Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz 1646 - 1716		 THEODICIES: "The Problem of Evil" January, 1993 & Sept., 2003

The "problem of evil" refers to all human pain and suffering, not just those caused by evil human choices but also those cause by the seemingly blind forces of nature, such as disease and drought. Freud calls them Fate and Society. Reconciling the fact of evident evil and suffering with the belief in God's perfect goodness and omnipotence has been a major challenge for theistic religions for centuries. The word "theodicy," invented by the philosopher Leibniz in the 17th century, stands for attempt to reconcile the existence of evil – pain and suffering – with belief in God

SOME BRIEF POSSIBLE ANSWERS:
    People create evil by their free choices
    Without evil no one could appreciate good
    Some suffering is necessary as a means to growth
    God is testing people
    God is punishing people
    Only God is unlimited perfection; if the world is to exist at all it must be imperfect

THE "BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS" THEORY (held by Leibniz among others)
    The all-perfect God would not have made a world any less perfect than is possible. But only the infinite God is fully perfect. Any finite world would have to be less than fully perfect. If God is to create at all, the world could only be the best possible. The evil that exists is the minimum possible in a created universe.

WHAT EVER IS, IS RIGHT -- ?
    "All nature is but art unknown to thee;
    All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
    All discord, harmony not understood;
    All partial evil, universal good;
    And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
    One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right."
            Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, First Epistle. (18th century)

MIXTURE: St. Augustine, early fifth century A.D.
    Evil does not really exist at all. It is privatio boni, a privation of good. God did not create these privations; they came about by human free choice. Moreover, God allowed evil (privations of good) so that out of it an even greater good might come. (Best of all possible worlds?)

REVERENT PIETY: a frequent answer in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thought.
    No one can place limits on God or legitimately question the ways of God. The infinite power of God may have produced an endless number of universes, each of them good in a different way, but each of them with different limits (or else they would not really be different). There is no way of knowing what concepts like good and evil ultimately mean in this context of a possibly infinite number of different universes. (Nominalism)

[SOME RESPONSES TO THE PARTIAL ANSWERS AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE HERE

People create evil by their free choices?
    This does not account for naturally caused evils;
    and why would God make people emotionally able to do such evils as they have?
Without evil no one could appreciate good?
    Does it require the suffering and death of millions of children?
Some suffering is necessary as a means to growth?
    Same question about children, etc.
God is testing people?
    Should parents test children like this? spouses test each other?]
God is punishing people.
    Did the people in the World Trade Center deserve death? Why do children die of AIDS?
Any world must be imperfect?
    But must it be so imperfect as this one is?