So, all you believer-types out there!!! Sparked by my recent studies of philosophy on religion, I have a philosophical speculation I’d like to hear your opinions on. It seems to me that the majority of theists on this board are subscribers to Western theology and/or the Abrahamic God (not all, but most). The defining characteristics of this God, among others, are understood by me to be: 1) omnipotence (possessing all power), 2)omniscience (possessing all knowledge; past, present, and future), 3)omnibenevolence (possessing all goodness and ultimate concern for mankind and justice), and in some cases omnipresence, which is unimportant for this discussion.
My question to you is, what are your opinions on the origins and justification of evil? Where did it come from, and why does God allow its existence? The only reasons that seem logical at first glance are—
a)God doesn’t know about it ;
b)God doesn’t care about it or will not eliminate it; or
c)God can’t eliminate it,
any of which assumed removes an intrinsic property of God, thereby contradicting his “Godness” (a removes omniscience, b removes omnibenevolence, c removes omnipotence), this situation also being known as the well-debated philosophical Problem of Evil. This is not a challenge to your beliefs; I am simply interested in your personal way of reconciling this with your faith, because this always posed a bit of a problem for me when I considered myself a Christian (more subconsciously than in such explicit terms, however). I am aware of many of the plausible answers to this dilemma, and actually take a hypothetical position in the matter in spite of my agnosticism, but I’m interested in individual perspectives, as well as being enlightened as to as-yet-unheard-of-by-me takes on the situation.