But I like the inconveniences...

We have to post online for my philosophy class in response to topics. The topic was, "Is the problem of Evil a sound argument?" and this was my response. The problem of evil, btw, is that if there is a God that is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful that it would know about evil, be powerful enough to stop evil, and would want to. Evil is defined as either human or natural. (tornadoes, cancer)

"I really don't know that I can come to a final answer to this question. I really like the idea that if the Tri-O God exists (which we're trying to disprove with the argument of evil) that it is omniscient and therefore already knows what all possible worlds are, and being omnibenevolent has chosen the best possible one for us. We've all read Brave New World, we know how much it would suck if there wasn't ever anything unpleasant and people were just content all the time. The savage's speech springs obviously to mind. I guess that if I were going to disagree with the problem of evil, I would say that evil is necessary because it makes life worth living. The Tri-O God undoubtedly knows this and has shaped our universe accordingly.
That doesn't entirely satisfy, though. Aldous Huxley wrote another book about a utopian society, called the Island, one that everyone doesn't read in High School, and it doesn't paint quite such a negative picture of a society in which people are just happy. In that book, it seems entirely possible, and desirable, to have a world without evil. I guess it isn't advisable to decide what the best possible universe is based on works of fiction.
Another reason why I think that the problem of evil might be sound is because of atrocities that simply have NO good outcome. I have an example. Say there was a family living in the woods, and they were totally self sufficient and happy and no one even knew they were there and they had chickens and a dog. One day some person who lives remotely nearby (but didn't know about the family) is walking in his sleep. He comes upon their home, kicks their dog and cuts all of their arms off. They bleed to death because they don't have any hands to try and stop the bleeding and there are no hospitals around and they can't even stand up because they don't have any arms. The guy wakes up in his own bed, has no idea what happened. No one ever finds out. What is the good outcome of this? There can't be one, because no one ever even knows. Say, for some reason, the world is a better place without this family in it. Couldn't that have been accomplished by a gas leak in the night? That would at least be less terrible.
But when I think of this scenario I am confronted by the idea that if *no one* ever found out about it, maybe it never happened. Maybe a Trio-O God did interfere, sent the sleepwalker home, and does so when there is no outweighing good "justifying" the evil and suffering.
Or maybe Fred Phelps is right, and God isn't omnibenevolent at all, and the poor armless family was paying for past sins. Maybe they were heretics. Or maybe there is no God at all and they were just shit out of luck for living near a psychotic sleepwalker."

When I was writing this it was tough because I really do think that the problem of evil is a pretty nice argument against the existence of God, but I do believe in some greater supernatural force. I can't seem to decide if belief is justified or not. More thoughts on that later.

Today project Rational Rachael (i.e. project getting over Tyler) hasn't gone exceptionally well. Class was rough, but that was over 6 hours ago and I expect to be in the clear until dinner tomorrow.

EDIT: I was just reading the posts of other people in the class and one of Tyler's friends, J, posted, saying that he hadn't attended class and Tyler had tried to explain the topic to him. This is what J said, "but anyone who's spoken to tyler knows how his brain works. he's a trainwreck of thoughts." I love him. Trainwreck of thoughts describes him so...right. That's hot.