Theodicy: God hates everyone

[John Lamb]

What must be explained, then, is why God created the add-on world of the one we live in, with pain and suffering, and with the attendant hell that goes on for eternity.  You essentially have a "greatest good" (heaven), plus an extraneous creation (our universe) where evil is  permitted "for the greater good" (even though the greatest good, heaven, was already in existence as a creation).  That's what presents itself as the difficulty.

Yes, so if it could be shown, via rigorous logical argument, that

1) There is no greater good served by a soul actually going to hell instead of heaven and
2) There is no greater good served by the possibility of a soul going to hell instead of the certainty of its going to heaven,

the Christian (or at least Catholic) God would be proven malevolent, and the religion therefore proven false.  1) is actually in fact true, despite the desperate efforts of Thomists to argue otherwise (e.g. along the lines of "it gives God the opportunity to manifest His justice.") and can be readily shown.  Sure, a greater good is served by hell given the soul's persistence in sin, but it is not true there could be a greater good (e.g. greater accidental glory for God) produced by a soul sinning and rebelling against God and being punished vs. the soul loving God and being rewarded.  Loving God means willing His good, which means willing His accidental glory which means, contradictorily, a soul in that situation desirous of willing His accidental glory to the max should sin.  That can't be.  This is a knock-down argument against the Thomist/Augustianian position.

But, they weren't asking the right question, which is whether 2) is correct.  Heaven is the greatest good, but there are degrees of greatness.  If making a free choice between good and evil for good, and thus obtaining a bigger reward, a higher place in heaven, a much greater union with God, is a greater good than the lesser union lost if heaven were a certainty but there was no free choice, then there is a greater good served by making such a free choice possible (which entails the possibility of choosing evil).

It may theoretically have been a greater good for all created souls to have ended up in heaven, but God is not forced to create the "best of all possible worlds", i.e. God is not forced to send someone to heaven instead of hell just because it would be a greater good to do so. Granted, God could never do evil, but choosing a lesser good is not evil (e.g. giving a beggar one sandwich is not evil just because you could have given him two).  The case is that the order of God's justice & mercy as manifested in both heaven and hell is a greater good than that which is manifested in heaven alone. Hell is indeed an objective good, even if it is experienced by damned souls subjectively as evil. I don't understand the opposition to the idea that the purpose of hell is to manifest God's justice - what other purpose could it have? No, God did not create anybody for hell, but given man's sin, hell is an appropriate punishment which manifests the goodness of God's justice.

I could avoid any and all suffering for sure by refusing to create anything at all.  But maybe there are some goods I want to have in my world which logically entail suffering or at least the possibility of suffering.  So no matter what parameters I pick, there will be suffering as long as I want those goods.

But then this raises the question of whether "wanting these goods" is justified by the suffering of others.  For a creator to place the desire for these goods above the inevitable evil which will befall others suggests a selfish and anthropomorphic nature, which seems blasphemous to impute to a God who admits no deficiencies or selfish needs, at least if we are considering God as a serene and impassive being.  Only of a demiurge would we say something like "he wanted the company of souls to join him in his heaven, and this was the only way he could go about it."

This seems to be the case if we are thinking too abstractly about discrete "goods", but not if we remember than the principal good in question is a free-will capable of meriting reward or punishment. God wanted to create a universe that would not only manifest His goodness and glory in a passive way, but that would be able to respond to His love and actively return it; therefore, he made creatures having free-will, with a consequence being the possibility of evil and rebellion. So the "greater good" in question is a cosmos in which spiritual beings can come to know and love God, as opposed to a purely unconscious universe that can never do so. The evil which mankind suffers has always been mainly due to the evil which we inflict on ourselves and each another. If we were all perfectly charitable, we could bear the natural sufferings of this fallen world mostly with cheer and resignation; but as we are still so corrupt, those natural sufferings (especially death) serve to limit our pride and ambition, thereby curbing much of the moral evil we might otherwise do (e.g. imagine of a Hitler or a Stalin were immortal).

So if the only way to avoid suffering is to not create anything at all, then yes, an omnibenevolent deity would pass on creation.

What about, "it's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all"? Here you are questioning the nature of God's love and its relationship to human suffering, which is where meditation on the Cross becomes vital, showing that suffering is truly bearable for love's sake.

Given the staggering amount of suffering in the world, the most reasonable conclusion would be that the creator was a less than perfect or all-loving divinity.

