Q&A: Does Creating the Choice of Evil Indicate Deficiency or Evil
Does Creating the Choice of Evil Indicate Deficiency or Evil
Question
As is well known, one of the answers to the problem of evil being created by an almighty, all-good, and all-knowing God is, in my opinion, that evil is necessary in order to create free choice. My question is: why create a choice that causes unnecessary suffering? The very fact of giving the possibility of choosing evil indicates that God is either not good or not perfect. Thank you very much, I’d be happy to receive an answer.
Answer
Not at all. He has an interest in our choosing, because without that there is no point to our existence at all. That requires the existence of evil, because without it there is no choice. When someone chooses option X, which comes with price Y, that does not mean he does not care about the price; rather, in his view the value of X justifies paying price Y.
Discussion on Answer
My response is that He indeed has needs. Not necessarily in the same sense that we do, but a kind of perfection that needs to be fulfilled.
See a proposed explanation in column 170.
So the Rabbi agrees that He is not all-powerful? Also, why doesn’t He overcome His needs for the sake of the good, as I would expect from someone perfectly good?
I see that you didn’t read the column. And apparently not my answer above either.
I read the answer above, but I still haven’t read the column.
I read the answer here, but not the column. In the answer you wrote here, you said that He has needs, so I asked why you think He is perfect.
Who said He is perfect? He has needs, and part of His perfection is that we fulfill them. That’s what I explained in the column.
But these are not needs that serve an interest; they create perfection. Therefore His demand that they be fulfilled is not something selfish, bad, or base. That is what I answered above.
I need to read the column. But isn’t the purpose of all our needs also some kind of perfection — to create perfection, at least temporarily? By the way, I think that if you need to make people suffer in order to be whole, doesn’t that say something about you?
Indeed, you do need to. Your arguments here are not relevant to the issue. Nobody said that all our needs are forms of perfection. Quite the opposite: those are His needs. Ours are not like that. And it doesn’t indicate anything about Him.
What is the difference between our needs and His? I’m saying that our needs are also an aspiration to perfection. A person wants to be whole, to fill a temporary or permanent lack, and for that he fulfills his needs. And the Creator’s needs are also an aspiration to perfection, as you wrote. Just as when we create evil in order to realize our needs that is evil, so too with the Creator. By the way, it seems to me that Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto writes that God is absolute perfection, no? What do you think?
By the way, I read the article, and you argued there that God must create a process of perfecting in order to be completely perfect. Couldn’t He create perfection without causing evil? Something good, and certainly perfectly good, would never do that.
The very fact that God has an interest in my choosing, and that this justifies evil, shows: a. that God has an interest / concern = something matters to Him = He lacks something. That means God is not absolute perfection and not all-powerful, because He cannot satisfy this need without creating evil, which obviously He does not want.
B. It matters to Him more to satisfy this need / interest through us than to avoid evil. That means choice is worth more than not doing evil, which a perfectly good being — and even just a perfect one — would never do. What is the Rabbi’s response?