The problem of evil

Satan-Satan dropped in - or should that be popped up? - to the Kingdom of Heaven in order to pay God a visit. Whilst it's generally true that there's “no rest for the wicked” he was there on business, of sorts; he had a way of combining pain with pleasure, that is, others' with his own.

So, God, I've been doing a little reading in my downtime; perhaps I'm getting philosophical in my eternal age, but I'm recently of the persuasion that you don't, in fact, exist.

Oh my Me! What the-f do you want?

You see you're supposed to have three defining properties essential to your existence ...

I've already stopped listening, though I doubt that fact will persuade you to shut the-f up.

... they are the tripart trope: omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence or, in the more readily digested vernacular: all knowing, all powerful and all good. Now, if you're all all good, how can you allow evil to flourish amidst your creation?

That's because I gave the f-ers f-ing freewill, so they could make the choice between right and wrong themselves, otherwise why the-f would I put up with you?

Ah-ha! But did you give them the choice to choose freewill?

Stop hoofing about you f-ing ass! That's a reductio ad absurdum. You're beginning to get my goat. What's your f-ing point sulphur breath? BTW you should really get that looked at. Talking to you is like trying to hold a reasoned conversation with a pathological psychopath while your head's stuck down the portable shitter at a music festival. Nightmarish. Trust me, I've seen and done it all.

Which brings me to the horns of the dilemma, the proverbial Scylla and Charybdis: can we comfortably sit betwixt the idea that your august benevolence coexists with evil, unless we accept that there are limits to your powers, that is, you are not all powerful? Omnipotent. For, if it is necessary - it couldn't have been otherwise - for there to be evil in order for there to be good and vice versa, then that necessity exists independently of your power. In other words, if you were all powerful, then you could create any necessity that you willed, for example, a universe where there was only good. Surely that would be the right and proper thing to do if you could?

It's true what they say.

Say, my divine presence?

The devil's in the f-ing detail.

Satan-Satan paused for a moment as he realised he was talking to himself again.