This appearance is always due to a failure to see the gravity of sin, of the moral evil that man freely commits. This is the insight that the saints had because they understood this gravity of sin, namely that the natural sufferings of this world are as nothing (in terms of evil) compared to sin. The opposite attitude to that presumption one which asks why God could allow such wonderful creatures as ourselves to suffer, is that despairing attitude which asks why God could permit such wretched creatures as ourselves to go on living and enjoying ourselves. When we appreciate the horror of sin, we see how the natural sufferings of the world have a medicinal effect insofar as they curb our pride by reminding us of our frailty; again, imagine if every tyrant or murderer in the world were immortal; imagine how evil we might really become if we did not have the prospect of illness and death before us.

[james03]

I don't understand the opposition to the idea that the purpose of hell is to manifest God's justice - what other purpose could it have?

I can answer that.  The normal way this is phrased is as follows: "God created hell because He wanted to manifest His Justice".  Your variation is an improvement, but I don't like the word "purpose".  I'll use my phraseology, which I typically come across.

The problem is a category error where the categories are perspectives: human and Divine.  We are applying human perspective to explain God, which you can't do.  So "wanted" is temporal.  I wanted a candy bar, so I went to the store and bought one.  God wanted to manifest His justice, so He created Hell.  Wrong.  Wrong perspective, a temporal one.  "Because" is problematic because it points to a potential being reduced to an act.  I don't need to explain why that is in error.  "Purpose" is a little less problematic, but it can be improved on: "Hell IS a manifestation of God's Justice" is more correct.

And even that is not precise.  "Hell" is the place of the dead.  Unbaptized naked savage children go to hell, but they are not tormented.  For that matter, all men in their natural state lack the faculties to view the Beatific Vision, so they go to the place of the dead after they die.  The more precise statement then is as follows: "The punishments of hell ARE a manifestation of God's Justice."

[Quaremerepulisti]

I daresay you're the one moving the goalposts now, QMR, because the Epicurean riddle in the OP only asks why God fails to prevent evil, not with your added qualification of "fails to prevent evil in the case where a greater good were likewise not prevented."

And I firmly deny the charge of moving any goalposts.  The Epicurean riddle claims that if God does not prevent evil when He could do so, then He is malevolent, without any supporting argument.  I deny this by saying that God would only be malevolent if He failed to prevent evil in the case where a greater good were also not prevented.  That is not moving goalposts.  That is presenting a counter-argument.  Now you can argue with me and tell me I'm wrong on principle, or wrong in actual fact insofar as there is in fact evil in the actual world that could be prevented without preventing a greater good, but I haven't moved any goalposts.

As is common with other debates I have on this forum, I am challenging you to question your assumptions and think outside your epistemological box.  Some traditionalist Catholic theodicy and soteriology is frankly seriously flawed and it seems evident you are getting some of your ideas from there.

However the problem with this is that the "greater good" is not yet evident, else the amount of evil already permitted would've brought on a total utopia by now, so the "greater good" becomes the elusive golden prize that we can't see now but it's just around the corner and best you believe it.  It's therefore something to be taken on faith, which is fine from the Christian standpoint (as faith is "the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not") but it kind of moots the original question, since Epicurus was asking to be shown.

And why is that a problem?  Arguing "I don't see it, therefore it doesn't exist" is an argument from ignorance.

Omnibenevolent simply means "all-good," and in a strict sense God could be accused of not having had that attribute the instant he chose to create this world with all its sufferings; that would've been the first opportunity to "prevent evil"—to forgo this creation. 

Right.  But accusing of and proving are two different things.

As I understand it, your claim is that God can permit suffering, even eternal suffering, so long as the greatest possible good is achieved, which apparently is the elect being able to enjoy heaven, freely chosen.  And I am not being emotional here: that just presents itself as a scheme of rank unfairness, particularly given the eternity of much of the suffering.  It negates the claim of "all goodness."  That's the only observation I can make.  I remain open to an explanation that overturns this impression.

You haven't justified the charge of unfairness.  You haven't shown that it is unfair to, instead of giving a rational soul a good A without its having any say-so in the matter, giving it a free choice of a much greater good B or an evil C.

I hope I am being rational enough in my assessment.  I'm trying to keep this basic: suffering is an evil, pleasure is a good.  The first problem of this world is, as I offered earlier, the millions of children who are born into suffering and disease, and die knowing little else.  The second problem is the eternity of hell, as opposed to the theological option of apocatastasis or universal salvation. 

