STEVEN POOLE
Trigger Happy
Shoot first, ask questions later
The problem of theodicy (from the Greek for “divine justice”) is often considered central in religious thought. How does a supposedly all-powerful and benevolent God allow the suffering and evil that we see all around us in the world? Various answers have been suggested. Perhaps God is dedicated to allowing humans their free will, so that all evil stems from their misuse of it. But this does not seem to justify the suffering of, say, babies or wild animals. Perhaps suffering is actually good; it’s just that we humans can’t understand why. (A particularly disgusting response, in my view.) Perhaps God is not all-powerful but in an eternal struggle with the forces of evil that rule the material world (the Manichean heresy). Or perhaps God does not exist.