EAllusion wrote:I think you misunderstand mainstream theology and how it responds to the problem of evil. Many theologians accept a Platonic God that is bound by the rules of logic. God, for example, can't exist and not exist at the same time. This is because in order for the concept of God to be a coherent thing to believe in, it has to have internal logical coherence.
But there is something substantially different here. If God created all things out of nothing, as the mainstream side takes it, then the free will defense doesn't work at all, and the problems go much deeper than that--because the implication would have to be that God caused all suffering by creating all things. What is added here for LDS, is God is subject to laws of eternity.
The free will defense, which you just employed here, argues that God cannot prevent suffering, or at least a great deal of suffering we see, because that would cause greater evil than the suffering itself does by damaging free will. Free will is the greater good. In short, there is a logically necessary conflict between preserving free will and preventing certain kinds of suffering. God, being bound by what is logically necessary, therefore must refrain from preventing certain kinds of suffering to achieve the greater good.
The additional piece of information that is left out is for LDS God didn't create out of nothing. If He didn't organize us into spirits, if He didn't organize this world for our benefit then there would still be suffering. Perhaps our suffering here is but small potatoes compared to the suffering of those, like satan and his partners, who eternally wail and whine. Indeed, logically, it must be so. So our suffering here, in some cases unstoppable by God, is less suffering then what we would have to go through if we weren't here.
You now jump in with a defense that isn't substantially different. You say, "Well, what if there are some rules written into the fabric of reality that require God to respect free will?"
But I maintain, since the whole LDS paradigm is substantially different, then the defense itself is substantially different. For one, there exists other possibilities for LDS, as partly explained above. For another, its quite different because for LDS laws being beyond God has precedent.
This, in actuality, isn't that different from the free will defense outlined above. Either those rules are going to make sense and this will be treated like a standard free will defense, or those rules are going to be arbitrary (meaning they do not lead to the greatest possible good) and this will be an example of unknown purposes. It depends on how cruel you think the universe is. You could go either way, but in each case you're will within what is offered in mainstream theology for a mainstream God.
As explained, I think you're wrong here. There is significant difference on the basic premises between LDS and the mainstream concepts to begin with. Thus the appeal to "free will" itself carries different implications.
This is an unknown purposes defense is what I'm saying. What if God can't prevent suffering because they're are unknown purposes that justify allowing it? What if the suffering we see is for the greater good for reasons we don't understand? That's the unknown purposes defense. Your version isn't as different as you seem to think. It goes, "What if God can't prevent suffering because there are unknown rules of reality that prevent him from doing it?"
I can tell you right now, this is going to be subject to the same basic criticisms as the former is (that this is just the problem of induction and does not reduce the force of evidence, that this precludes concluding God has good purposes, etc.)
I'm not sure what you mean by your last point, but I can't stop but thinking you are wrong in tat the LDS paradigm offers something substantially different here.