We've already been over the first one.  But let me ask you this, if a little bit of suffering provided the opportunity for a great deal of pleasure, would you condemn as evil an entity who allowed this tiny bit of suffering so that more pleasure could ensue?  Or would you consider it "worth it".  Well the same argument goes for virtue, which is also a good.  If God miraculously prevented all suffering and disease and all other human misery, there would not be the opportunity for compassion and compassionate caregiving.  As for the second, you present this in terms of an "option" which theologians, or God, could choose as an alternative.  But if the conversion of condemned souls is a metaphysical impossibility, then apocatastatis is no more an "option" than 5 is an "option" to what 2 + 2 is.

I believe in the death penalty.  But I don't see how you justify an eternal punishment for a temporal transgression; the punishment of hell grossly outweighs the crime.

And we don't.  The transgression is eternal insofar as the soul doesn't repent and remains hardened in its hatred for God.  Can you honestly expect that a soul who hates God will be treated identical to one who loves Him?

I am considering a pair of teenagers who park at a lover's lane and make whoopee in the back seat of the lad's father's car, only to be killed in an instantaneous collision with a "ten-ton truck or a double-decker bus" on the drive home, dying in the rosy afterglow of their sin without having given an ounce of thought to repentance.  I'm unable to see the justice in punishing this youthful indiscretion with eternal torment.  Feel free to refer to this as an "argument from ignorance," but also feel free to enlighten me: how is their infinite suffering justified?

And just how do you know there was never an "ounce of thought" given to repentance.  How do you know what graces and opportunities were given these souls by God?  Even in the infinitesimal amount of time between the collision of the truck and death?  You don't know all these things.

I suppose the discussion I've chosen here is your option no. 4: "provide evidence to think Christianity is false via the evidential problem of hell."  My exhibit A, then, being the problem of eternal punishment for finite crimes.  Because as Chestertonian has said, we are human beings, and the only rational perspective we have is the human one; we can only use human logic and human reason to suss these things out.

I agree.  My counter-exhibit though is that it is not a question of eternal punishment for finite crimes, but eternal punishment for eternal crimes.

But so far you have not said much on this "good" that is to be "gained," so I can only assume that you refer (as I said above) to the ability of the elect (the few) to enjoy heaven, freely chosen, at the expense of both the earthly and infernal sufferings of everyone else.

That isn't an accurate way of putting it.  The good of being able to freely choose heaven is , I say, a much greater good (in comparison with a non-freely-chosen heaven) than the necessary concomitant evil, that is, the the ability to freely choose hell.  The earthly sufferings, such as they are, are, I say, a much less evil in toto than the opportunities to practice virtue which go along with them.

If a world without suffering were created, then the creator would've outdone God, who has a created a world with suffering.  Such a creator would be a perfect creator, and therefore God, not a demiurge.  Although it's your own claim that a world without suffering is somehow less preferable to the current one we're living in, so I can see how you might think a demiurge could create a world without suffering.

Exactly.

[Quaremerepulisti]

It may theoretically have been a greater good for all created souls to have ended up in heaven, but God is not forced to create the "best of all possible worlds", i.e. God is not forced to send someone to heaven instead of hell just because it would be a greater good to do so. Granted, God could never do evil, but choosing a lesser good is not evil (e.g. giving a beggar one sandwich is not evil just because you could have given him two). 

But someone sinning and going to hell instead of acting virtuously and going to heaven is not just a lesser good.  It is an evil. 

Thus, the combination of  1) It is a greater good for all created souls to have ended up in heaven; and 2) God, simply by an act of His will, predetermines which souls act virtuously and attain heaven and which do not; and 3) Some souls go to hell anyway entails God is malevolent.  He is not preventing an evil which He could prevent without thereby preventing a greater good.  In fact He is ultra-malevolent, the most malevolent being imaginable, for He is not preventing the worst evil which could befall creatures (hell) which could be done without thereby preventing the greatest good they could have (heaven in whatever degree).

Since Thomists are determined to affirm 2) come hell or high water, they must deny 1), as you end up doing.

The case is that the order of God's justice & mercy as manifested in both heaven and hell is a greater good than that which is manifested in heaven alone.

That is simply the conclusion you are forced to.  However, not only is it illogical (and can thus be proven to be false), it is absolutely and utterly contemptible when paired together with the assertion that that is the world which God in fact willed.

