mentalgymnast wrote:
Darth: To be fair, mentalgymnast, neither your religion in general nor your denomination in particular have given you any particular insights or answers to the problem of evil. If only there were some kind of living spokesman for God who could receive some kind of answer to these questions.
2 Nephi Chapter 2 covers it pretty well. Living spokesmen for God have used this text as a basis for their teachings.
Regards,
MG
2 Nephi 2 is a standard theodicy about free will and natural laws. There is nothing unique about it: many, many people before Joseph Smith and after have come up with these explanations. A theodicy is an argument attempting to logically reconcile the existence of evil---both moral evil and natural disasters---with the assertion that the Abrahamic God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevlent. The suggested theodicy of 2 Nephi 2 not only is not unique, it is more or less cliché'. And the argument has substantial problems.
Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Problem of EvilTheodiciesAlso, here is your "we don't know what God knows" argument:
Human Epistemological Limitations So let's apply 2 Nephi 2 to reality. I want my kids to understand happiness. So I will beat them mercilessly from time to time, make them sleep outside in the cold, not feed them, and give them a bunch of mixed messages about what rules they are supposed to follow and no coherent way to determine if the rules they think they have to follow really came from me. And the merciless beatings will happen no matter what they do, anyway. This way, when I decide to be nice to them, they will appreciate it more.
In real life, child protective services would step in to prevent me from abusing my kids like this. But what you're saying is that our loving, wonderful Heavenly Father acts orders of magnitude worse than this, in order to make us happy. If the Mormon god has the same sense of morality we do, such that we have a valid warrant for asserting he is morally good, then why would it be wrong for me to treat my kids the way you say Heavenly Father treats his kids?
Jesus said on the Sermon on the Mount that no mortal parent would give his child a stone when he asks for bread, or a serpent when he asks for a fish, and since we imperfect mortals can figure that out, it stands to reason that our perfect and completely righteous Heavenly Father would be even more like this. Real life does not bear that out, though, because of the various types of suffering that your deity either actively causes or willingly chooses to allow. So now, contra Jesus, you have to assert that our Heavenly Father will intentionally give us a stone or a serpent, so that we can appreciate it in the event that he ever gives us bread or a fish.
By the way, you've got a couple more problems with 2 Nephi 2. One is that if everything we know about good and evil is a posteriori, then how could I have ever had my first experience with good and evil? I can only experience good if I have experienced evil, but I can only experience evil if I have experienced good, so how can this process ever even start?
The next problem you've got is that it is Mormon theology contradicts itself, because 2 Nephi 2 says we learn about good and evil only a posteriori---the chapter explicitly says that it has to be this way, or nothing could exist. But then the Doctrine and Covenants says every man knows the difference between good and evil a priori---through the Light of Christ. So which is it? Is the plan of salvation necessary because only through experience can we know the difference between good and evil? Or is it that the Light of Christ, which is a force of nature, directly makes people know the difference between good and evil through our innate conscience rather than experience?
And then there is the continuity problem that both Jehovah and the Holy Ghost attained godhood prior to passing through this mortal vale of tears, demonstrating that within Mormon theology, it is in fact not necessary to experience the tribulations and oppositions of mortal life in order to become a god. (You'll remember that Mormon theology expressly holds that Jehovah/Jesus is not inherently a god, but progressed to godhood in the pre-mortal existence.)
In summary, the following points stand:
--Neither your religion in general nor your denomination in particular have given you any particular insights or answers to the problem of evil.
--It is reasonable to assume that if the LDS Church really had prophets who were receiving revelation from an omnibenevolent deity whose work and glory was to bring about our immortality and eternal life, and if the purpose of the alleged restoration was to open the heavens once more to end sectarian confusion and bring the true gospel to the world, said deity might have something to say about the most problematic philosophical issue in theism, which has been debated for centuries.
--Yet no such insights are present in the LDS Church.
--As an extra bonus, the boilerplate theodicies the LDS Church and its adherents have borrowed from other theists are inconsistent with the LDS narrative.