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Both Sides Brigade's avatar

I wrote a paper when I was getting my degree making a similar point - I think I used an analogy with speed limits, where you can say that speed limits are truly justified while also accepting that, say, a seriously ill person being pulled over for speeding on their way to the hospital is still legitimately bad and benefits no one. The problem, though, which I think a lot of theists pick up on, is that this makes mitigation efforts perfectly acceptable and the new question is why God wouldn't engage in them. And I think that's ultimately a more difficult (and more depressing or uncomfortable) question. Most people would rather think there's an unknown reason why something is good than think there's an unknown reason why a bad thing wasn't stopped - if you take this view, you're basically required to say that God is, in fact, failing to help you in some serious way when you suffer. And that seems like the sort of view a lot of theists just wouldn't be willing to accept.

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Michael Huemer's avatar

Evolution doesn't entail those other things; it just causes them. God could intervene and stop episodes of great suffering, without making it false that species evolved by natural selection.

Explanations like those you suggested (which you agreed are not super-plausible) read to me like the sort of ad hoc thing that you could always say if you really want to hold on to a theory. Sure, I don't know exactly what the world should look like if there was a perfect being; I'm not myself perfect enough to figure that out. But I think it's too big of a coincidence if it just happens that it would look exactly as if there wasn't that perfect being.

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