First, the manifestation of God's perfections is known as His accidental glory.  Souls should will God's accidental glory to the maximum extent possible, since that is the greatest good possible to will for a creature.  That is why (among other reasons) we are told to imitate Christ.  However, if in a given case, God's accidental glory will be greater if the soul sins and is punished, versus it being virtuous, then that is what it should will to do, contrary to God's command that it not act that way.  You never addressed this argument but just skated around it.

But second, Love is the willing of another's good, primarily just for the sake of the other's good and not for one's own good.  Thus if God fails to will the salvation of one because that soul's damnation better enhances His accidental glory, and therefore wills the salvation of others also primarily because this better enhances His accidental glory, He is not Love but, in reality, a selfish, malevolent monster.

Hell is indeed an objective good, even if it is experienced by damned souls subjectively as evil.

Hell is indeed an objective good given the existence of sin, but the combination of sin (and its consequent hell) is an evil.

I don't understand the opposition to the idea that the purpose of hell is to manifest God's justice - what other purpose could it have?

Well, His other perfections too, but there is no opposition to this idea as such.  However, there is strong opposition to the idea that God failed to will the salvation of some precisely so that there could be hell such His justice could be manifest.

[Graham]

Here is an article by Dr. Feser discussing hell and why our will is fixed upon death:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/10/how-to-go-to-hell_29.html?m=1

Search Obstinate human wills for why our wills are fixed at death, but I supppose that won't answer your question since you will ask why God created a world that is set up in this manner.

Great article

[Mono no aware]

Here is an article by Dr. Feser discussing hell and why our will is fixed upon death:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/10/how-to-go-to-hell_29.html?m=1

Search Obstinate human wills for why our wills are fixed at death, but I supppose that won't answer your question since you will ask why God created a world that is set up in this manner.

I enjoyed reading that essay—but as you've said, it doesn't address the question of "why God created a world that is set up in this manner."  Thank you very much for the link, though.  I've read some other things by Edward Feser and although I have never been an aspiring Thomist myself, I appreciate his talent for explaining St. Thomas on a level that an informed layperson can comprehend.  His discussion of the angels choosing their fate "in an instant" fairly contradicts what QMR was arguing for earlier, which is that this world with all its millions of years of sufferings and vicissitudes is somehow required in order to have a heaven populated by souls who had "freely chosen" it, whereas according to Feser, that option had already been arrived at cleanly, with God giving the angels a free and immediate choice of good or unhappiness.

I think Feser is correct that a consideration of the angels' predicament is a "useful thought experiment."  It frames things in such a simple and streamlined way that we can actually be omniscient in this thought experiment.  If you create two angels, and you know in advance that one will immediately choose beatitude and the other will immediately choose unhappiness, why create the second one?  And if you do create it, why not spare it hell and just annihilate it?  Its choice was immediate and irrevocable; it could never have had a chance to change its mind or regret its choice—it can only "remain ever obstinate in its malice."

No, if we resolve the problem of evil we have only proved that there could be an all good God. And it has been shown that there is no rigorous logical argument proving without a doubt that a good God cannot exist. We can only say it "seems" like an all good God could not allow this or that evil. The problem is we cannot be certain given our lack of knowledge of all of the relevant factors.

Right.  This is what is causing our disagreement: the statement that "we cannot be certain given our lack of knowledge of all of the relevant factors."  As it has been put more or less on this thread already: God is omniscient and we are not, so he surely must have his reasons for allowing suffering that we are not aware of.  As I indicated above, however, the thought experiment with the angels removes the snag of our own lack of omniscience about suffering.  We need only imagine this: we are a creator; we can create angels which can freely choose good or evil; and we know in advance 1. that some of them will make the wrong choice, and 2. that their making the wrong choice will cause them to be eternally damned.  All earthly complications thus aside (since in this scenario we do know all the relevant factors), how can it be shown that a creator of fallen angels and a hell to which he consigns them is all-good?

[Mono no aware]

This seems to be the case if we are thinking too abstractly about discrete "goods", but not if we remember than the principal good in question is a free-will capable of meriting reward or punishment. God wanted to create a universe that would not only manifest His goodness and glory in a passive way, but that would be able to respond to His love and actively return it; therefore, he made creatures having free-will, with a consequence being the possibility of evil and rebellion. So the "greater good" in question is a cosmos in which spiritual beings can come to know and love God, as opposed to a purely unconscious universe that can never do so.

