> > Well, I actually heard Mia say this in chat the other day: you can't have joy without the existence of evil. Joy is the absence of evil, and said evil must be known for said joy to be knowable. The existence of evil, I think, helps to cause an increased appreciation for those joyous/good things, and appreciation that would be lacking were evil to not exist. This appreciation also helps lead to an appreciation for and desire to know God. If all was "good" and not evil, there would be little to no desire for anyone to seek out a good God. If there was no evil for us to ask God's guidance from, then no one would ask it. And seeing as our desire for God/eventual service is what is pleasing to Him, He allowed evil to exist as a means to push us to seek him, a decision that was still left up to us to make. If he wanted us all to seek Him out and serve him regardless, He would've made sure of it. I think the active decision by a human to know God is what is most pleasing to Him.
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> I think what I said in my original post was, "Without evil, we would have no joy." Basically, if God did not allow evil to exist, good would not exist either.

I understand this line of reasoning, and I think it's valid, even though I'm not entirely convinced it's true. Perhaps joy is simply a neurological response by various receptors in our brain. If you were to stimulate them all the time, would it be possible to constantly experience joy without ever experiencing pain, agony and evil? I don't know. But let's accept this argument: god allows the existence of evil so that humans can know joy (because humans could not know without evil)*.

There as an implication to this I see immediately: referring to my original analogy of god as programmer, this seems to strongly imply that god purposely put evil into his system. It's not something he "allows," but something he is responsible for.

It follows, then, that it would be unfair for god to punish those who commit evil -- as they're an important part of god's plan. Furthermore, we still haven't explained free will, so I'm operating under the assumption that they had no choice in the matter.

Is it right to punish people who do evil if their evil was really serving a greater good?

> Again, I addressed this in my original post. I don't believe "free will" is actually "free." Just because we have the ability to make choices, that doesn't mean we won't get punished for making the wrong decision. God gave us agency, but that doesn't mean it doesn't come with a price.

The word "free" in the term "free will" should be thought of as meaning "freedom" rather than "no cost." I don't think anyone would disagree with Mia on this point.

If we should be punished for committing evil acts, however, probably depends on us having freedom to act anyway, and that's really the question we're trying to answer.

Stephen

* Interesting thought: prior to the introduction of evil to existence, did god know joy or happiness?