> From this.
Epicurus said:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
The big problem with the claim(s) of this argument is that it presumes that God has to use our logic to do things. To give faith a chance, though, think of the possibility that He knew that evil would happen, but that His purpose would be served better if He allowed it to happen than if He did not? That the most good would come about as a final result, which would exist in eternity? (Note that this counterargument is not to say that the end justifies the means — for He Himself does no evil, giving only freedom.) Perhaps we merely act upon the argument that we do not prefer things to go wrong, but when they do, we make of things better than if the wrong never occurred? If there is an eternity, an afterlife, we lose no chance to make it up to those destroyed by the world.
Many questions that deny the existence of God seem merely to underestimate Him, or think that He operates in a way that is trivially understood by beings that are far, far inferior in wisdom and of purpose. And to harp on the point that God is willing and able to stop evil: we call it Judgement Day. Just because He doesn’t follow your timeline doesn’t make Him incompetent. It is no longer thinking out of the box to claim ignorance of the existence of God. Now that we see a bit clearer things of scale, find a place for infinity in the finite: see how well that fits in your world.
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