Michi’s arguments are easily refuted. If there is no intervention—and all the more so if there is some intervention by the Creator—then assuming He is omnipotent and omniscient, however you turn it, He is evil. Both because of natural evil, which is itself His doing, and He should have intervened from time to time in His world and did not; and because of human evil, for whose consequences He is responsible and yet did not intervene. At the very least one can maintain that He is not omnipotent and therefore helpless. Consider this carefully. And Richard Rubenstein already argued that the Holocaust proves unequivocally the bankruptcy of traditional Jewish theology.

God stood before who knows how many possibilities at dawn, and this is the world He created. He went bankrupt long ago; if He had to intervene in every bit of suffering down to the last detail in His failed creation, it would never end.

The principle of sufficient reason compels the conclusion that there is a reason God granted human beings the power of choice. Doesn’t that hidden reason undermine the claim that God is omnipotent? What was God contending with in granting human beings free choice? Then the claim of His lack of omnipotence retreats one step backward—from the very existence of evil in the world to the desire to grant human beings free choice.

God gave free choice like this so there would be a sadistic game He could watch while cracking sunflower seeds.

As for animals, He gave up on free choice for them—they are His direct will, that they should prey on one another cruelly. I detest predatory animals.

I think it’s enough that you’re willing to support Rabbi Michi’s approach even once regarding natural evil (that there must be order in the world) in order to argue already that this is not evil. “Evil” too is embedded in nature as a necessity. Because nature is blind; it operates lawfully, and that lawfulness is blind as to whom it affects. Unless, of course, you allow intervention. But if that happens constantly at every point, then there won’t be any nature at all. And how would you learn that fire causes pain? It creates total cognitive anarchy.
So to the extent that you allow suffering, what difference is there to me between a little and a lot? That’s how I understand his words.
In particular since some would say that the world was created partly broken, with “evil” on the side of brokenness, so that people could repair it.

Dear A., my question was directed to the Rabbi. Please don’t drown the thread in your musings lest the Rabbi miss my question, which I’m very interested in getting an answer to.
Thanks in advance for your patience.

K,

Learning that fire causes pain does not absolve the Creator of responsibility if a person stumbled and fell into the fire and He did not save him. Plagues or cancer, when a person has no idea where they came from, are the Creator’s responsibility. Let the omnipotent one intervene.

He does not spare even His righteous ones. If a man is righteous—it goes badly for him. But the way of the wicked prospers.

Sigal, the principle of sufficient reason does not apply to actions performed by beings with will. There, the sufficient reason is their will. The Holy One, blessed be He, was not obligated to give us free choice. He wanted that, and therefore He gave it to us.

So that they would rape a beautiful captive woman. Interesting that God implanted in man a sexual drive and violence whose character, at root, is all evil incarnate. And Rabbi Sigmund Freud already pointed this out.

Thank you

Of course it’s possible. Ask the children in America. His name is Santa Claus.