Clynne asked:
If God is Good, why does evil exist?
Answer by Helier Robinson
One answer is that God is not all-powerful so, although He wants to prevent evil (being all-Good), He is unable to do so.
Another answer is that God is not all-knowing so, although He could prevent evil (being all-powerful), He does not because He does not know about it.
A third answer is that there are three Gods. One is all-good but neither all-powerful nor all-knowing; another is all-powerful but neither all-good nor all-knowing; and the third is all-knowing but neither all-good nor all-powerful.
A fourth answer is that there is no God at all.
A fifth answer if that evil is an illusion. What appears evil to us does so only because we have only an incomplete picture of reality.
There are other answers that seem to work but do not do so in fact. The best known is that God gave us free will, which some of us use to commit evil acts, but because free will is such a great good (better than all the evil put together) it is better that we have it than not. This does not work because God created angels, which have free will and which do no evil, and He could have created us similarly. This argument is a specific case of the general argument that evil exists in order to allow a greater good.
My preference, among what seems to be a very unsatisfactory selection of answers, is for the third, but I cannot go into my reasons for this here. If you want to know more, visit the website SharebooksPublishing.com.
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