theodicy

[iambiguous]

Theodicy:

Theodicy means vindication of God. It is to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil, thus resolving the issue of the problem of evil. wiki

Just as, in my view, the existence of God is often merely defined and deduced into existence, if we accept for the sake of argument that a God, the God, my God does in fact exist, how is the "vindication" of this God in the face of evil not also just defined and deduced into existence?

The point below [and my reaction to it] is taken from my own "on discussing god and religion" thread:

What’s New in….Philosophy of Religion
Daniel Hill describes how the work of Alvin Plantinga has revolutionised Philosophy of Religion.

One argument [against the existence of God] which has shown no sign of diminishing in popularity, still less vanishing, is the problem of evil. This may be expressed very roughly as follows. The set of propositions (1)-(4) is inconsistent, so at least one of them must be wrong:

(1) God is good, and therefore wants to remove evil
(2) God is omniscient, and therefore knows that there is evil
(3) God is omnipotent, and therefore can remove evil
(4) Evil exists.

Now you're talking. This matter is by far -- by far -- the most important question of all in regard to any God and any religion.

Indeed, imagine that we lived in a world where there was no human suffering. A world where no one ever spoke of evil because there was nothing that could be thought of that would allow us to make sense of what some say that it was. Now, in this world, we may well still be unable to demonstrate that an actual God did in fact exist. But when people spoke of Him as loving, just and merciful that would certainly make a whole lot of sense. We may not be able to communicate with or interact with this God, but how could anyone doubt that something "up there" must be sustaining a world totally without pain and suffering.

Let's run this by the religionists here. But, really, how could they not all be reduced down to this: God works in mysterious ways.

Or, for the Buddhists, the universe works in mysterious ways.

But, fortunately enough, for both, one of them results in immortality and the other in salvation. And all the evil in the world doesn't make that go away.

[Peter Kropotkin]

iambiguous:

[b]Let's run this by the religionists here. But, really, how could they not all be reduced down to this: God works in mysterious ways.

Or, for the Buddhists, the universe works in mysterious ways.

K: I am going to work out this one part of the post.....

I hold that those who use the "god/universe works in mysterious ways"
are using that as a cop out...... it allows them to punt on any real thought
about the religious viewpoint...it allows them to avoid doing any real thought
as to this question of "evil" for one....

"what is evil?"

and we can avoid dealing with that question, by just saying,
ah, god/universe works in mysterious ways.... and I'm off the hook...
no more thought necessary... god/universe works in a mysterious way.....

and I am not responsible or going to be accountable given "god/universe
works in mysterious ways"........

I hold that the very presence of "evil" negates, denies the idea of "god"....

god is good or god is about love.... and so, what about "evil?"

ah, god works in mysterious ways and I don't have to engage with that
question...see how that works.........

what does the presence of "evil" really mean?

and in fact, what is "evil?"

we can't even come up with a very good explanation of what "evil" is.....

define "evil"...........

and please avoid using the tired and cliche saying, "god/universe works in
mysterious ways"......

Kropotkin

[iambiguous]

Still, I also think the faithful fall back on the "mysterious ways" of God or the universe because it's either that or having to accept that human pain and suffering is essentially meaningless.

In other words, given what can be argued is but the brute facticity of an existence utterly lacking in anything that might be seen as the equivalent of a teleological foundation.

Instead, from the perspective of the Humanists, we have to create our own "human all too human" facsimile: reason, ideology, deontology, scientism.

Then [for me] it's how close to or far away from others are in regard to "I" being "fractured and fragmented".

This fucking thing:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values "I" can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction...or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then "I" begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

What I wouldn't give to actually figure out a way to yank myself up out of it. God or No God.

[iambiguous]

The Good, The Bad and Theodicy
John Holroyd on the pitfalls of academic debates about God and evil.

In the classic spaghetti western The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (directed by Sergio Leone, 1966), three gunslingers co-operate and compete with each other in search of a cache of gold. None of them trusts either of the others, and in the final shoot-out ‘The Good’ character kills ‘The Bad’, leaving the third in the trio tied up on top of his share of the loot.

