<< What, like faith that it is impossible to (or that we
shouldn't) overcome evil and all that which ails us? After all, if
there is a God, we must find some way to justify why God hasn't
overcome evil. If an all powerful God can't (or shouldn't) overcome
evil, we must abandon all hope that we can (or should) overcome evil
with our science. If God can't, how can we?
>>
That's an unsound argument. Suppose that we find some reason R that
reconciles the existence of God (an omnipotent, omniscient, autonomous,
benevolent being) with the existence of evil.
There is no reason that I can see to think that R necessarily entails that 1)
evil will never be overcome or 2) we should not overcome evil.
Furthermore, if R can provide a case for why a benevolent God allows evil,
then it's possible that R is also applicable to our actions, and thus provides
a reason for us to allow evil. And if that's the case, then we've merely
discovered that to do right we must allow some evil. To word as though we've
"lost all hope of conquering evil" is simply to lose sight of the fact that
we've discovered a reason showing a particular treatment of evil to be the
ethically correct treatment.
Andrew