Yes, it does all end in paradox, but the traditional view is that God has both an active will and a permissive will. A right hand and a left hand. God could prevent evil, but he permits evil to occur in order to bring about an alleged “greater good.” There are dissenting theologies like Calvinism and Jansenism, or the recent development of “open theism,” but this is the main one as far as I know.
Yes, it’s all very complex and endless - all the theology, the sects, the endless schisms etc
Likely much of it tells us a lot more about the theologians, thinkers, philosophers, leaders and others devising and extrapolating from all the theory than it does about any putative God, first mover, divine being etc
I think much traditional Christian thinking would say that yes, God, being, conceptually at least, omnipotent, could prevent evil if he chose - but chooses not to do so in order that humans can have freedom to choose their path in life, to choose to be good or ‘evil’, as, as you say, this is seen as leading to the ‘greater good’, the schooling of the soul etc
And the idea is some choose evil and that in turn leads to the idea of the devil, the fallen angel etc
In the end it isn’t really logical, as it involves God both being omnipotent but at the same time not being omnipotent because he can’t make it all ok and a ‘greater good’ and do without evil, pain and suffering in the world - so he/she is therefore necessarily limited, by definition.
But maybe that’s all just language creating an illusion. All these words are man-made. ‘A’ self-evidently cannot be ‘not A’ so to speak - and to say God if he was omnipotent could make it so is an inherently misleading and nonsensical hypothesis because that is impossible by definition, definitions that humans created. And anyway it can be argued the subject of logic is itself devised by humans and therefore limited and not the ultimate truth which humans can’t fully grasp etc etc
Religion of some sort has I suppose been pretty ubiquitous in every age and civilisation it seems. It’s a small percentage of all the billions of people who’ve lived on the planet who have rejected it. Of course many would probably be just going along with the herd and in any case it was, and still can be, often unwise to question religion which was/is promoted and used by governments etc to control and coerce people.
Was it Nietzsche who said if God didn’t exist we’d have to invent him?
I suppose God appeals to a need many experience to surrender and let go and reach out to something greater than oneself, which provides protection and solace and comfort and meaning and an answer to the suffering and pain people generally experience, and providing something eternal and somehow morally more reliable than the limited nature of individuals and finite human societies and the seeming mess of the world and life. And that’s referred to as God.
Doesn’t prove it’s objectively true though.
Someone once told me to that in India for example to most people it literally makes no sense to question God’s existence, it is just nonsensical to ask it as God just self-evidently is, self-evidently exists. Not a matter of belief so much as just how it is.
Maybe that brings us back to definitions again ….? Oh dear
The endless labyrinth ….