Q&A: Preventing Evil in the World
Preventing Evil in the World
Question
Hello, Rabbi.
What do you answer to the claim that God can prevent evil in the world, and if He does not do so – it is like a person who sees someone suffering and does not help him even though he could easily do so, and therefore, "I do not want to serve such a God"?
(In fact, the question is divided into two parts: about the very fact that evil is not prevented, and about the claim that since there is evil, even if there is a God there is no 'ideal' in obeying His words.)
I read that the Rabbi says that God created the world with fixed laws and free choice, and therefore disease, suffering, and the like are a necessary side effect.
But the question still stands: why not create an ideal system? Why allow people to suffer? That is, it would have been possible to allow free choice up to the point of harming a living creature (there would still be enough tests, and free choice would find its place in other matters).
Answer
The question is whether an ideal system actually exists.
My assumption is that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants a world that operates according to fixed laws (and there are good reasons for this. For example, we could not manage in a chaotic world without laws). That rules out corrective interventions in the world's ongoing operation. What remains is to create a different system of laws in which phenomena of evil (natural or human) would not appear. But the question is whether there is such a system of laws, one that would do everything the current system does (since that is what He wants to happen) but without the bad parts. In order to press this difficulty against Him, one must assume that such a system of laws exists. I doubt that.
Discussion on Answer
Indeed, it is elaborated on there. I do not know when and how it will come out. When I finish writing, I will think about the best way to publish it.
Seemingly, the answer is valid with regard to bugs in the natural system. But it does not answer the issue of the solutions human beings found for eradicating diseases and the like. Because from the fact that human beings were able, by the power of their intellect, to develop, for example, antibiotics – that creates a difficulty for the Creator: why could He not already at the creation of the world create, alongside oranges and abundant food, all those medicines and improvements that would have spared endless suffering for billions of years to come? Is He less advanced than a few inventors and doctors? If they could do it, that is proof that it does not negate the natural system.
That is exactly like asking why He does not prevent every evil act. He decided not to intervene in the world aside from setting the laws.
I did not understand the answer. He could have created only laws, but ones that would produce, alongside evolutionary development, the medicines just as they led to the creation of food and bread for every living being according to its needs. That way He would also spare suffering and still not intervene. Unless we say that just as life took billions of years to develop in accordance with the system of laws, so too the technology and medicine developed by human beings also for some reason required a long time before they came into being – and they too are part of the Creator's master plan. That is, the answer to my question why He did not create medicines and other non-nature-defying improvements is that He did create them; through human beings. And otherwise, apparently, the laws of nature did not allow it.
Who revealed this secret to you? Can you write the formulas for such laws that do everything as now but without the evil (no need for medicines – just let there be no diseases)?
I do not understand. He also does not know how to write the formulas of the current laws, so what of it? What logical obstacle is there to laws without those diseases? It is not like a stone falling.
It seems to me that the burden of proof is on you, to show that there is a logical contradiction here, and not on him to provide equations.
I think this topic needs to be expanded on..
Will you write about it in the trilogy? When are you planning to publish it?