of cosmology which finds many fundamental constants of the universe “fine-tuned” to within very high degrees of sensitivity to lead to a life-supporting universe. For purposes of this thread, however, Korihor does not raise the problem of evil. That is dealt with by Alma elsewhere (chapters 12 and 42) where he presents the proposition that if God tried to deny justice He would “cease to be God.” This is the foundation of the strong LDS response to the logical problem of evil, which is to redefine the nature of divine omnipotence to allow that there are some independent modalities in the universe to which God is subject which prevent Him from instantaneously making beings who are both perfectly free and perfectly good.

This life is very important, but it’s just one step. They next one we can’t comprehend until we get there. Just like my 2-year-old who doesn’t understand why I have to work at my job everyday. But he will eventually understand why, later. The suffering we see here in this life has a point. This world is not our final destination.

I don’t know precisely where you stand on this, but I have never been persuaded by the “If there were a God, He would intervene” line of reasoning. That’s only a slight restatement of, “If I were God, I would intervene.” If you don’t see eye to eye with God on what to do about the world’s heaping doses of injustice, evil and suffering, that’s fine. If your thinking is colored by your failure to see divine intervention when it would be most logical, fair enough.

But can we agree that this is still largely an emotional argument rather than a purely logical one? I don’t pretend to know why God countenances so much pain and evil. Why do intellectuals pretend to “know” that it is impossible for a real God to allow such conditions? If that’s really the only conclusion they can come to, I’d be interested to know what other explanations they thought through first. I’ve seen far too many people consider only these two possibilities (there is either a kind God who acts in ways I can comprehend or there is no God), which I see as a crisis of creativity to come up with other possible options.

From the perspective of the restored gospel, it sure helps me to recognize that we’ve all just walked in on the second act of a three-act play, with no idea what unfolded before and very little comprehension of where the plot is going. We religious folks are spending our time trying to figure out the plot and guessing what might happen in the third act (or second act, to most others). Meanwhile, a certain breed of intellectual loudly shouts that there couldn’t possibly be a next act, and with the awful plot taking place on stage, there couldn’t possibly even be a script.

Anyway, I can understand the “no real God would allow this” argument and why some find comfort in it. But I’ve never accepted the inevitability of that conclusion, nor been shown the iron-clad, objective reasons why this is more compelling than my beliefs. I HAVE seen God’s intervention at key times in my life and the lives of others (and seen some pretty nasty and long-lasting pain along the way). But I can’t deny His hand when it has been there.

Just to consider:

Mormon theology includes a view of individual progression that is reincarnative in nature – including at the very least five distinctly unique stages of “physical change”. We know next to nothing of the real details of the other four stages. Therefore, this type of discussion is the height of speculation. Interesting and fun, but speculative. When dealing with speculation concerning things over which we have no control and only can assign arbitrary labels, sometimes we simply think too much.

I concur with Clark. It is hard to see how the recent Chinese earthquake or the Indonesian tsunami were necessary greater goods for those hit with the devastation.

Now one alternative is to say that good for God is completely different than good for us. (This was, for instance, Anselm’s approach). The other alternative is to say that whatever God does determines the good and God doesn’t do the good because it is good. However that has all sorts of troubling problems (many discussed by Blake Ostler in his recent book).