If God were good, well then he would have done…such and such.
(I honestly can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the hubris in a statement like that – but let’s not get sidetracked.)
This is the same trilemma that Ravi’s Zacharias pointed out, with 5 more objections.
People who have not considered it for longer than a minute will use the problem of pain as a trump card against theism, but it’s exactly the opposite.
It opens up a giant can of worms.
I mean, “if God were good?”
A naturalist does not even have the language to make that statement.
Physics does not classify “good” and “evil.” How could it?
‘If God were good, He would wish to make His creatures perfectly happy, and if God were almighty He would be able to do what He wished. But the creatures are not happy. Therefore God lacks either goodness, or power, or both.’ This is the problem of pain, in its simplest form. The possibility of answering it depends on showing that the terms ‘good’ and ‘almighty’, and perhaps also the term ‘happy’, are equivocal: for it must be admitted from the outset that if the popular meanings attached to these words are the best, or the only possible, meanings, then the argument is unanswerable.
-C.S. Lewis, The Problem Of Pain (Amazon)
