Marc I. Vuletic has a brilliant story that exposes the inanity of many theodicies (i.e., responses to the Problem of Evil) on his blog. I'm unable to post a hyperlink since I haven't posted 15 times yet, but you can remove the spaces from the following and add some w's and a dot at the beginning, if you get my meaning:
vuletic . com /hume/at/12 . html
The (brief) story is about a woman, Ms. K, who is raped and murdered while 12 off-duty police officers stand by without intervening whatsoever. It becomes immediately obvious that the officers are analogous to God, and that each officer represents a different theistic "answer" to the Problem of Evil, exposing their failure through parable.
For instance, one officer declares that he didn't stop the rape/torture/murder of Ms. K because "it occurred to me that it was obviously better for the murderer to be able to exercise his free will than to have it restricted. I deeply regret the choices he made, but that's the price of having a world with free agents."
Another officer defends his inaction by stating, "I was about to pull my gun on the murderer when I thought to myself, 'But wait, wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity for some unarmed bystander to exercise selfless heroism, should he chance to walk by? If I were to intervene all the time like I was just about to, then no one would ever be able to exercise such a virtue. In fact, everyone would probably become very spoiled and self-centered if I were to prevent every act of rape and murder.' So I backed off. It's unfortunate that no one actually showed up to heroically intervene, but that's the price of having a universe where people can display virtue and maturity. Would you rather the world were nothing but love, peace, and roses?"
And so on. I applaud Mr. Vuletic for such a creative and revealing look at the failure of mainstream theodicies to account for the Problem of Evil.
What do you folks think about his story?
vuletic . com /hume/at/12 . html
The (brief) story is about a woman, Ms. K, who is raped and murdered while 12 off-duty police officers stand by without intervening whatsoever. It becomes immediately obvious that the officers are analogous to God, and that each officer represents a different theistic "answer" to the Problem of Evil, exposing their failure through parable.
For instance, one officer declares that he didn't stop the rape/torture/murder of Ms. K because "it occurred to me that it was obviously better for the murderer to be able to exercise his free will than to have it restricted. I deeply regret the choices he made, but that's the price of having a world with free agents."
Another officer defends his inaction by stating, "I was about to pull my gun on the murderer when I thought to myself, 'But wait, wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity for some unarmed bystander to exercise selfless heroism, should he chance to walk by? If I were to intervene all the time like I was just about to, then no one would ever be able to exercise such a virtue. In fact, everyone would probably become very spoiled and self-centered if I were to prevent every act of rape and murder.' So I backed off. It's unfortunate that no one actually showed up to heroically intervene, but that's the price of having a universe where people can display virtue and maturity. Would you rather the world were nothing but love, peace, and roses?"
And so on. I applaud Mr. Vuletic for such a creative and revealing look at the failure of mainstream theodicies to account for the Problem of Evil.
What do you folks think about his story?