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6/13/2025, 1:52:39 AM
God values freedom of will above all else. He wants creations that he can speak to and connect with. Plants, insects, mammals, fish, and the sort are wonderful, but they can only offer so much companionship. Even a man needs more than a pet cat in his life. But to be made in his image, he cannot treat man the same way as a bee or a tiger.
He cannot suppress knowledge or remove parts of the mind that might think abstractly. To do so would not create a human, it would just be another drone-like insect or another animal driven by instinct. So yes, man is now privy to all sorts of suffering, horror, and misery that maybe our gorilla and chimpanzee cousins are not. A gorilla is never going to figure out creative ways to waterboard his neighbor just because it sounds fun. A chimpanzee will not fall into depression because he discovered that other chimpanzees are raping kids on the other side of the globe. However, they also are not capable of living in goodness like we can-- and we cannot live in that type of goodness unless we have the evil to go with it.
If God wanted to make a paradise where we don't have this level of suffering and sadness-- he can do it. He already has. That was the beginning of Earth until more advanced animals came along. Bacteria do not fear death, they aren't even capable of fear. Bees are basically organic machines whose only purpose is to keep their species going. Many fish don't even have the nerve capabilities to feel certain pain-- they also don't do much besides eat and mate. But who actually wants to trade their human life for that of an ant or a trout?
Good is the default baseline. Creation is good. Yes, even the cat eating the bird is good, because that's the perpetual cycle of life, and life is good. Maybe some of it is scary, but the alligator and spider have just as many wonderous elements as the sunflower and sea sponge. Corruption can only exist if good exists. There is nothing that starts out as corrupted and turns into something else. The corruption is not the work of God, because God can only create good. So yes, he sees that evil is preying upon humans and allows to happen because to divinely intervene would remove the free will that makes us human. All he can do is guide and influence us so we're not completely corrupted.
He cannot suppress knowledge or remove parts of the mind that might think abstractly. To do so would not create a human, it would just be another drone-like insect or another animal driven by instinct. So yes, man is now privy to all sorts of suffering, horror, and misery that maybe our gorilla and chimpanzee cousins are not. A gorilla is never going to figure out creative ways to waterboard his neighbor just because it sounds fun. A chimpanzee will not fall into depression because he discovered that other chimpanzees are raping kids on the other side of the globe. However, they also are not capable of living in goodness like we can-- and we cannot live in that type of goodness unless we have the evil to go with it.
If God wanted to make a paradise where we don't have this level of suffering and sadness-- he can do it. He already has. That was the beginning of Earth until more advanced animals came along. Bacteria do not fear death, they aren't even capable of fear. Bees are basically organic machines whose only purpose is to keep their species going. Many fish don't even have the nerve capabilities to feel certain pain-- they also don't do much besides eat and mate. But who actually wants to trade their human life for that of an ant or a trout?
Good is the default baseline. Creation is good. Yes, even the cat eating the bird is good, because that's the perpetual cycle of life, and life is good. Maybe some of it is scary, but the alligator and spider have just as many wonderous elements as the sunflower and sea sponge. Corruption can only exist if good exists. There is nothing that starts out as corrupted and turns into something else. The corruption is not the work of God, because God can only create good. So yes, he sees that evil is preying upon humans and allows to happen because to divinely intervene would remove the free will that makes us human. All he can do is guide and influence us so we're not completely corrupted.
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