>>53881058This presupposes that evil has a positive ontological status (in other words, that Evil is a Thing on its own rather than a privation). Secondly, the ontological gap between God (properly defined as "That than which a greater cannot be thought") and Man is infinite and can only be bridged by an infinite Being. In other words, it is foolish for the pot to question the wisdom, or indeed existence, of the potter. It also means that God cannot be seen as a moral agent in the same way that a person can. God, as First Cause, is beholden to no one, and any evil suffered in the world is, logically speaking, finite. And as it is finite, God is able to make up for any finite suffering by making it possible for us to partake in His eternity.
>>53888438Epicurus and his acolytes make free will impossible in the first place, and thus eliminate morality altogether. If Epicurus is right, morality doesn't exist as a meaningful concept as it is predicated on the notion of being able to do otherwise. Atomistic morality is an oxymoron. His ad-hoc hypothesis (or maybe it was Lucretius) of the vibration of atoms creating some sort of window for the freedom of the will is laughable.