But as I think I said earlier in the thread, John Lamb, it seems either blasphemous or wrong to suggest that God had any deficiency of goodness prior to the act of creation, or that he is somehow dependent on a creation that includes suffering in order to bring about the greatest good.  (Otherwise we would have to say that God was not perfectly and sufficiently good in and of himself).  It's also not the case that the universe would have to be "purely unconscious" in order to know and love God, as the thought experiment about the creation of angels demonstrates.  (Given omniscience, one would only create the angels who one knew would freely make the right choice.  Or the ones who did choose wrongly would be immediately annihilated, thus maintaining the element of free choice and keeping the suffering quotient at zero).  Finally I attempted to stress the inequality, randomness, and chaos of the world as a hindrance to the notion that the choice made in this particular world is absolutely free.  The will of the damned is fixed for them at the time of death.  The eternal fate of an immortal soul is determined by a fallible and finite creature.  This is not a greater good but an injustice.

The evil which mankind suffers has always been mainly due to the evil which we inflict on ourselves and each another.

As cruel as humans have frequently been to each other, most of human suffering has not come at the hand of other humans.  Famine, disease, and natural disaster have been more effective at causing mass suffering of greater degrees than any human could muster.  Historically the majority of humans that ever lived did not live for long.  They died in infancy or childhood, the cause usually being malnutrition, disease, or birth defects.  It's true that in some cases a child's death came at the hands of its parents, as infanticide has been an accepted practice in many cultures.  But disease, which knows no conscience, has always been much surer a killer.  Even in the twentieth century, during the age of modern medicine, influenza killed more people at a faster rate than even the most vicious tyrant could.  The black plague is estimated to have wiped out a third of Europe in less than a decade.  And the further back one goes in history, the more primitive the state of medicine and science is, to a past where diseases would often proliferate virtually unchecked.
 
After disease there is famine.  Ever since the dawn of agriculture most societies have depended on the fickle fortunes of the weather, which has only ensured that malnutrition and starvation have been perennial causes of suffering.  History is littered with offerings made to the gods and goddesses of fertility, in the hopes that the fields would be wetted and unblighted, but the statues of the gods remained unmoved and the prayers of the pagans went unanswered.  Starvation is said to be a fairly horrible death.
 
QMR claims to have resolved the problem of natural suffering by saying that it brings about "the opportunity to show compassion," which he argues is a greater good than preventing the suffering in the first place.  I disagree on the grounds that this is unreasonable.  With the exception of extreme Munchausen-by-proxy cases, I don't think any parent would prefer to see their child suffer from disease or starvation in order for others to respond with compassion.  The parent would surely find it "a good" that people were being compassionate, but they would consider it "a greater good" if their child had been spared the suffering altogether.  And I argue that their preference is both rational and loving.  That's why I think it's illogical to consider "a free-will capable of meriting reward or punishment" as a higher good than the prevention of suffering.  If we can't agree that one of these two is a greater good than the other, then that's okay and pax tecum, but unfortunately the discussion is doomed. 

What about, "it's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all"? Here you are questioning the nature of God's love and its relationship to human suffering, which is where meditation on the Cross becomes vital, showing that suffering is truly bearable for love's sake.

This would only apply to human suffering, though.  It would not be relevant to animal suffering, as they can't experience a relationship to God's love.  They are merely sentient beings and nothing more.  God created them, and they have a brain and a nervous system, so they experience suffering.  The only option otherwise would be to take up Descartes' opinion that animals are just clockwork: that they do not actually feel pain, but merely give off expressions as if they did.  In the Cartesian view, an animal howling in pain when pierced is no different an expression than a Tickle-Me-Elmo doll giggling when squeezed.  Animals in this sense are just animatronic.  I don't think anyone who's ever had a dog or a cat would agree with this view, though, and most people tend to be in favor of animal cruelty laws, the belief being accepted that you can, in fact, be cruel to an animal, as it can suffer.  Otherwise there would be no animal cruelty laws and we could go back to having the cat burnings that were popular spectacles in the France of Descartes' day.  Animals in that respect would be something like "Torture-Me-Elmo" toys.

But biologically we do observe that animals have brains and nervous systems, so how is their suffering rationalized?  In a consideration of theodicy, it logically looks as if animals should be Cartesian automatons, and not creatures capable of suffering.  Their suffering has no application or relevance to a divine plan of soteriology.  They're just creatures created by God: they suffer in life, and then they're annihilated at death.  Is there any point to this "nature red in tooth and claw," or any way that it can be seen as a manifestation of God's goodness and glory and justice?

