h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I have a couple of points on your article.

I do not consider volcanoes and floods an evil so I will not comment on that definition. It is the moral evil I wish to speak of.

The problem with moral evil is it is not constant. Morals change with time, and culture. What one culture belives is immoral is different that that of another. The Aztecs took part in human sacrifice something many would argue is wrong and in America people are executed, some would argue that nothing justifies killing another human being. In 18th Century England many people were married off when they were in their early teens. These today would be morally wrong, so moral evil does not exist as it is relative to when and where you live.

As to god wishing us to have free will. He can be all loving, omnipotent and have evil exist. Sometimes you have to be "Cruel to be Kind" and this may be what God is doing.

As you have stated, the idea of morals being something consistant throughout time is a valid point and one that should be addressed. The argument I was outlining (and it was an outline not a putting forward) was one based within the Catholic tradition which at the time viewed the Bible as something to be interpreted literally (like modern day fundamentalists) and as such did not change through time and therefore the transiency we see in morals today did not enter the eqaution.

I'm not very big on the evil definition. What is evil to some might not be evil to others. Evil is a human interpretation of an event. I'm more of the belief in cause and effect. You do something and something happens as a result. Wether you feel it to be deserved or undeserved it really doesn't matter. Maybe the term you were looking for was suffering. Why does God allow suffering? I think the basic answer to that is that human beings have free will. If God intervened every time something bad was going to happen then that wouldn't give us much free will. I think also as souls we learn from the sufferings. My daughter battled leukemia and although I would very much not like to go through anything like that again, the event strengthened us all individually and as a family. You know how the saying goes, "that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger". Plus how could any of us mere humans understand the plan set forth by a Being so far beyond what we are, understand or sense? It would be like expecting a fly to understand how an automobile works.