I believe it's Crashfrog I was hoping to woo here with this topic. It may have been Nosy Ned. My memory is so much worse than it was when I was younger.
Anyway, one of them occasionally signs off with a statement that God is either powerless, immoral or both, because of the great evil in the world. I didn't have a good answer to this, and I wanted one, so I even checked out a book from the library called _The Omnipotence of God_ by Howard Redmond. Mostly, it was a horrible disappointment. The best he could do was, "Another important conclusion of this book is that the finite-infinite category be dropped from theological discourse...this in no sense implies God's finitude, but only the applicability of the category to divine reality."
What that means is that he's not going to try to claim God is infinitely powerful, because that brings up a real problem with the existence of evil. Can't an omnipotent God create a universe with free will but without evil? In the end, Redmond says, "I really don't want to answer that question, so I'm going to say God's omnipotent, but not infinitely omnipotent."
I guess you can be that silly in theology school.
He does, however, bring up David Hume, about whom I know almost nothing, but I was interested in the quotes in this book. Hume has a character named Philo who suggests, "It would seem that God must be either impotent or malevolent, for if he is neither, why should there be evil in the world?" Since that is the very topic I wanted to address, I want to put forth Redmond's treatment of Hume for discussion.
This writer says that while we cannot necessarily reconcile an omnipotent and good God with a universe with so much suffering, we also cannot rule both out. He quotes Hume as saying, "Pain or misery in man is compatible with infinite power and goodness in the Deity." He says, however, that for Hume, mere compatibility was not enough.
To sum up, he says, "In the _Dialogues_, Cleanthes, with whom Hume most closely identifies himself, observes that there is no necessary conflict between divine goodness and divine power. To be sure, there is a _possible_ conflict between them."
That said as a long introduction, my position is that it is logically possible for an omnipotent and beneficent Creator to create a universe in which evil is possible and suffering is common, and that a kind Creator would not necessarily intervene in every circumstance of evil and suffering, leaving such intervention to the mercy or lack of it in his creatures.
That would not be the first thing I would expect, but because I believe in God, and believe I have experienced God, and because I think that the God I believe in claims to be Creator of the universe, and I see that evil and suffering do exist, I ask the question, "Is it logically impossible for what I see and believe to be true."
My answer is no. I think an omnipotent and moral Creator could create the universe we see.
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