This appearance is always due to a failure to see the gravity of sin, of the moral evil that man freely commits. This is the insight that the saints had because they understood this gravity of sin, namely that the natural sufferings of this world are as nothing (in terms of evil) compared to sin. The opposite attitude to that presumption one which asks why God could allow such wonderful creatures as ourselves to suffer, is that despairing attitude which asks why God could permit such wretched creatures as ourselves to go on living and enjoying ourselves. When we appreciate the horror of sin, we see how the natural sufferings of the world have a medicinal effect insofar as they curb our pride by reminding us of our frailty; again, imagine if every tyrant or murderer in the world were immortal; imagine how evil we might really become if we did not have the prospect of illness and death before us.

But most of the tyrants throughout human history were its pharaohs, sultans, emperors, and dictators; men for whom the natural sufferings of the world were far better kept at bay than they were for the unwashed hordes of the lowly and the poor.  And the rulers were men for whom the sensual pleasures of the world were at their greatest availability: lavish feasts, splendiferous comfort, and harems full of attractive courtesans (or torture chambers full of young boys, if we consider the grotesque activities of Tiberius at Capri).  Some of these rulers had their maladies, of course, medicine being not nearly what it is now.  For the most part, though, the wealthy and the powerful had the best physicians of the day and the longest life spans.  So death was really the only thing stopping them, and even that wasn't a guarantee, since some of them reared up heirs who went on to rule in their callous example.  Death might rid us of a particular tyrant, but the continuation of things does not rid us of the ceaseless human proclivity toward a vicious will to power.  "Why doth the way of the wicked prosper: why is it well with all them that transgress, and do wickedly?"  And the worst tyrants in history were the most recent: Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and Pol Pot; in no small part because they had the wherewithal of modernity to make mass killings more brutally efficient.  So it's difficult to see how the sufferings of the past have brought about a greater good, since in terms of the sheer numbers we have more sentient beings than ever enduring concentration camps, death marches, orchestrated famines, and factory farms.

[An aspiring Thomist]

If you create two angels, and you know in advance that one will immediately choose beatitude and the other will immediately choose unhappiness, why create the second one? 

God cannot know that until "after" He wills to create them in a Thomistic frame work or in any frame work unless you believe in scientia media, which I would argue is logically flawed.

and we know in advance 1. that some of them will make the wrong choice, and 2. that their making the wrong choice will cause them to be eternally damned.

We know some will probably make the wrong choice until we actually will to create contra scientia media.

Furthermore as Quare has already said, there is a greater good accomplished when we or an angle freely choose heaven instead of hell verses being put in heaven without choice. That greater good which is not otherwise possible is that we are secondary causes of us (same with angles) being in heaven which is greater than God being the only cause of us being in heaven. This greater good logically intails the possibility of damnation. For God to prevent the possibility of damnation he must also prevent the possibility of us freely choosing heaven, the greater good.

But you will ask why doesn't God then just annihlate the damned? Even if I give a sufficient answer you will surely have some other problem to pose to me and others...

I think it would be more worth while to investigate the arguments for God's omnibenevolence. If they are sound deductive arguments then we know the problem of evil has an answer.

[Graham]

It seems appropriate that God would fill up all the nooks and crannies of existence rather than make nothing but incorporeal minds.

[james03]

God already created the world where there was no evil.  Man with Free Will rejected it. 

Free Will is the greater good.

[Mono no aware]

Right.  But accusing of and proving are two different things.

I can't prove a negative, QMR.  All I can tell you is that the assertion "God is omnibenevolent" is contradicted by the observable reality of suffering.  You contend that God somehow requires suffering in order to achieve the greatest good; I contend that the greatest good would of necessity be one that does not include suffering.  On which of us lies the burden of proof?

It might not matter, though.  I am seeing that the fundamental disagreement here is over what constitutes the greatest good: whether the greatest good is the ability of the elect to enjoy heaven having freely chosen it (a stance shared by you, An aspiring Thomist, John Lamb, and james03—in other words, everyone but me), or whether the greatest good, whatever that may be, must lack suffering (whether this good is manifested in a created heaven with corporeal or incorporeal souls, or whether it is simply God resting in infinite and divine perfection, birthless, deathless, sufficiently good and deficient in nothing).  If we cannot agree on this then we're at a hopeless impasse.  I will even deign to take on the ultimate insult: that I am being effeminate and emotional by making the primary consideration a lack of suffering.  So be it.  I cannot see a greatest good including suffering.  The notion presents itself to me as nonsense, and short of a lobotomy I don't think my mind can be changed.  I accept the failure to come to terms as the fault of my inability in this respect.

