Oh come on know Blacknad. What fall?
1. Surely not a fall that occurred outside of God's realm.
2. Certainly not one that took place with his knowledge.
3. Certainly not one that occurred without acquiescence?

Dan,

1. Accepted.
2. The fall took place with God's knowledge - yes.
3. I do not believe that God acquiesced, as in 'consent or comply passively or without protest'. He certainly gave warning and certainly protested - but I am not sure that this is what you meant. What follows in your post is the real question.

The idea, simply put, that God would go on to create a race of sentient, free-willed creatures despite knowing all that would ensue, including uncountable instances of the most outrageous suffering and the fact that the majority of those created would reject him and end up existing separately from him.

I can see why you would think this is sheer nonsense and why you would feel that the fact that anyone who holds this view defies any logical explanation.

And I can see the relationship this statement implies -

God created beings that would reject him + this would lead to immense suffering = God created immense suffering.


I am sure that if I was an entity considering creating such a creature I would think 'well... on balance, I think I'll give it a miss'.


But I believe that God did not come to that conclusion. I believe that God considered everything and decided to go ahead and create.

And I do not know what the 'everything' was, that God took into consideration when deciding that on balance it was better to create that not to.

Obviously the question still remains - How can a being be described as good when he has directly created a situation where suffering and evil actions come into being?

Well who defines what is good or bad? Is it us or is it God? Is it us with our limited understanding of the 'everything' that God took into consideration?
Can we honestly and conclusively say that God is bad or a ?malicious little troll? for weighing up the options and deciding that on balance it was better to act than not to? Better to create creatures and give them the incredible opportunity to experience existence - to love and create and explore and discover and experience the incredible privilege of giving birth to life themselves? - And in doing so he has done no evil directly.

Your argument, it seems, would argue any God into inaction, and yet we human beings create children every day that may go on to perpetrate incredible evils and visit horrific suffering upon others or suffer, themselves, from painful and lingering deaths. At the least they will go on to hurt someone at some point in their lives ? who doesn?t. Are you saying that we should give up procreation?

You will still probably feel that I have not answered the central question - How can a good god give birth to a situation that will allow or even enforce evil. Well I feel that the question rests upon assumptions about the nature of evil and has within it a self derived belief that says the act of creating a situation that will bring about both incredible good alongside incredible evil is in itself an evil act. We are indeed deep in the land of metaphysics and may find that at this point our very thought processes & language are too narrow to be able to grasp the extent of variables involved in deciding whether a god is guilty or innocent.

I would need much more time and space to do this subject any great service, but I am conscious that this forum is a science forum, not religion and philosophy, and I am sure this debate is intruding upon the real business here.


I still believe there are more options to define a God that chooses to create under these circumstances than the three you posited. Religious matters cannot be that black and white. They are not subject to Occam's razor and sometimes you find the answer by going the long way round.
I understand why people who have shaped and disciplined their minds to excel in the area of science will often find religious debate nonsensical, for you are surely not as happy to trade in the suppositions, conjecture and the intangible ghosts of theology, but would much rather deal with concrete falsifiable facts.

I still choose option four.

Regards,

Blacknad.