Opinion on The Problem of Evil.
The Problem of Evil is difficult. Death, murder, robbery, abuse, genocide, and natural accidents take things we set our happiness on, things we'd love, and sometimes our hope along with them. If our Hope is in God or in something else, these evils can diminish that hope by proxy. It’s common, if unhealthy, to hinge our happiness onto one ideal or another; not doing this, can be a much healthier way to be.
There are things I repeatedly practice in my life that help me remain hopeful in the face of moral evils. I avoid a dependence on emotional highs as to not be dependent and despair when the lows inevitably come. I also normalizing perceiving limitations as capacities, much as the beauty of scars being wounds allowed to heal and not mere aberrations. Recognizing my happiness-held-hostage attachments - to people, relationships, ideas - as what they are helps as well. This better prepares me for when the winds inevitably change against my favor. Instead of cursing the wind, or celebrating it, I am then more-free to adjust my sails, and further on. These attitudes defy in-group mentalities that invariably identify with something other than pulse and breath. While these two important things remain, there is always an ember of hope from which fires great and small may yet be ignited.
As for a god in The Problem of Evil, if one exists as I believe he does, he can survive our disbelief. We must first believe in ourselves, working with whatever great-or-small grace we have. If this grace, this state-of-being matches our ideals or not, the world remains as it is, so there is no use in resenting it. We’ve every right, however, to be grateful for what spark and breath remain, and to use them for the greatest moral good within our given varying capacities (or limitations). I do not recognize Ontological Evils then as-much-as greater and lesser natural or material Goods. These Goods we employ for more-or-less useful moral purposes, less useful purposes being Morally Evil by comparison. This choice of how to employ material Goods by our informed and dynamic consciences is a grace God gives us - our means, and free-will. When we reject the possibility of a god, it is never a god mysterious to us.
Does Evil prove or disprove a loving, all-powerful god? How?
I am not of the opinion that the presence of Evil disproves the presence of an all-loving, knowing, and powerful God. This is due to my belief that all material existence is good, and that moral evil is but the choosing of lesser-good acts in place of equally-accessible greater ones. This ability to choose the greatest moral act - and thereby participate in our own creating - I attribute to the gracious nature of a generating and sustaining god who does not violate his creation into a danse-macabre, a mindless puppetry, but would gradually and gently romance man toward perfection, making all our crooked lines straight with us. The existence of a moral evil, then, is not an option to fail, but for success, and redemption.
Do you side with Hume or Hick? Is Hick's reply the best?
I tend to agree with most everything Hick shares in our reading. Perhaps if I understood Hume’s circumstances more I could speak better about his argument. I have little love for refutals, and strongly disagree with each of Hume’s four seemingly-idealized points against a god existing despite the presence of evil, if for different reasons.
Are there other replies? Are there better replies?
There are more and better replies to The Problem of Evil than just Hume and Hick’s. The world is vast, with many philosophies in it, which we have come across before, and will likely encounter. Ours is only an Introductory Philosophy class, and it is unlikely that we can plumb the depths of The Problem of Evil here. Boethius' Consolation in our text (14th Edition), for example, is an amazing and heartening read on the subject that greatly helped me wade through Hume's rhetoric.
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-XV, 27 September 2013