The transgression is eternal insofar as the soul doesn't repent and remains hardened in its hatred for God.  Can you honestly expect that a soul who hates God will be treated identical to one who loves Him?

The soul doesn't repent because it can't repent.  The ability to directly repent is removed (involuntarily) at the moment of death.  To say that this fate is "freely chosen" is mistaken, because the freedom to choose is taken away at an arbitrary moment—sometimes by surprise, like a pop quiz, and sometimes it comes with plenty of preparation allowed, like being given a deadline that even a procrastinator could meet.  To say nothing of the conditioning of the impressionable minds of young children by atheist, Jewish, or Islamic parents that frequently hardens them against the Catholic faith—or experiences like being molested by a priest that turn the abused against the Church.  It's a lottery, a crapshoot.  How this can be construed as an equitable and free choice is beyond me.  There is a forum member here whose posts I greatly enjoy but who has also bragged that he possesses the most practical balance of how to raise traditional Catholic kids, such that he is almost certain his offspring won't apostatize whereas children of Jansenist neckbeard nutjobs more likely will.  And maybe he's right.  Woe unto the children of Jansenists; "the sins of the fathers will be visited on the sons" indeed.  The point is that there are too many random elements beyond the individual's control which exert an influence that compromises this so-called "freedom of choice," compounded by the fact that humans are by nature inclined to sin, and that a coterie of demons prowls the earth seeking the ruination of souls.  As the essay by Edward Feser rightly points out, a person's will can very easily be habituated toward desiring the wrong end.  In any case, you are expecting a flawed and fallible and oft-tempted creature to have made the correct choice about their eternal fate at a random point in their life.  That's almost like these parents who think their twelve-year-old can decide whether he or she wants to become "transgender."

And just how do you know there was never an "ounce of thought" given to repentance.  How do you know what graces and opportunities were given these souls by God?  Even in the infinitesimal amount of time between the collision of the truck and death?  You don't know all these things.

I don't know all these things.  I just know that more souls are said to go to hell for sins of the flesh than any other sin.  Lapsed-Catholic teenagers are probably a more likely demographic to die in a state of mortal sin due to sins of the flesh than are, say, 82-year-old devout churchgoers.  I obviously can't speak to the graces and opportunities that are given to people at the moment of death, but somebody is going to hell for these sins.  The broader point I was trying to illustrate, however, was this: if even a very conservative parent wouldn't consider torturing their teenager forever for having had premarital sex and not being sufficiently contrite for it at a particular point in time, why is the system of punishment contrived by God so much more severe?

[An aspiring Thomist]

Keep in mind sin is an offense against an infinitely good God and hence is infinitely evil in a certain respect.
Here is a quote from Feser responding to an atheist arguing a God could be just as easily evil as good. You seem to agree with the first mover arguments and other arguments for God's existence. I am not sure how much of classical theism you agree or disagree with. But Feser lays out the path of how to get to an omnibeneveleant God. If you agree with all of the fundamental premises it's a relatively easy task. If you disagree or are unsure of most then it would be a book long endeavor. Enough of my ramblings:

Regarding Law's point (ii), for Law to claim that I "just seem to *define* God as good" – as if what is in question here is some eccentric ad hoc stipulation on my part – and to assert that "the privation view is not obviously incompatible with the existence of an evil God," is just to manifest his unfamiliarity with, or at least to ignore, the central arguments of the classical theistic tradition and the metaphysical ideas underlying it. For when one takes account of those ideas – the act/potency, essence/existence, and simple/composite distinctions; the doctrine of the convertibility of the transcendentals; the principle of proportionate causality; the doctrine of privation; and so on – there is no mystery at all as to why the classical theist regards a demonstration of God's existence as ipso facto a demonstration of that which is necessarily devoid of evil. Given the underlying metaphysics, to assert that God cannot possibly be evil is no more a matter of arbitrary stipulation than saying that the Pythagorean Theorem must hold of right triangles is a matter of arbitrary stipulation.