In other words, any particular individual watching it can react to it from any number of conflicting perspectives. Construing and differentiating the good from the bad with or without a faith in God. But one thing doesn't change for any of them. This: that throughout human history in almost every community there were, are and probably always will be behaviors deemed good and behaviors deemed bad. And, if there is a God, then He is around to pass judgment on it when push comes to shove and we go up or down.

But, if there is a God, how to explain why there are any bad guys embracing evil at all?

And, sure enough, the faithful have any number of arguments to explain it. Just Google "God and the problem of evil": https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z ... revision/5

And, given any particular context, the arguments can be seen as more or less reasonable.

In debates about whether or not a benevolent, omnipotent, all-knowing God would allow evil and suffering in the world, both more and less is at stake than for the characters in the film The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. On both sides there is the honour of ‘winning’ or the indignity of ‘losing’ a public debate. But for many of the disputants who are religious these arguments are about matters of eternal significance for every person, whether they appreciate that or not. For some atheists, too, the issues have seemed imperative.

And who are we as mere mortals to grasp the "eternal significance" of, for example, the 24,000 babies who are stillborn in America alone each year, or the 3 million children who die from starvation every year, or the countless millions that have died, die, and will continue to die from one or another "natural disaster" year in and year out. Or from the next "extinction event" to thump planet Earth. That's for a loving, just and merciful God to file away under "mysterious ways".

[Meno_]

Here is an alterior take, albeit a relative one. What if we should agree to the indefinity of a god , a albeit a god who doesen't sack us into a pantheistic irreducibility.

A god of relative measure between substance and form.

What to a god who can co-experience our own self awareness with or without god himself.

One god without this focused awareness of each and everyone,may wish to perceive us teleologically through our eyes, as if he was a construct as You suggest, or matematico-phisically with evolving corresponding relation between them.

Then , god can actually look at men as if they were made of multitudes of sparks corresponding to our view of the heavens , lit up as do big manifold objects in the universe's night sky, the stars and other galactic objects.

In this sense of teleilogical accute-ism, stars may have life , existence, and being, as a potentially
significant relative quantum state.

The whole cosmos including consistence with the infinite multiplicity that ever recurs, reaches a specific state of infolded disattachment, where the particular habitable planet recurs into it's pre-enlighted past- experience it'self and it's stage of civilization as does a part of a photograph blown way out of proportion, and You may get the picture.

The absolute reducement of such toward absolute zero. persisting in a state approaching absolute anti matted, time, curves to form a near perfect absolute curve approaching The Ring, which becomes A strange phenomena like black holes and such. .....such attribution curve into a foundation ofabsolute sorts, Asimov may be aware if here, ....


To get the sense what transpires here are manyfold transforming forces, some likened to the opposite if cell division- causing the eventual collapse of the entire cosmic architecture into an infinitely pure absolute ....that is indefinitely definiable, over and above if what can currently be described as 'energy'beyond the indifineable nothingness beyond description.

[iambiguous]

The Good, The Bad and Theodicy
John Holroyd on the pitfalls of academic debates about God and evil.

Epicurus gave us an early formulation of the ‘problem of evil’, a logical problem to do with believing in God. He wrote:

“God either wishes to take away evils and is unable; or he is able and unwilling; or he is neither willing nor able; or he is both willing and able. If he is willing and unable, he is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God, if he is able and unwilling, he is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if he is neither willing nor able he is both feeble and envious, and therefore not God, if he is both willing and able, which alone is suitable for God, from what source then are evils? Or why does he not remove them?”

