Coming off of the rather pedantic argument I criticized in my last post regarding omnipotence, I’d like to address another objection to Christian thought, the problem of pain. Taking three characteristics Christians ascribe to God, namely His omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, this argument concludes that a good God would not create a world with suffering, an all-powerful God could create a world without suffering, and an all-knowing God would know the world he creates to be one of suffering. From here, taking a general stock of the world—seeing that suffering is self-evident—the argument comes to its final analysis: God must lack at least one of these qualities.
A library undoubtedly exists on this argument, and the topic may be one worthy of succeeding posts. However, building off of my points on omnipotence, how an all-opening skeleton key cannot open nonexistent locks, I’d like to propose a parallel in omnibenevolence. (I readily concede that God’s omniscience would logically presuppose His knowledge that the world He creates is one where there is suffering, though I’ve heard argument against it.)
In my post, Musing on Goodness, I tried to articulate the differentiation of the temporal good as opposed to the eternal good. On a basic level, we might call either a cake or a plate of vegetables good. However, in such a case the term good as applied to the pastry is not the same use of good we ascribe to the vegetables. The vegetables are good in that they make us strong and healthy. The cake is good in that it is pleasant to the tastes and, to a limited extent, a catalyst for happy emotion.
An interesting element arises here: The cake is not good should your goal be the loss of weight. The serving of vegetables is not good should the goal be the catering of a cake. A new level of good herein emerges. Something can be good in the sense that it works towards an objective, but what of those aims? The aims themselves can be either good or bad, and nested within other goals. To the point: A plan may be drawn up to accomplish a prime objective, and within that plan there may yet be subset goals which are necessary contingents to accomplishing the prime objective.
To say that a good God would not create a world with suffering in it is to assume God’s goal a shallow good. Within the Christian doctrine, God’s ultimate goal is something like freedom and love. Here, suffering, though not good, is an obvious caveat. Freedom means the ability of some to choose evil, to harm themselves and possibly others.
Tale Told 