My earlier discussion about the conflict between an omnipotent and omnibenvolent God and disasters like the recent tsunami has led me to another question that my religious friends and coworkers have been unable to resolve for me. Seeking a well-qualified source for my answer, I sent a letter to the God Squad in the hopes that they will be able to clear up the matter. I just sent the letter today, and I will include their answer if and when they send one. The letter is as follows, sans salutation and signature. Please take into account that this discussion presupposes the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God, and also assumes that human beings currently possess free will.

I'm having trouble with a cliche, I'm afraid, and I thought perhaps you would be able to help me out. I wish I were more interesting, but it's the old question of "why do bad things happen to good people?"

I've asked this question to several friends who believe in an all-powerful and all-good diety (three Christians of varying denominations, one Jew, one self-identified "miscelaneous believer") and all have given me essentially the same answer: free will. But that doesn't make any sense to me.

I do not currently have the freedom to choose to ride to school on a red unicorn. This is obviously due to the fact that red unicorns do not exist. I also cannot choose to fly by flapping my arms up and down, since humans do not have the ability to fly by flapping our arms up and down. Yet I am told that human beings still have free will, even though none of us can choose to ride red unicorns or fly by flapping our arms. So, assuming humans have free will, why would free will be compromised by the elimination of evil from the world? Why can't God make evil as nonexistent as red unicorns, or make humans as unable to do evil as we are to fly by flapping our arms?

One friend told me that getting rid of evil would destroy morality, because morality is about choosing to be Good, but that just seems a variation of the original answer; morality is only a virtue because it is possible to be wicked, so an all-Good universe would not need "morality" as we know it. This would not mean that we would all be drones, simply that we would have yet one more limitation on our already-finite human existence. (To put it another way, we each could still have a "moral compass," but the needle would always point to "Good.") We cannot currently choose to murder another human being by shooting him with lazer beams from our eyes, so why would our supposed free will be compromised if God made us equally unable to kill a human being by shooting him with a gun?