No. Not all “evil” is caused by people, and not all bad things caused by people were done with that intention. There is a very large margin for “less evil”, where natural disasters could just not exist and people with good intentions get the information they need to not do something bad accidentally.
Yes, people often overlook that evil (in the form of suffering) exists in our world without free will as a cause when trying to respond to the problem of evil like this. Why would our world be designed to require suffering? And even if we were willing to concede that the ideal world should have some suffering, surely it should have less than this one, right?
Also, this response takes for granted that free will exists when most people in my experience concede that we live in a deterministic world. So if some version of free will exists that people nonetheless act predictably, and have their nature pre-determined rather than chosen, why would an omnipotent, all-knowing, benevolent god not choose a nature for them that would avoid inflicting suffering in their expression of free will? I haven’t found a good answer to these, if one is even possible.
No. Not all “evil” is caused by people, and not all bad things caused by people were done with that intention. There is a very large margin for “less evil”, where natural disasters could just not exist and people with good intentions get the information they need to not do something bad accidentally.
Yes, people often overlook that evil (in the form of suffering) exists in our world without free will as a cause when trying to respond to the problem of evil like this. Why would our world be designed to require suffering? And even if we were willing to concede that the ideal world should have some suffering, surely it should have less than this one, right?
Also, this response takes for granted that free will exists when most people in my experience concede that we live in a deterministic world. So if some version of free will exists that people nonetheless act predictably, and have their nature pre-determined rather than chosen, why would an omnipotent, all-knowing, benevolent god not choose a nature for them that would avoid inflicting suffering in their expression of free will? I haven’t found a good answer to these, if one is even possible.