Again, however, the beauty of religion is that it no less subsumes logic in God's "mysterious ways" than it does everything else. And there it is: faith. You don't even have to demonstrate how or why this is true. You merely take that leap to God and even the Holocaust and pandemics and natural disasters are all "explained away" is beyond the reach of any mere mortal grasping the ways of a "loving just and merciful" God. Then it just comes down to your own personal agonies. Any particular horrors that become apart of your existence. God then is testing your faith. And, besides, what's the alternative? You lose your beloved son or daughter or mother or father or husband or wife or close friend to the coronavirus or the earthquake or the volcanic eruption and it's either God and your religion or accepting that it is all subsumed instead in the brute facticity of an essentially meaningless existence that for each of them is now the embodiment of oblivion.

In more recent times Gottfried Leibniz coined the term ‘theodicy’ to refer to systematic attempts to defend belief in God in the face of evil and suffering, such as the arguments offered by St Augustine. In the last twenty years the New Atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, have brought such debates about theodicy to the fore, excoriating the God of the Bible and the God of the Qur’an for their alleged misdeeds. We might think of these writers, alongside sceptical philosophical heavyweights such as David Hume and John Stuart Mill, as anti-theodicists.

On the other hand, what did any of them know of God's "mysterious ways"? Misdeeds? Mere mortals attributing to an omniscient and omnipotent God acts that mere mortals themselves decide are either good deeds or bad deeds? Come on, both the old and the new atheists here come up short in doing battle with God. Just ask the faithful.

Theodicy is and will ever remain a stacked deck. And the last time I checked I am myself still a "mere mortal".

So, I recognize the futility of bringing this up to the true believers. On the other hand, what else is there? One of them might have an explanation that I can make some sense out of.

Someone here, perhaps?

[iambiguous]

The Good, The Bad and Theodicy
John Holroyd on the pitfalls of academic debates about God and evil.

Obscuring Evil

I want to focus on the fact that there has been, for some time, a reaction against the type of philosophical debate that argues back and forth, critiquing and defending specific concepts of God in relation to problems of evil. This reaction has come from some philosophers who are themselves religious believers. Terrance Tilley, for example, in his 1991 book The Evils of Theodicy writes:

“The usual practice of academic theodicy has marginalised, supplanted, ‘purified’, and ultimately silenced those expressing grief, cursing God, consoling the sorrowful and trying practically to understand and counteract evil events, evil actions and evil practices. I have come to see theodicy as a discourse practice which disguises real evils while those evils continue to afflict people.” (Tilley, The Evils of Theodicy)

Got that?

Of course when you approach theodicy "academically" in a "philosophical debate" how does this not come down to a battle of wits? Who has a greater command over the definitions and deductions generated in discussing God and evil.

Real evils?

We'll need an actual context of course. Or is that just my thing here? Am I simply too naive to grapple with theodicy on their level?

Let’s consider two closely related points that Tilley makes here. First, theodicy obscures the nature of evils actually occurring in the world. I would like to broaden this first point and add that on the other side of the debate the anti-theodicists are just as guilty of this.

Seriously, someone here please make the attempt to bring this out into the world of human interactions...interactions involving behaviors that some see as good and others as evil. How would a conflict of this sort be connected to a particular understanding of an omniscient and omnipotent God argued by many to be "loving just and merciful"? Evil from the perspective of theodicy construed academically and evil as fiercely debated by mere mortals given a specific situation or set of circumstances.

Forget broadening his point, how about narrowing it down to a discussion of theodicy [pro and con] in regard to abortion, or homosexuality, or social justice.

Second, and implied by the first point, philosophical debates about problems of evil and suffering in relation to God are problematic because they detract from other ways of coping with suffering, coming to terms with it and countering it. Because these other ways are of moral value this is a moral problem.

Yes, you can discuss evil "philosophically" or you can go out into the world and actually do something about it. Be less problematic and...make things worse?

That's the thing about reconfiguring words into worlds when confronted with moral and political value judgments in conflict. Both sides can prefer "action" and from the perspective of each side things are only that much more abominable. Especially when the "action" revolves around one or another authoritarian or ideological or dogmatic agenda. Which is why those like me suggest instead that, to the extent it is feasible, practical and realizable, moderation, negotiation and compromise is likely to become the "best of all possible worlds".

