Because I let You off
From telling me Your reason, don't assume
I thought you had none.  Somewhere back
I knew You had one.  But this isn't it
But if You will forgive me the irreverence,
It sounds to me as if You thought it out,
And took Your time to it.  It seems to me
An afterthought, a long long afterthought.
I'd give more for one least beforehand reason
Than all the justifying ex-post-facto
Excuses trumped up by You for theologists.

Job to God in
Robert Frost's
A Masque of Reason

The Problem persists because, it seems, a god has confessed He made us, invented pain and creatures both to feel it and inflict it.  He says He is good, feels the pain Himself and plans to right the wrongs, but will do nothing to prevent them.  If His power or goodness is flawed, there is still no Problem, but if holy, He should hate evil, omnipotent, could stop it.  No omnipotent, holy God would let evil exist; since evil exists, there is no such God.

Perhaps there is, a Hamlet, Who cannot bring Himself to act, sits over the world ever three parts coward, wonders why He lives to say "The thing's to do," since He has cause, and will, and strength, and means to do it; hides in heaven watching players weep for Hecuba and thinks, "What would they do had they the motive and the cue for passion I have? They'd drown the stage with tears and cleave the general ear with horrid speech, make mad the guilty and appall the free, confound the ignorant and amaze indeed the very faculties of eyes and ears.  Yet I, a dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak like John-a-Dreams, and can say nothing."  Say nothing nor do nothing, and yes, why not? for if God be good, and evil rule on earth, His thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.

Struck with the terror of souls alone, in agony, the thought that a good god put them there, and neither protects nor rescues them makes us marvel that men ever have believed, but the problem is not suffering in general.  In Ivan's story of the general who sent his dogs after a child, if we turn to the general and say the dogs are chasing him,they should tear him apart.  Even the gentle Alyosha admits he deserves to be shot, and implies deservedsuffering.

It is implicit in the problem, in Ivan's charge that if God is responsible for "the tears of that one tortured child," He is unworthy of worship.  In contending (rightly) that God is, in Hume's word, "malevolent" if He permits any pain He could prevent, we undercut objection to the pain of men who inflict it.  In positing deserved suffering, we lessen the amount we must justify, but do not diminish the problem--it is not that there is so much, but that there is any at all, and it would remain, as large, with "that one tortured child."

It is not pain that concerns us, but the pain of innocents.  Ivan ignores adults because they "have a compensation--they've eaten the apple and know good and evil, and they have become 'like god.'  They go on eating it still.  But children haven't eaten anything, and are innocent."  The argument is their innocence, that they have caused no pain, but Ivan asks if we are "fond of children," and their helplessness, that they affect us when they hurt as adults cannot, is pathos.

We improve the argument and drop the pathos if we consider the pain of a man not merely innocent, but greatly good, who sets his face against wrongdoing and should live not just untortured, but as well as a man can live.  God says Job is such a man, and Satan says, "Of course he serves you.  You give him everything. Strip him of same and see what he says.

God says, "So be it," and our hearts should stop.  Reduce God's best man to misery, give him no sign he is still in God's favor?  Why "So be it"?  What kind of God is this, and what kind of game is He playing?  We need not justify types of torment, just the suffering of innocents, and we cover that if we justify a good man's pain.  Here is God's most righteous servant, suffering with His permission a deprivation more severe, more undeserved, more inclusive of the ills the flesh is heir to, than any other we could imagine.  If we justify this, we have solved the riddle.

A detective correlates unconnected facts.  Hypotheses are not verifiable empirically; their verifiability is in explaining facts, and pointing to unsuspected facts.  Einstein described the process, characteristic of the search for truth, in The Evolution of Physics: "he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions."  We seek simple assumptions which explain the facts.  In an intricate universe, the simplest notion is that an all powerful god created it, but simplicity is not enough.  The explanation must be general as well, explain without evading any facts, and in a treacherous universe, the most ludicrous notion is that a wholly good god made it.  But we may have overlooked a possibility, so here again is the beginning of the theistic explanation of the world.  We must assume:
 

1)  God, holyand omnipotent
2)  an adversary, evil and impotent

It looks hopeless, but we will suspend judgment and see if the first two assumptions lead, if not straight to conclusions, credibly to a thesis in a speculation unnecessary to the assumptions, but enlightening.

In the Judaic scenario, the adversary is a creature,in an initial creation, creatures facing God and fully conscious of His power.  If God made creatures, He made them for communion, implying independent wills, individual creatures in relation to each other as well as to God, and achieving righteousnessin varying degrees.  God, justand benevolent,will reward those best who achieve it most.  Communion of a righteous creature with a holy creator is worship: the best worship most fully.  Worship and righteousness are coincidental, so God, in rewarding righteousness, seems to reward worship, and the situation supports another interpretation:
 

3)  We assume finally that evil originates with Satan's contention that creatures do not serve God because He is good, but because He is powerful,and gives them comfort,security,and assurance.

