Yesterday I discussed one attempted solution to the problem of evil that students wrestled with, taking J. L. Mackie\u2019s classic article, \u201cEvil and Omnipotence,\u201d<\/a> as their starting point, together with the Book of Job and an excerpt from The Brothers Karamazov<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n Today I would like to focus in on another, the argument that good cannot exist without evil, since it is only by way of contrast that we perceive things to be good or evil, better or worse than one another. On this view, evil and good are not absolute existing things or characteristics, but terms of comparison.<\/p>\n Here too, there is something to this. If\u00a0we always had the taste of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies in our mouths, presumably actual freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies would simply seem tasteless. It is the absence of those delicious flavors during most of our experience that makes each bite from a really good cookie so delectable.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the question that struck me as I thought about this topic yet again. If God alone exists eternally, then prior to creation, presumably there was no good or evil.<\/p>\n Is this a\u00a0logical\u00a0corollary of this view of good and evil, and if so, should it be acceptable to\u00a0theologians?<\/p>\n Alternatively, is God not infinite, so that the not-God has also always existed? That viewpoint may be reflected in the Biblical creation account, with God taking that eternal chaos and imposing order upon it.<\/p>\n Stephen Law recently offered the \u201cEvil God Challenge\u201d which explores the alternative scenario that an evil God created the world, and free will explains why sometimes\u00a0good happens in an evil universe.<\/p>\n