Providing of course that in regard to things said to be good or evil your own "I" is not as torn and tattered as mine is.

[iambiguous]

The Good, The Bad and Theodicy
John Holroyd on the pitfalls of academic debates about God and evil.

Making Logic Moral

At its best, the debate between the theodicists and anti-theodicists is both a logical and moral enterprise.

Logic and morality. I won't even pretend to untangle all of the variables here. Come on, where does the part that we can encompass in reasonable communication end and the part where the subjective/subjunctive "I" is able to actually demonstrate that their moral and political value judgments encompass the logical, rational, epistemological truth.

And throw in all of the assumptions that revolve around an omniscient and omnipotent God? Is the word of God necessarily logical? Can God's own ghastly creations -- natural disasters, extinction events, countless diseases -- be grappled with by mere mortals using the tools of philosophy?

Whether or not belief in an all-good, omnipotent God is compatible with the existence of evil is a question of great importance in the lives of many people, and the debate is an attempt to pursue that vital question. To do so honestly, to seek what is most reasonable to believe whatever one’s personal background or inclinations and however much one’s findings may clash with existing beliefs, is a moral pursuit.

On the other hand, from my frame of mind, you would have to be an omniscient God in order to accomplish this. After all, can any of you grasp the lives of those who lived them in ways you haven't a clue regarding? Can you take into account all of the multitudinous experiences millions and millions around the globe have had that create "backgrounds and inclinations" embedded in untold combinations of historical, cultural and circumstantial factors? All in order to acquire a God's eye view in order to pursue a morality in which one size fits all?

So I do not advocate a halt to this debate. Quite the contrary. It should remain part of an ongoing exploration both within and beyond academia. Clearly the debate can lead some people to believe in a God and others to lose their faith.

Why? Because it can be determined rationally, logically, epistemologically that someone either ought to believe in God or lose their faith given the pain and the suffering that they have endured? This is not more likely to be rooted instead in the arguments that I make?

And it's not like those who do subsume their miseries in God and religion have any better alternative. What, to believe that their terrible pain or grief or bitterness or anger can only be subsumed instead in an essentially meaningless No God existence?

Why not place that wager on immortality and salvation by betting on the God or religious path that you are able to think yourself into believing in? It's just a matter of still being able to. Some can, others can't.

Bottom line [his and mine]:

These arguments are part of the fabric of many people’s deliberations and perspectives, but how the arguments fit together with personal perspectives is a complex question. It is often ‘reasonably’ driven not so much by some diktat from philosophers that one should be ‘logical’, but by the necessities of life. In our various searches for meaning, psychological survival or personal fulfilment, we are often concerned with what we think it is rational to believe or do. It is hard to justify a claim about what role an argument should play within the living of someone else’s life, without entering into dialogue with them, and into a genuine attempt to appreciate their situation in life.

I merely suggest that in the absence of that crucial confirmation that a God, the God is in fact your God, it is likely that the choice that you make here is only able to be communicated to another up to a point. It is rational to you more because you have managed to think yourself into believing that it is. At least until the next round of pain and suffering. Then [existentially] that may well be the one that changes your mind.

Thinkers from either side of the debate that fail to do this are clumsy; in this sense theodicy is indeed ugly. Discussions about problems of evil and suffering are at their best when the participants put aside the desire to convert someone to their own point of view, and instead are open to an exchange that aims to deal practically with suffering while simultaneously reflecting upon its nature.

Yes, here, on this thread, the best of all possible worlds. I simply point out that with so much at stake on both sides of the grave, communication breakdowns are far more likely to be the rule.

[iambiguous]

The Good, The Bad and Theodicy
John Holroyd on the pitfalls of academic debates about God and evil.

You may imagine that I wish to lower discussions about problems of evil and suffering to a subjective level.

On the other hand, you may imagine that my aim here is to suggest that evil and suffering can only really be broached and understood from a first person subjective/subjunctive frame of mind. The alleged existence of God simply configures it in the direction an omniscient and omnipotent frame of mind. And to a mind said by many to [ultimately] be "loving just and merciful." What of human evil and suffering then?

