1. Didn’t I already prove that in the original question? You claim that God intervenes in evolution; what was the problem with intervening in it so that there would be no suffering?
In any case, if it is beyond His power to create a universe without suffering (you’ve really crippled Him), it would have been better not to create the universe at all. There is much more suffering in the world than pleasure (and not only among human beings—look at nature. Three billion years of creatures dying and being eaten and being born and suffering and crying and being tormented and dying and being born…), and suffering is also far more significant than pleasure. Therefore, creating such a universe is simply an evil act.
2. I don’t understand why that’s an absurd proposal. If you had the ability to prevent all people in the world from having the option of abusing children, would you do it?

1. The problem is that you can’t intervene in processes and at the same time preserve a world that operates according to fixed regularity. That’s a contradiction. In a world without regularity, it’s impossible to function.
The issue of suffering too has been discussed here quite a bit in the past, and I really do not agree with your assessment. But it’s hard to argue about assessments like that.
2. No, if that involved taking away everyone’s freedom of will. Do you advocate neutralizing the ability of all human beings to think and choose so that they won’t cause harm? If it were in your hands, would you do that? I wouldn’t.

By the way, I also didn’t write that He intervenes in the evolutionary process. But even if so, in my view there’s no problem with such intervention before the formation of man. The regularity of the world is necessary for human functioning.

1. I don’t understand—why is it so important that the world operate according to fixed regularity? I don’t see how that is more important than preventing real suffering of sentient creatures.
2. Why not? It actually sounds like a utopia to me. I don’t understand your justification for giving people such large and significant choices, choices that can have terrible consequences. What is so important about free choice that justifies a child starving to death in a concentration camp?
One more thing I’ve wondered: why did God create us with free choice in the first place and give us the possibility of sinning and doing commandments? Why did He do all this, in your opinion? To me it looks like some sick game of His in which everyone loses.

Apparently I didn’t read God Plays Dice correctly :/ Oh well, if He could have intervened and prevented suffering and didn’t intervene, then He’s simply evil.

1. Try to think what you would do in a world without laws. You would die immediately. You would have no ability to respond to situations or know what to do. Life would be capricious, with no ability to predict it. You have a fever and take acetaminophen—the fever goes up, or you get cancer. You go down the stairs and fall. You built a house and it collapses. The alternative is that the Holy One, blessed be He, would run everything Himself and prevent each such event separately. But then there is no point to the world He created. He created it, and us, so that we would conduct ourselves within it on our own.
2. Then we have a deep disagreement. I can only be glad that the decision is not in your hands.
Your conclusions about sick games and the like are baseless nonsense. You don’t have the slightest basis, the slightest information, or the slightest understanding of His modes of conduct and thought, and yet you judge Him as though He were a human being doing something. That is a meaningless judgment, since it is all made within the human framework that He Himself created.

All right, I think we’ve exhausted this. I think your certainty is not a substitute for arguments. And the arguments are weak.

1. I still don’t see in your words any justification for all this. If He can’t or doesn’t want to create a world without suffering, then He simply shouldn’t have created the world in the first place. By creating the world, He caused all the suffering that exists. That is the best alternative.
I didn’t see that you answered me: what, in your opinion, justifies the creation of the world? What do you know that I don’t, that would change my mind and make me understand that God created the world for a justified reason? As far as I understand, it seems you have no idea what justifies the suffering involved in creating the world. (If that is indeed the case, then there is no escaping the conclusion that He is evil, because there is no justification for the suffering He caused.)
2. Here too you didn’t answer me. I asked what, in your opinion, is so important about free choice that it justifies all the suffering it causes (and will yet cause).
The only thing I need to understand in order to judge Him is that suffering is bad and that the world is full of suffering. If I don’t have the slightest understanding (and you do?), you’re welcome to explain to me what justifies it, as I asked above. In the end, the assumption is that He has the same values as ours (suffering is bad, etc.).

I’ll answer this collection of fallacies one more time, and with that I’ll finish.
1. The question whether to create or not create the world depends on things you do not necessarily understand. Judging from your point of view is presumptuous, and I wouldn’t base anything on it. From our point of view there cannot be a reason for creating the world, because if it was done for His sake—then that is bad selfishness. And if it was done for our sake—then let Him not create us and there will be no problem. You do good for an existing person when you improve his situation. But to create a person out of nothing cannot be considered doing him a favor. My solution is that it was done for His sake and not for ours, but such a consideration is beyond our capacity to understand. When we know Him as He truly is, we will be able to judge Him. To judge Him in our own terms is presumptuous and unreasonable.

2. The same applies to the need to give free choice. You are asking questions that you have no chance of understanding. So if you decide in advance that there is no explanation, fine. But you have no way to conclude that on the basis of your own perspective.

Your recurring fallacy is that again and again you infer that I must know something that you don’t know. Not so. I did not claim that I know something else, but rather that one must know that not knowing doesn’t say very much. It’s like an ant trying to understand why you are doing this or that to it. With its tools it has no chance of reaching understanding, and if it draws conclusions from that, it will make a mistake.

That’s all.

Okay, so just to sum up: you claim that I cannot judge Him because I do not understand the processes and His thinking and so on. Just to close the discussion, I’ll say that I think the very fact that we do not know why we suffer (we do not know His calculations) is the most unjust thing of all. If you are going to impose suffering on living creatures, the very least you can do is tell them why they are suffering (He actually had a good opportunity to tell us at the end of the Book of Job. Too bad He didn’t take it).

Shabbat shalom 🙂

And I claim that this itself too is an unjustified and baseless judgment of His conduct.
Shabbat shalom 🙂

“Item 1 deals with natural evil, and there indeed the answer is that conduct according to laws probably necessitates the bad outcomes.”
Fine, that’s “your” God. But “my” God is omnipotent, and can create a perfect world, no?

