Dialogue On Good Evil And The Existence Of God Analysis

In this paper I will argue that in Dialogue on Good, Evil, and The Existence of God by John Perry, the dialogue does not disprove the idea of God. This book focuses on three main characters: Gretchen Weirob, Sam Miller, and Dave Cohen and their debates about the existence of God. This drawn-out discussion begins when Miller visits his flu-ridden friend Weirob and asks to pray for her. Weirob immediately declines and this sparks a three-day long conversation, where Cohen joins in later, on who God is, the reason for evils in the world, the concept of freewill, and the possibility of devils.
One of the first points discussed by Weirob and Miller is what foundation of God they were going to build off. Weirob states that Christianity claims …show more content…
Some examples he provides are a boring chapter in a book, a note of dissonance in a symphonic piece, or a large part of a painting being a certain color. (Perry 7). These examples are key examples to this argument because it is intended to help Gretchen see that the whole of the art, music, or her life are made better through times of dissonance. Weirob does not accept this explanation, because she is “not a picture of a sniveling, dripping, suffering human; I am a sniveling, dripping suffering human.” (Perry 8). In this quote, Weirob is saying that she is not a piece of art, she is a human so her life should not need dissonance. I disagree with this argument, because if an artist adds darkness to a painting to compliment and make the key aspects better to look at, why would God not do the same thing with his creations: the creatures of Earth. To Miller and other theologists including myself, it is the thought that “hard work and sacrifice at any stage in a person’s life being the condition of great success, comfort, and satisfaction at another stage.”(Perry 9). I believe that this is a great explanation because in the argument that God is all-powerful and all-loving, that assumes He is always with you through the good and bad and could change anything at moment. In my personal ideology of God, He chooses which things are crucial enough to change and …show more content…
Gretchen sees having to wake up early and possibly poking her finger with a hook as a suffering, so this suffering is seen as a necessary evil for a “perfect day on the lake.” Miller says to “take any whole, a whole day, a whole year, a whole life. Just because some creatures some of the time feel some discomfort, or even suffer, does not mean that the whole day, or the whole life, may not be a fine one.” (Perry 9). Gretchen challenges that by suggesting that God could have removed the bad and kept the good by giving her the energy to enjoy waking up early or making the fish sleep in later and that they would have still have a great day. Miller disagrees and says that “there is no inconsistency in supposing that a perfect God designed the world to work according to those principles, because having it work that necessary for some greater good.” (Perry 14). The quote concludes the point that because the world is so big, there is no way to disprove that little sufferings do not lead to an overall greater good. I agree with this assessment, because it draws back the main point that evils in the world are able to exist with a benevolent God. It corroborates this because according to this idea all suffering can be credited to God’s bigger