Consider that the classical (Platonic, Aristotelian, and Thomistic) arguments for God's existence are arguments to the effect that the existence of compounds of act and potency necessarily presupposes the existence of that which is Pure Actuality; that the existence of compounds of essence and existence necessarily presupposes the existence of that which is Being Itself; that the existence of that which is in any way metaphysically composite presupposes that which is absolutely simple; and so forth. Given the doctrine of the convertibility of the transcendentals, on which being is convertible with goodness, that which is Pure Actuality or Being Itself must ipso facto be Goodness Itself. Given the conception of evil as a privation – that is, as a failure to realize some potentiality – that which is Pure Actuality and therefore in no way potential cannot intelligibly be said to be in any way evil. Given the principle of proportionate causality, whatever good is in the world in a limited way must be in its cause in an eminent way, shorn of any of the imperfections that follow upon being a composite of act and potency. Since God is Pure Actuality, he cannot intelligibly be said either to have or to lack moral virtues or vices of the sort we exhibit when we succeed or fail to realize our various potentials. And so on. All of this is claimed to be a matter of metaphysical demonstration rather than probabilistic empirical theorizing, and the underlying metaphysical ideas form a complex interlocking network that is (as anyone familiar with Platonism or Aristotelianism realizes) motivated independently of the problem of evil or the question of God's existence. That is to say, the concepts are not introduced in an ad hoc way so as to get around objections of the sort Law raises. They are already there in the underlying metaphysics, and rule out from the get-go objections of the sort Law raises, at least insofar as they are directed at classical theism.

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/10/laws-evil-god-challenge.html?m=1

[Mono no aware]

Keep in mind sin is an offense against an infinitely good God and hence is infinitely evil in a certain respect.

Yes, but the person committing the offense is a finite creature, and one whose will is involuntarily fixed for eternity.  And in this scenario, there is a sense that the "infinitely good God" takes it upon himself to be so aggrieved at the offense, which carries an uncomfortable anthropomorphic tinge.

But thank you for the link to the blog post from Feser.  As usual he communicates well, though I detect some sleight of hand in this one, as he relies too heavily on what he broadly calls "the central arguments of classical theism."  He elucidates the arguments for God's goodness quite nicely and I enjoyed reading his summation and learning from it.  Nevertheless I don't think he answered the objection, because the arguments he was citing originally only justified the goodness of a non-interventionist god and not even necessarily a creator god.  The god of Greek philosophy was very different from the God of Semitic monotheism, but Feser passes blithely from one to the other and assumes nothing further is required.  He simply says he's talking about "the truth of theism as it is understood by writers like Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Anselm, Maimonides, Avicenna, and Aquinas"—as if Plotinus and St. Thomas shared the same conception of God.  They did not, and that's a crucial difference in terms of theodicy.

Plato himself made the distinction, reasoning from the very imperfections seen in creation that the creator was not the same thing as God, and hence was perhaps a demiurge who was not himself perfectly good.  So Plato did argue for the goodness of God, but he separated that issue from the goodness of the creator.  He even surmised that the creator had the best of intentions and that his heart was in the right place, but his tragic choice to work from matter was what doomed him.  (In Neoplatonism particularly, there is a notion that "evil by privation" is what characterizes matter.  For the monist there is something disappointing and disordered about the material world).  But in Christianity, creation is seen as good.  Even the fact that the world is considered "fallen" and consequently "a vale of tears" does not impede the argument (being made on this thread) that the entire scheme itself, with all its sufferings, is nonetheless the greatest good and the most perfect scheme that could ever have been devised—it is the direct work of God, and the evil within it is deliberately and knowingly permitted. 

And that's where I see Feser's argument as unpersuasive, because he isn't acknowledging the distinction.  He takes the successful arguments for the goodness of an impersonal god and just seems to assume that they equally apply to a personal god who has to answer for a whole lot more, saying "I'll leave it to theistic personalists themselves to figure out how they might respond to it."  Even if Edward Feser would like to dismiss "theistic personalists," he still has to address that the God of Aquinas is of a different sort than the One of Plotinus.  By his logic the Vatican II formula of Catholics and Muslims worshiping "the same God" would succeed without a hitch (if Plato and St. Anselm can be reckoned to have had the same theism).  Negatory; more work is required here.  As you have rightly said, "it would be a book long endeavor."

[An aspiring Thomist]

that the entire scheme itself, with all its sufferings, is nonetheless the greatest good and the most perfect scheme that could ever have been devised—it is the direct work of God, and the evil within it is deliberately and knowingly permitted.

I wouldn't say it's the greatest scheme but better than many and justifiable. Feser doesn't take for granted that the unmoved mover is also a personal God, but admitidley he does not prove in the article.

I think we are at an impasse. Maybe in the future we could examine how an if you can and must get to omnibeneveleant God.

[An aspiring Thomist]

Btw, Kerin, if you are listening, what are your general thoughts on the theistic response to the problem of evil in this thread? Just curious.