But the discussion is only "lowered" here to the extent it can be demonstrated that in fact there is a "higher" frame of mind from which to approach it. At least in accepting that there is no objective moral font that mere mortals can turn to to resolve conflicting goods there is at least the possibility that "moderation, negotiation and compromise" can be sustained as the "best of all possible worlds".

I think this underestimates the connectedness of human experience within and beyond the question of believing in a God. Arguments about theodicy find their place within the context of living a life, and of living with others. To say this is to protest against Descartes’ disengaged rationality and allow that there are real issues that concern real choices about how to live life alongside disputes about the logical character of philosophical arguments. Believer and disbeliever alike will do best if they take this approach.

Okay, but what doesn't change from my own perspective is that this "connectedness" can involve an enormous amount of pain and suffering. And the part of our consciousness that "engages" in connecting to it reacts from a subjective/subjunctive point of view. Out in a particular world understood in a particular way. And this is applicable to both the believer and disbeliever. It's just that the subjective assessment of the believer allows for the existence of a transcending entity into which questions of this nature can be subsumed. God or the "Universe" becomes a way in which to make it all objective.

The most powerful reason for rejecting this kind of perspective is offered by many of the New Atheists. It could be put in this way. If belief in God is a moral hazard then persuading people to stop doing so would seem to be a moral good; and belief in God is a moral hazard; therefore arguing against theodicy is a moral duty. We should be clear however, that the theodicist typically believes they are similarly justified in defending God and in sometimes arguing for God’s existence. If they can persuade people to believe in God then, for them, this is a moral good and the lives of those converted will be immeasurably improved. This is a live debate not least because what the ‘good’ is by which life is to be morally evaluated is a matter of dispute. The constituents of moral evaluation, such as the importance of community, equality of opportunity, tolerance and individual freedom, are themselves at the heart of the disagreement. All the while, the sacred and the ‘secular sacred’ collide with no resolution in sight.

And around and around and around they go. As though one can actually establish that either a belief or a disbelief in God could be assessed [by philosophers or scientists or theologians or anyone else] as creating a greater "moral hazard". And it's a "live debate" from my own frame of mind because conclusions seem only able to be derived from the perspective of one or another subjective point of view.

[iambiguous]

The Good, The Bad and Theodicy
John Holroyd on the pitfalls of academic debates about God and evil.

...a desire to understand and work together needn’t be obliterated by the fact of disagreement, as the philosopher Paul Hedges notes in his book Towards Better Disagreement: Religion and Atheism in Dialogue (2016). People are most able to reach mutual understanding about experiences they share.

On the other hand, when the experiences they share are embedded deeply in all manner of pain and suffering, the only way in which to understand it in the "best of all possible worlds" is in being able to subsume it all in God or religion.

If your mutual understanding and working together doesn't make the pain and suffering go away, then you either agree to leave all that to the ecclesiastics or you might end up thinking about it all as I do.

Humans of all religious persuasions and of none share experiences of grief, tragedy and the prospect of death. They also share the practical and ideological question that arises generally and in relation to suffering: how can we live life and continue living it in the worst of circumstances? Mutual exchange between faiths about this question is happening all the time.

Questions are asked. Different faiths exchange possible answers. But, in the interim, in the absence of God manifesting Himself with the only explanation that really matters, it's like questions and answers being exchanged regarding all other aspects of human interactions in the is/ought world: they're right from their side, we're right from ours.

Muddling through the "actual contexts" given one or another intertwining of might makes right, right makes might, democracy and the rule of law.

And what we do here: discuss and debate it.

Then this: the best of all possible worlds...