Can He also create a round triangle? What about a married bachelor? These are absurdities. You assume that there could be a world that operates according to these laws, with all the good outcomes, but without the bad outcomes. Without that assumption, your question does not exist. Please prove that this is the case. Reasoning suggests the opposite (the bad outcomes are consequences of the laws, and in order to get rid of them one must change the laws or abolish them).

I saw that the thread came back to life, so with the audience’s permission I’d like to summarize once again (I’m not satisfied with the previous summary). I argued that if there is no possibility of creating another world, then the very creation of this suffering-filled world is an evil act. The Rabbi argued that there are probably things that justify the suffering (and that I cannot judge because of my ignorance). I asked what things justify the suffering, and the Rabbi did not know. I see it this way: if you are a judge in court, and you know for certain of an evil thing the defendant did, and you do not know for certain of any good thing that justifies that evil act, would you judge him on the assumption that there is some hidden good factor behind that act? Of course not. You judge according to the knowledge you have. No judge knows exactly the chain of decisions and reasons that went through the criminal’s head, and that does not stop him from judging.

Rabbi, with all due respect, is creating a perfect world in which the laws do not produce friction really a logical contradiction?
You could say that human intervention—which in your view is not known in advance—is what causes the friction.

Sh, the next stage will be that you won’t be satisfied with this summary either. When a being comes before you for judgment and you have no idea what kind of being it is, what its mode of thought is, or how it operates, you will not be able to judge it. In that way you also cannot judge a black hole for the sin of not emitting light, even if you do not know the reason for it. These analogies are as usual absurd.

Moshe, indeed. I’ve already explained here more than once that if one wants a system of laws that will give everything the current system gives, but without the bad outcomes, one must prove that there is such a system of laws. Can you write the equations of physics of such a world and show that all this holds? My bet is that there is no such system of laws. Just one correction: the laws do not create friction. On the contrary, they work perfectly. But some of their results are bad (friction in our eyes, from a moral standpoint, not in the sense of deviation from the laws).

1. By “friction” I meant results that are “evil” in our eyes.
2. You are not addressing the claim that if so, then God is not really omnipotent (to create a physical system without friction). He did not come from a blank slate but with constraints?

I certainly did address it and answer it.

Sorry, but I wasn’t able to understand. Maybe after all you could explain to me why inability to create such a world is not a limitation on omnipotence? Suppose I have no proof that it can be done and you are right—it cannot be done. Who is it that imposes the limitation? Why can’t God solve this technical problem? Are His creative powers limited by a limitation that is not a logical contradiction? (My only explanation is the possibilities of free choice, and even that needs further thought.) If you think you can’t explain beyond what you already wrote—don’t bother.

This limitation is indeed a logical limitation. If such a system of laws is not possible at all and does not exist (is contradictory), then He cannot create a world whose laws are those laws. The Holy One, blessed be He, cannot create a quadratic equation that has three solutions, simply because there is no such equation. The concept is empty.
I asked above: who limits Him from creating a round triangle or a married bachelor? Can He create a ball that penetrates every wall and at the same time also a wall that withstands every ball? Can you answer these questions, or do you think He really can do that? If not—who limits Him?
Omnipotence means the ability to do everything that is possible (that can be conceived, whose concept exists). But if something is an empty concept, contentless and self-contradictory, the inability to do it is not a limitation. It is not really an inability. When you explain to me what a round triangle is, I can try to answer the question whether He can make one.
Somewhere I brought the parable of Puss in Boots and the fearsome sorcerer regarding this. Worth looking for it.

You wrote that if it is impossible then it is a logical limitation. Correct. But maybe it is possible for the omnipotent? Isn’t your argument circular?

Maybe it is possible and maybe it isn’t. Now go think about whether the burden of proof is on the questioner or on the one answering. At the moment, the questioner is in the category of “one can object with difficulty,” and objections of that sort carry no weight.
Every argument is circular in the sense that it assumes its own premises. The challenger has the burden of showing that even in light of those premises, the conclusion is not correct. Otherwise this is not an attack, just the expression of a different position.

I’m having trouble understanding. If it is not unavoidable, that is, there is no impediment to creating such a physical system, (and I do not see any logical impediment to a different physical system), then it is within the power of the omnipotent. Sorry for pestering, but I really can’t manage to understand.

I don’t know how to explain it more clearly than I already have. It doesn’t seem complicated to me, and I think I spoke very clearly.
You claim that such a system is possible, meaning that there is a system of laws that will bring about all the results brought about by the current system, but without the bad outcomes. Therefore you ask why the Holy One, blessed be He, did not create a world with that better system. Do you have proof for that assumption? I claim that on the contrary, it is very plausible that there is no such system. In any case, if you have no proof, I do not see how you can attack on the basis of your arbitrary assumption. The burden of proof is on the challenger, not on the one resolving the difficulty.

I feel this is a dialogue of the deaf, and so I’ll write for the last time. If one assumes that God is omnipotent, it follows from that that such a system is within His capabilities (if there is nothing that limits that ability, say, a logical contradiction). Just as He came from a blank slate and created the universe according to the current physics (according to which, in your words, there must be evil), He could have created a universe with different physics. Since His powers are unlimited, He could have marked out the goal in advance (a universe without “evil”) and invented suitable physics accordingly.

Unfortunately, it’s a dialogue of one deaf person. I explained that there are universes that are logically impossible, and even He cannot create them (just as He cannot create a Euclidean world in which a round triangle is possible). I explained that the burden of proof that your universe is not one of these is on you. You keep repeating the same claim again and again as if nothing had been written here. Indeed, this is the place to part as friends. I’m done.