Zagorath

First, you’ll note that I started this conversation by conceding free will and concentrating my discussion of evil on evils that are not performed by humans, but by the planet itself, or by fundamental biology.

But as for “the concept of life as a test”…why is something supposedly omniscient performing a test? It should already know the result of said test, thus making the test itself irrelevant. That’s what omniscience is.

If there is no evil how can there be good?

Easy. You take the world as it is right now…and then remove the evil things. Evil is a metaphysical concept. We often use analogies of light and dark, but it doesn’t literally work that way.

But why is that all good? Why couldn’t he have earth be good?

I’m upvoting because I thought this was done good engagement with the premise and you don’t deserve to be downvoted for it.

But fundamentally, you’ve missed a pretty big step. What if god just…didn’t create a situation where children get diseases that can only be cured with one rare tree?

Or, more importantly, what about diseases that cannot be cured? What about natural disasters? Yes, some types of natural disasters have gotten more common and worse as a result of human action, but they still happened before climate change, and if anything were more disruptive to people before we had modern building practices.

We’re talking about a god that is literally capable of anything. It could just wave its hand and delete all disease from existence. It chooses not to.

What shits me is Christians (and Jews and Muslims, but it’s mainly Christians who do this) who just handwave away the problem of evil. Like fine, I can accept that some evils might arise as a result of human decisions and free will. Things like wars and genocides are done by people. It’s difficult to swallow even that much with the idea of a god who supposedly knows all, is capable of doing anything, and is “all good”, but fine, maybe free will ultimately supplants all that.

But what I absolutely cannot accept is any claim that tries to square the idea of a god with the triple-omnis with the fact that natural disasters happen. That children die of cancer. You try telling the parents of a child slowly dying of a painful incurable disease that someone could fix it if they wanted, and they completely know about it, but that they won’t. And then try telling them that person is “all good”. See how they react.

I find religious people who believe in the three omnis after having given it any amount of serious consideration to be absolutely disgusting and immoral people.