When the tsunami of 2004 devastated the lives and communities of Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Christians alike across parts of southeast Asia, many found a great deal of camaraderie within a variety of multicultures. Multicultures make up an ever larger proportion of human societies. They offer human beings rich opportunities to overcome the worst of life because at their best they offer unparalleled opportunities for the exchange of perspectives, lifestyles and values. Whether in our cities or on social media or in the global village, atheistic and religious perspectives alike will be richer for seeing themselves as integral parts of such a multicultural home.

Yes, and when the next "super volcano" or the next "big one" from space precipitates the next "extinction event" here on planet earth that becomes magnified a thousand fold. A multicultural reaction on steroids.

But there is still the grotesque horror of the event itself. A global catastrophe of truly epic proportions.

And God.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy of Religion
Chapter 6. The Problem of Evil
Section 4. Theodicy
https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/SocialSciences ... eodicy.htm

Any attempt to make the existence of an All-knowing, All-powerful and All-good or omnibenevolent God consistent with the existence of evil is known as a Theodicy. It is an attempt to justify the ways of God to humans. It is as attempt to explain the coexistence of God and Evil.

Now what operates in these attempts to rescue the idea of the existence of a deity from the charge that there can not be a deity if there is moral evil is the very subtle altering of the idea of the deity from that of a supreme and all perfect being to something other than that.

The classic example being this one: https://www.amazon.com/When-Things-Happ ... 1400034728

The idea that God is in fact loving, just and merciful...just not omnipotent. And that can work for some precisely because no actual God has ever been demonstrated to exist. If God is just something you define or deduce into existence from a world of words concocted in your head, the problem/paradox embedded in centuries of at times excruciating human pain and suffering can be resolved in any number of ways:

All criticisms of these apologists or defenders involve exposing the subtle attempt to convert the idea of the supreme being from one that so perfect as to generate the Problem of Evil in the first place to the idea of the deity as not quite being all perfect or all knowing or all powerful or all good.

Here at ILP of course we've had any number of "spiritual assessments" over the years...members providing us with explanations from any number of conflicted denominations -- and from "personal" TOE -- for why the world is what it is. But one thing never changes: that truly horrific human pain and suffering derived either "man's inhumanity to man" or from one or another "natural disaster".

The covid-19 pandemic being just the very latest example of how we are confronted with the "will of God".

[iambiguous]

Philosophy of Religion
Chapter 6. The Problem of Evil
Section 4. Theodicy

Historical Explanation:

The early Hebrew deity is one that has apparent weaknesses and is not at all perfect in every way. It is jealous and vindictive and unjust.

The God of the Old Testament.

And, again, isn't this really the only way in which to reconcile God -- any God -- with the world that we live in? There is so much pain and suffering around -- staggering amounts of it! -- that only a man or a woman desperate for immortality and salvation can take that leap of faith to worshipping and adoring the nasty brute of the Old Testament. Here it seems to be more about fearing the wrath of God than anything else.

That at least makes sense.

The God of the Old Testament is like the unbridled capitalist. The God of the New Testament -- Jesus Christ -- is, instead, more the yearning among the flock for the socialist alternative.

For the Christians the idea of the Hebrew deity was not going to be acceptable to those whom they hoped to convert: those who had come under the influence of the Greek manner of thought, those other than the Hebrews. The Christians take the idea of the all perfect being , the source of all that is true, good and beautiful, from the Greeks and layer it over the idea of the single deity of the Hebrews and the history of that idea as presented in the Hebrew scriptures. The ideas about the qualities of the early Hebrew god when combined ideas about the Greek ideal deity have made for many problems.

Okay, so given things like natural disasters, viral pandemics and extinction events, what else is there but linking this more "perfect" God to a will that mere mortals are simply unable to grasp. Everything, apparently, will be explained to faithful on the other side of the grave. And in paradise no less.

And there are only going to be problems when the idea of God and the ideal God actually have to acknowledge just how ghastly human pain and suffering is. But, up in the spiritual clouds, the solutions can simply be "thought up".

[iambiguous]

Philosophy of Religion
Chapter 6. The Problem of Evil
Section 4. Theodicy

Theodicists:

Augustine: Humans are free and Humans have fallen because they are as children

St. Augustine proposed a solution to the problem by blaming it on the Fall of Humanity after the disobedience in the Garden of Eden.

