Keme asked:

If there is God and he is almighty why then do we suffer evil in the world?

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I accept Keme's factual assumption. We do suffer evil in this world. (Perhaps some philosophers
would argue that evil is an illusion. But their allegedly veridical grasp of that illusion makes me wonder
if their perception of other evil is illusory.)

To his factual assumption Keme links a moral presupposition, which we can explicate as follows. All
things being equal, a moral agent who is able to prevent excessive suffering from befalling another,
suffering from which good is neither expected to come nor can conceivably come is morally obligated
to prevent it if he can.

The strength of this obligation varies with circumstances. They include the risk to himself, his loved
ones, or his property that the prospective preventive act may expose them to. (This does not hold for
those who profession it is to incur risk in order to rescue others in danger.) Generally, however, as
risk rises, obligation weakens. (We regard as heroes those who perform their rescue obligations
without regard to risk, especially when risk is significant.) Obligation is strongest where ability is great
and risk is minimal.

In the case of God at least the deity of classical theism (that of Eastern and Western Christian
orthodox theology) ability is infinite and risk is zero.

And thus Keme's implicit problem. For the existence of great power alone does not by itself make the
occurrence of excessive suffering a puzzle. Many powerful men have made people suffer greatly, but
their victims never wondered how it could be so. What would have made them wonder, and curse,
was that anyone would praise their tormentors for being morally good. Keme omitted to mention
God's moral character.

Neither has Keme specified what he means by 'almighty' or even by 'God.' We may ascribe to God
great creative power without ascribing to him a monopoly of power, as does classical theism. In the
latter philosophy, beings other than God do have power, but only by his leave. They have no power
independently of God's decreeing that they have it, which power God can withdraw at will.

There is an alternative theism, however, wherein God exercises the power of persuasion. God 'lures'
(Whitehead's term) other subjects of experience into arrangements that afford more intense
experiences for them and for God. God does that, according to this alternative scheme, by providing
each subordinate agent with an initial aim, which the agent may accept or replace with its own. In
such an alternative theism, God is not unilaterally responsible for the metaphysical situation in which
each agent (including God) finds himself. Neither is God unilaterally responsible for the actual cosmic
order that results from the decisions and actions of all agents. God is a necessary, but by no means a
sufficient factor in the actual world order.

In the alternative theism, whose ultimate coherence and adequacy to experience we cannot assess
here, evil results from the collision of subjective aims. Collision is perfectly compatible with the
existence of a universal end-coordinating God. Without God, there would not be any coordination of
aims. There would, therefore, be no intelligible world with someone in it asking how evil is possible.
Given a world that God can shape but not unilaterally determine, God cannot obliterate evil any time
God wishes to. The classical theistic God can. But classical theism cannot satisfactorily explain why
God apparently wishes to so rarely and selectively, especially when the demand for God to do so is
so excruciatingly urgent.

Given our moral presupposition, then, the God of classical theism cannot be morally good. Yet
classical theism affirms God to be precisely that. Classical theism is therefore incoherent. The
reasonable person rules out the incoherent. One theism's incoherence, however, does not necessarily
rule out every other. The God of the alternative theism we have been entertaining, in so far as this
God is the universal lure to the better, does all within God's power to promote the realizable good in
every situation. This God is therefore morally good. What God cannot do, however, is push gross
matter around, as we can. Such pushing is, however, often what preventing excessive and pointless
evil requires. God cannot be morally blamed for that inability.

If some kind of being recognizable as God is necessary for there to be a world, then the occurrence
of excessive, pointless suffering does not disconfirm the existence of that God. On the supposition of
the latter, however, we see how there can be 'excessive,' 'pointless' beauty.

Anthony Flood

There is an unstated assumption in this question. The assumption is that God intervenes in the world
process. This assumption is understandable. The earliest Gods were personifications of natural
forces. This is the genesis of the idea that God intervenes in the world. However there is no
unambiguous evidence that God intervenes in the world. If God does not act in the world then there is
no contradiction between the existence of suffering or evil in the world and the almightiness of God.
Any contradiction is only apparent.

One way around this apparent contradiction is to diminish the attributes that are generally ascribed to
God as the entity that is able to initiate the cosmos. This is Whitehead's approach, but it does not
produce a very believable God.

A better approach is to consider why an almighty God would produce a world that he had to
continually fiddle with. God would not have to fiddle with the best possible world. Perhaps Leibniz was
right to argue that this was the best possible world. How could this world, with all its evil and suffering,
be the best possible world?

Why would an almightly God initiate a cosmos anyway? Such a God needs nothing. The only motive
God has for acting would be love. But as Aristotle argued, love is only possible between parties that
are similar. Is God similar to the cosmos? It does not appear so. Is God similar to anything in the
cosmos? There are some similarities between God and man. Man is capable of being creative, loving
and good. Could mankind develop in these qualities so that he becomes like God? One man at least,
Jesus, appears to have done so.

Perhaps then, God initiates the cosmos as a process involving both self-organisation and
self-creation, so that a communal entity similar to God, and appropriate for God to love, could
self-create. But wouldn't it be simpler for God to just create such an entity. It would not, for any
creature God creates is necessarily dissimilar to the self-existent God.

The only avenue open to God appears to be to initiate a Cosmos, which should freely self-organise,
and self-create at the human level, until it produced an entity that is similar to God. God could clearly
not intervene in this process without frustrating the self-creation of such an entity. This is the answer
to the question why we suffer evil. This is also the best possible world because no other world could
possibly produce an entity that is similar to God and appropriate for God to love. This is my argument
in "The Process of the Cosmos".

Dr Anthony Kelly