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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    42
    There is every reason to expect that a perfectly good and... — Carmelics
    Home/Divine Attributes
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    There is every reason to expect that a perfectly good and loving God would create a world in which there is suffering.

    Divine Attributes
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Soul-making is not possible except through the experience of suffering.
      ?

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    • 2.A world in which humans are brought to spiritual maturity through the process of soul-making is incomparably better than a hedonistic paradise.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.An omnipotent God could produce virtuous, spiritually mature souls directly without requiring suffering as the developmental medium.
      ?

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    • 2.If soul-making requires suffering, this implies a constraint on divine creative power incompatible with classical omnipotence.
      ?

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    • 3.Hick's soul-making framework presupposes a developmental anthropology that a perfect creator would have no reason to build into human nature.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The quantity and severity of actual suffering—including suffering that destroys rather than develops souls—vastly exceeds what any soul-making rationale could justify.
      ?

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    • 2.Dostoevsky's argument, formalized by Ivan Karamazov, holds that the suffering of innocents who lack the cognitive or moral capacity for soul-making is unredeemable by any future good.
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    Divine Attributes

    Related

    A world in which humans are brought to spiritual maturity through the process of...An omnipotent God could produce virtuous, spiritually mature souls directly with...Dostoevsky's argument, formalized by Ivan Karamazov, holds that the suffering of...Hick's soul-making framework presupposes a developmental anthropology that a per...
    +3 moreShow less
    If soul-making requires suffering, this implies a constraint on divine creative ...Soul-making is not possible except through the experience of suffering.The quantity and severity of actual suffering—including suffering that destroys ...

    Similar

    A perfectly good God would create the best possible world79%If a good and loving God exists and has created all humans, then the r...78%If this is a best possible world, there could not be an evil unless it...78%Every being is a good thing and every good thing is a being.76%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: providence-divine
    Soul-making theodicy defenders
    View source passageHide passage
    Soul-making, according to its defenders, is not possible except through the experience of suffering. Because this is so, and because a world in which humans are brought to spiritual maturity through this process is incomparably better than a hedonistic paradise, there is every reason to expect that a perfectly good and loving God would create a world in which there is suffering. Still, the opponent may object that this answer is at best incomplete. For, he will argue, not all of the suffering of the world enters into soul-making. Consider again the case that was mentioned earlier, of the fawn ...
    Extraction notes

    The passage explicitly presents this argument as the defenders' position: premises 1 and 2 are directly stated, and the conclusion follows logically—if soul-making requires suffering and produces an incomparably better world, then a perfectly good God would have reason to create a world with suffering.

    Validity:

    Confidence: Clearly stated argument in the text.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit