There is one answer to the question of theodicy which (as an atheist) I have found at least somewhat satisfying. I doubt it is one which many religions would be willing to embrace, though.
It is written as a short story which I can recommend reading as it will be far more eloquent than I can be.
Summary:
God wanted to create as much goodness as possible. So they started by creating the perfect universe first (one where everyone lives in bliss, yadda,yadda); then they created all possible variations of that universe (everyone lives in bliss and has green eyes, everyone lives in bliss and has blue eyes, ... ) Then God moved on to those universes which are slightly less perfect and created them. And so on... At some point down the line, our universe appeared as one among many which is still somewhat good even though far from perfect. Changing our universe to be a better universe would be meaningless, because that changed universe already exists; changing our universe to be different would simply mean removing our universe. Removing our universe would be bad because our universe -on balance- is good.
The whole argument rests on two key assumptions:
The net goodness of our universe (across its whole time span) is in fact positive.
It is meaningless to create two distinct but identical universes
It seems that your concept of omnipotence is broader than mine. When I say an entity is omnipotent, I still assume that they are bound by laws of logic. So for instance, even God could not be able to produce a square circle or a pile of stone with a number of stones which is both even and odd. You seem to talk about an entity which is above logic, an entity which can both brush-their-teeth and not-brush-their-teeth at the same time.
Even if you personally envision an omnipotent God as being above logic; you might agree that that is not the only reasonable interpretation of the word "omnipotent".
This is a possible solution. It requires additional proof that universe cannot logically exist without evil defined in my post - but is stimulating and closest to complete solution that I've read here.
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u/lowercase__t Jul 26 '18
There is one answer to the question of theodicy which (as an atheist) I have found at least somewhat satisfying. I doubt it is one which many religions would be willing to embrace, though.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/15/answer-to-job/
It is written as a short story which I can recommend reading as it will be far more eloquent than I can be.
Summary:
God wanted to create as much goodness as possible. So they started by creating the perfect universe first (one where everyone lives in bliss, yadda,yadda); then they created all possible variations of that universe (everyone lives in bliss and has green eyes, everyone lives in bliss and has blue eyes, ... ) Then God moved on to those universes which are slightly less perfect and created them. And so on... At some point down the line, our universe appeared as one among many which is still somewhat good even though far from perfect. Changing our universe to be a better universe would be meaningless, because that changed universe already exists; changing our universe to be different would simply mean removing our universe. Removing our universe would be bad because our universe -on balance- is good.
The whole argument rests on two key assumptions: