Nick wrote:
If the major and minor premises are true, the conclusion is logically inescapable. This conclusion, however, is highly undesirable. Indeed, Christianity maintains that there is but one perfect God who cannot be the source of evil or sinful imperfection. So where does evil come from? There are a few solutions to this problem. One is to argue that there must be two creators. One is responsible for all that is good and the other for all that is evil. This lets the good creator off the hook, but it raises another problem. If there are two creators, then the good god cannot be considered all-powerful. In other words, this god does not have power over everything that happens.
(Nick quotes another's essay)
Why must God be a thing separate from creation? What if God is NOW and creation is the process of existence taking place within NOW? NOW is not bounded by the limitations of time and space yet creation is.
In Christianity there is God beyond creation and LORD God within creation. We can believe in subjective descriptions of evil but what is objective evil and does it exist?
God cannot create himself. There cannot be two gods. God is ONE. There is only one ONE. So whatever is created to serve a purpose must include imperfection which we can experience the natural results of and call it evil. The value and purpose of the universe is in its process while for us, we define value in accordance with results.
In society in previous times people respected the axiom: Now this is considered naïve and the popular belief is “the ends justify the means.” It is no wonder that the idea of a universal process is rejected and ridiculed. Evil for us is defined in terms of results. But for the being of Man, evil is defined by what prevents Man’s gradual conscious evolution into a higher quality of being along the vertical great Chain of Being.
"Where does evil come from?"Nick asks. Evil is absence of good. Man either judges an event to lack good, or that event actually does lack good. Who knows?
A solution to the problem of evil is that there are two gods, one of which is the creator of nature and the other of which is an alternative name for the Good. In this case, in the case of the problem of evil, the Good is not all powerful. As Teresa of Avila said "we are God's hands". God needs us to manifest in nature what is good.
The Christian God is both separate from and coexistant with nature. He transcends nature and also is immanent in nature.
Nowadays it tends to be bad people such as torturers and political immoderates who believe that the end justifies the means.
I agree with
“it’s not whether you win or lose that but how you play the game that counts.”
It's good also to be efficient, and the more people who are efficient and also good the better.
Nick wrote:
But for the being of Man, evil is defined by what prevents Man’s gradual conscious evolution into a higher quality of being along the vertical great Chain of Being
I sort of agree. However the process of consciousness-raising is natural not supernatural nor applicable only to the theory of Great Chain of Being.
What 'Age of Faith means is an age during which practically everyone absolutely believed that reality was an ordered system that was ordered by God.