This is the argument in Job. God says, "Consider Job, a man of blameless and upright life, who fears God and sets his face against wrongdoing," and Satan says, "Has not Job good reason to be God-fearing?  Have you not hedged him round on every side with your protection, him and his family and all his possessions?  Whatever he does you have blessed, and his herds have increased beyond measure.  But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face."  And God says, "So be it."

"So be it" because the argument is valid:  if Job serves for comfort,he does not worship, so take the comfort away.  Though God lets Satan take it away, Job does not charge Him with unreason.

Again God says, "Consider Job," and Satan says, "Skin for skin!  There is nothing a man will grudge to save himself.  But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face."  Denied security,he'd seek security, deny God.  God says, "Denied," but still Job does not sin.

The rest of the book is a debate between Job and his friends about which of two assumptions describes the world.  They are diametrically opposed, so one is valid, the other directly out of phase with reality.  Job's friends say prosperity proves virtue; material success is assuranceof righteousness.  Job says success has no connection with virtue, that as often as not the wicked prosper.  In His judgement in Job's favor, God says, No, I do not reward the good (to the comforters: "You have not spoken as you ought about me, as my servant Job has done.") and, Yes, I do have a reason (to Job: "Dare you deny that I am just?").

It was also the argument in the temptations in the wilderness.  Satan said, "You want to lead men?  Turn stones to bread and they will follow you.  Make them comfortable." Christ refused.  Satan said "Set up an empire (have one of mine); give men security,and they will follow."  Christ refused.  Satan said, "Give them a miracle; they want to worship, but demand assurance." Again Christ refused, refused because, again, the argument is valid:  if you reward men's allegiance, the allegiance is to the reward.

Christ couldn't credibly refuse to offer comfort, security, and assurance; He had to show that He could give them, and then refuse.  He didn't turn stones to bread, but He fed five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, and to those who rushed to follow Him He offered the Bread of Life.  He didn't jump off the temple, but He healed the sick and raised the dead and then refused to give the Pharisees a sign.  He didn't set up an empire, but He rode into festive Jerusalem triumphantly, setting the city abuzz anticipating the Kingdom. When His kingdom turned out to be not of this world, He was killed.

The argument is extended in "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter of The Brothers Karamazov,in which the cardinal says Christ has no right to speak, having refused the temptations, and that the church must burn Him, having accepted them, and based its appeal on comfort, security,and assurance. Dostoevsky's terms are different, but to the same point, and history's lesson is that both Satan and the Grand Inquisitor were right:  feed men, and they follow you; make them secure and they ask you what to do.

The argument began in an angelic dilemma, the primary challenge to a god both holy and omnipotent ("Creatures serve power, not goodness."), a fundamental attack on the givennessof the good:  as long as the good has all the power and gives unlimited reward, we can only say that it is all there is; we cannot know it is better than anything else.

God can tell, but Satan cannot, and won't be told.  God can destroy him, and the challenge--with His power.  The challenge is stamped on consciousnesses, and the extermination of Satan would look like proof that it was valid.  Creatures could not serve goodness, once it had invoked power.  God could destroy the memory, by interfering with the consciousnesses of His creatures, destroying their independence and putting an end to communion.  If Satan is to be not destroyed but defeated, and if the good is to be justified, the good must be the just agent of the defeat in a test of good versus evil, creatures choosing between them.

Satan says creatures serve power; denied security, would seek security, deny God.  This is the choice for evil.  Those who would choose God must denounce power, reject security, and serve the good, neither in fear of God's might nor hope of reward, but willfully, wholeheartedly, unrewarded.  Apart from Satan's challenge there is no power but God's and no reward for anything but service of the good, but to test the contention God must surrender His power, cut goodness from security, and against His nature allow righteousness to go unrewarded, malevolence to roam unchecked.

Satan says, "Let creatures be without comfort (in pain) and security (and terror)."  Creatures denied assurance (alone) cannot see God powerless (He could not tell them why they suffer--that would abort the test), so they will not see Him.  He will make a world where it is easy to believe there is no God, or that there is One, out of sight.  The reality will offer two contradictory interpretations:  that it is all of reality, or contingent on another, invisible reality.

Choice implies time (temporality)to make it in, and if, as "universe" implies, it is to look like all there is, there cannot always have been life:  the reality must be initially material(as objects, so it must be spatial)and life must seem, however closely the creatures look at it, to have evolvedfrom lifelessness.  Creatures who choose consider a choice, and make a choice, implying rationalityand freedom. A reality which allows rational interpretation, and especially two interpretations in radical opposition, is causal.

The arena for the choice will be a universe in which there is no evidence of God's existence, an infinitely elaborate mirage with two complementary phases, the reality apprehended and the apprehending consciousnesses. The apprehension will be spatial, temporal, material, and causal, and there will be no sign of a reality outside this framework.

Though we have not nearly built a detailed picture of the world on the assumptions, we have just touched their implications, and have deduced from them the outline of precisely this reality, with God bound by His goodness to allow the existence of evil.