The problem with theodicy

Does the theodicy problem really disprove Christianity? Or is it just a rhetorical device made effective by the Zeitgeist? 

We all know the argument by heart, I think. It goes something like this: If God is all-good, he wants to eradicate evil (and/or suffering). If he is all-powerful, he can eradicate evil (and/or suffering). But evil (and/or suffering) exists. Therefore God isn´t all-good and/or all-powerful. Therefore, God (at least in this sense) doesn´t exist. Logically, there is little to argue with here. However, the entire argument isn´t really an exercise in syllogistic logic, but a rhetorical attack on the Christian concept of God, or even the Christian God himself. Indeed, this is what gives the argument its psychological power. Let´s be honest, nobody would care if it was just a boring syllogism. 

However, it´s not overtly obvious that the syllogism is even correct to begin with. "All-good" and "all-powerful" can mean different things. Traditionally, most Christians made at least an implicit distinction between "all-good" and "all-benevolent". Yes, God is all-good in the sense that he really does want to defeat evil and end suffering, but he is not all-benevolent as in "a nice and slightly senile uncle in yonder heaven who just wants everyone to kind of get along". This is obvious from the Bible, where God punishes sinners (often just defined as "those outside the covenant") with all kinds of pestilential torrents, while also permitting his chosen to suffer until martyrdom. Indeed, there are verses strongly suggesting that only those who do suffer until the end can be saved or "win the wreath of victory". So all-benevolent he is not. He is a God who sends rain on the heads of both saints and sinners. 

Yet, atheists usually assume (or want their listerners to assume) that all-good *means* all-benevolent, otherwise the theodicy problem wouldn´t work as planned. The reason why Christian apologists often lose the argument with the atheists is that they, too, assume that all-good means all-benevolent, indeed, most people in the West for the past 200 years or so have made exactly this assumption. *This* is what makes the theodicy problem such a powerful weapon in the hands of atheists, not any fantastic syllogistic reasoning. Now, try the same thing in a Muslim country... 

Right.

(Incidentally, I´m not saying it´s necessarily wrong to identify all-good with all-benevolent. The point I´m making is that it´s the Zeitgeist that makes the argument work, just as it was the Zeitgeist of the 1950´s that made C S Lewis´ Trilemma work.) 

Obviously, "all-powerful" can be problematized in the same way, but usually isn´t, since freedom of choice is important in the secular West. Most people would probably be uncomfortable with the idea of a god (or a government power) rigging everything and controlling everything so that "the good" would be the only possible outcome. Yet, they wouldn´t argue that a government power is all-evil (let alone non-existent) if it isn´t all-powerful. Hence the concentration on the all-good part of the equation.

Note also that the theodicy argument is *really* only a way of saying "Boo to God". But that doesn´t prove nor disprove his existence. We could imagine a similar "problem" applied to Shiva, the Hindu god. That would obviously just be a way to say "Boo to Shiva", since the Shaivas would agree that both good and evil comes from Shiva, and that He is therefore not "all-good" in most senses of that term. An atheist might find such a god deeply abhorrent and refuse to worship him, but that doesn´t disprove his existence. It´s just a way to be miso-Shiva-ist. And yet, the theodicy problem gets its rhetorical and psychological strength precisely from the fact that it´s taken to *disprove* the existence of the Christian God, which (by the same reasoning) is the only God we have to deal with, since of course "everyone" knows that Shiva can´t be real (except one billion Hindus). So ultimately, the all-powerful syllogism of theodicy turns out to be a parochial argument bound by time (the last 150 years) and place (the secular West). 

Contemplate this: God really wants you to suffer to purify your sinful flesh. Or God couldn´t care less about you, unless you worship him during frankly weird nocturnal rituals on the charnel ground for seven lifetimes. What if reality *actually looks like this*? You protesting that this is grossly unfair by the standards of the British gentleman, doesn´t make it any less so. 

You can´t judge God.