David Hume states the problem (a problem only for monotheists) plainly:
"The ultimate author of all our volitions is the creator of
the world, who first bestowed motion on this immense machine, and placed all beings in that particular position,
whence every subsequent event, by an inevitable necessity,
must result. Human actions therefore either can have no
turpitude at all, as proceeding from so good a cause; or, if
they have any turpitude, they must involve our creator in
the same guilt, while he is acknowledged to be their ultimate cause and author. For a man, who fired a mine, is
answerable for all the consequences, whether the train employed be long or short; so wherever a continued chain of
necessary causes is fixed, that being, either finite or infinite,
who produces the first, is likewise the author of all the rest."
(Of Liberty and Necessity, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (New York, 1955, chap. VIII, 90-111.)
The problem of evil is only a problem for monotheists who see God as omnipotent. "If God is Good, He is not God. If God is God, He is not Good." (J.B., by Archibald MacLeish). The information philosophy solution to the problem if evil is a
dualist world with both entropic destruction and ergodic creation. If ergodic information is an objective good, then entropic destruction of information is "the devil incarnate," as
Norbert Wiener put it.
The ergodic
creation of
information is not responsible for its entropic destruction.