this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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I know someone who was in the hospital a lot as a kid, and said her faith was shattered by three words "Pediatric Oncology Ward". That and having been placed in the room across from where they took patients for burn debridement, in a children's hospital.
Pretty much my goto for problem of evil. It is really hard to argue that an loving god, even with free will bullshit excuse, would create a situation where humans had to develop pediatric oncology. The one group of humans we can point to and say they are innocent the one group we can point to and say this injustice. Given a choice between a universe that is indifferent and one that is a machine for misery I know which I would prefer and which one makes the most sense given the data we have.
It's a good example of it.
I'm fond of a work of fiction called UNSONG when it comes to the problem of evil though, it posits as a solution that god operates at a level of abstraction where if two things are identical, they are the same thing and God's purpose is to maximize the amount of good that exists. So God goes about creating worlds, first a perfect one, then ones with a single imperceptible imperfection, etc, etc, every conceivable world that results in more good than evil on net. We're out on the fringes of that.
This same work of fiction also manages to be an absolute masterclass on foreshadowing, and manages to be about theodicy, kabbalah, open source software, the works of William Blake and the song Miss American Pie all at once. Coherently. If something doesn't make sense to you in the moment, it's probably not a plot hole but a lack of understanding that has already been foreshadowed.