So, leaving the part where an omniscient God is compatible with human freedom aside, we are to believe that the God of Moses and Abraham allows the pain and suffering endured by His flocks still today to persist because of something done by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We are made to endure unspeakable tortures for something that others did. We didn't disobey God, they did. But it's all the same.

And yet [of course] most of us would find it utterly appalling to punish children for the transgressions of their parents. Let alone for their parents parents or their parents parents.

And, again, what of the terrible agonies endured by men, women and children brought on by natural disasters and ghastly diseases and extinction events? How is that explained when human obedience and behaviors have little or no part to play at all in these catastrophes?

From this view, humankind is responsible for evil by being led astray by Satan.

Another bizarre frame of mind. As though Satan himself is not just another creation of God. And what of Satan literally entering the bodies -- the hearts and souls -- of mere mortals. Blame it all on us? Going all the way back to Adam and Eve.

This not only absolves the deity, the God, of creating evil but also allows the deity to show the world its love by bringing a form or version of itself into physical form in the presence of the Christ into the world.

And what of all those who lived, suffered and died, before this? And [seriously] what did Christ have to say about the terrible suffering endured by mere mortals due to "acts of God" beyond their control?

The Supreme Being, God, is seen as involved in soul making. Humans are growing from bios to zoe: from undeveloped life to divine love and spiritual life. However, the existence of Evil leads to the questioning of the existence of an all loving and all good and powerful deity. The large amount of EVIL is particularly difficult to explain.

My own point as well.

On the other hand, my own point is as well to note the obvious. That in the absence of God, all human pain and suffering is essentially meaningless and life itself ends in oblivion.

So, if the only alternative to that is to invent a loving, just and merciful God and then subsume all the pain and suffering in His "mysterious ways", how can that not be better than an essentially meaningless existence that tumbles over into the abyss that is nothingness?

I'll still choose that if I can come up with a way to.

[iambiguous]

Philosophy of Religion
Chapter 6. The Problem of Evil
Section 4. Theodicy

Irenaeus Developmental and Teleological view
God is involved with soul making.

Irenaeus (130-202 AD) thought that the existence of evil actually serves a purpose. From his point of view, evil provides the necessary problems through which we take part in what he calls "soul-making". From this point of view, evil is a means to an end in as much as if it did not exist, there would be no means of spiritual development. However, with this view god is the author of evil and although it has a purpose it challenges the nature of god as being all good.

Irenaeus' view has been put forward in modern times by such philosophers as John Hick (Evil and the God of Love, 1966) and Richard Swinburne. According to this view the pains and sufferings of the world are meant by God to act as a means of producing a truly good person.

This might seem more reasonable in regard to human interactions in which the pain and the suffering are more clearly the result of bad or immoral decisions. Your body has to be punished so that your soul can learn to avoid the pain and the suffering by choosing more righteously.

But:

1] what of the terrible pain and suffering inflicted on children and babies and infants?
2] what of the situations embedded in "rival goods", in which mere mortals on both sides of the the conflicts genuinely and sincerely believe their own moral values are righteous ones?

And then the part where pain and suffering comes as a result of natural disasters. I remember a newscast once in which a woman insisted that the deaths brought about about by a hurricane were God's way of telling us that we should not build homes too close to the shoreline.

However the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov has severely criticized this view. Using human suffering as a means to good is criticized and condemned on the grounds that the suffering of one child can never be justified in terms of what good results. Again this defense of the deity brings into question the all -good aspect of the deity.

Exactly. All the terrible pain and suffering inflicted on those oblivious even to the existence of a God allowing pain and suffering in order to make them a "truly good person". And the staggering extent of the tortures that those who are already God fearing "good people" are made to endure.

Here, it would seem, there is nothing left but to fall back on the only explanation there is: God's mysterious ways. Anything that happens to anyone can be accounted for here.