Problem of evil is a flawed argument

Like I stated, it's not a rule that God should eliminate all evil. You are making hidden assumptions of what an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent God is. How do you know that such a God would automatically prevent evil? Unless you want to define him that way then you can no longer use the argument against Christianity because that concept of God iswh at you created. 1) God created all things in the sense that he made all things good (Gen. 1) and creation. Good itself also creates evil (Romans 7 : 8). 2) I addressed that 1st paragraph Con claims that God could have instated the greater good from the beginning which is not true. The very specific type of knowledge gained from Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden was knowledge gained by experience which is caused by human free-will (Gen. 2-3). The type of knowledge gained by Job on the nature of God is based on experience through suffering. God desires that we know him personally through experience which can only be instated by human choice, not merely intellectual knowledge that God places inside the human mind. "If God's creation is "natural good", and natural disasters are part of his creation, but are also "natural evil", then it is possible for something to be "natural good" and "natural evil". This is a contradiction. You cannot say that natural disasters are not part of his creation, because ultimately everything is part of his creation (allegedly)." I think you misunderstand what i said, but allow me to clarify. 1) Natural good is when the natural realm benefits the human race physically survive. 2) Natural evil is when natural disasters occur to inflict suffering on humanity While yes, God essentially created them both, natural disasters were seen as divine punishment for moral evil in the ancient world (1). "Additionally, your definitions of "moral good" and "moral evil" are contradictory as well. Suppose I lie to prevent someone from being severely injured. This violates the commandments, but does not cause harm to anyone. Is it "moral evil" or "moral good"?" I would say that it's neither good or bad, but necessary to preserve life. Abraham lied ( Gen. 12:13-19), Rahab lied (Josh 2:3-7 ), Issac lied ( Gen.26:7-9), so on. Notice that God did not approve of them breaking the commandment, but neither did he punish them for saving human life. "Your first example falls under my first refutation. If God was omniscient, he knew that Eve and Satan would be evil. So why would he ever create them? Why would he create them with the potential to carry out evil? He has the obligation not to, as it is the moral thing to do and he has the capability of doing it." Why did he do it? We don't really know. All we know is that they have the potential to also carry out good despite evil. Genesis 3:15 is taken to be a prophetic reference to the coming of the Messiah "15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel." It is not as important to learn that humans are evil as it is to know that there is potential in them to do good. "How exactly can anything be perfect yet still have evil? By definition, a perfect world would have no evil. Additionally, if a perfect world is possible, it is by definition better than the current world. So why did God not simply instate that world right from the start? He is omnipotent, he can do that. This falls under my third refutation." It goes back to my earlier refutation. Faith persevering through evil and suffering builds the world of perfection (Rev.). "When you give the choice-maker infinite power, there is absolutely no reason to allow evil to exist unless they themselves have evil intentions" Like i said, your making hidden assumptions. Your assuming that because an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being does not function and instate the world that you want, that makes him evil. You did not show that the Christian God has to work that way. On top of that, infinite power must also co-exist with omnibenevolence and omniscience. If allowing suffering increases our understanding of who God is and makes us wiser and more experienced then it is for the greater good, hence omnibenevolent. This also is in harmony with omnipotence: the infinite power to bring good out of evil. "If we can't discern good and evil, then how can you define them?" We were never meant to discern between good and evil, we simply follow God's commandments and trust that he knows what is good and evil for us. "finite knowledge doesn't mean that omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and omniscience cannot be understood. It just means that not EVERYTHING is understood" That's the problem: we are humans with finite knowledge and lack the ability to understand everything. Only an infinite omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient being has complete knowledge of himself and all things. " Good and evil is a question still under debate to philosophers, but that doesn't stop us from saying that certain things are good and evil most of the time. If we didn't agree on that, we'd have no basis for any structure of morality." My argument is that because we do not fully understand good and evil, we cannot make an argument against the morality of a being who has absolute knowledge of good and evil. "Ah yes, the story of Job, where God ruined a man's life just for a bet with the Devil. If Job's ultimate reward for being unnecessarily punished is that God needed to know whether or not he would keep his faith if his fortune was taken away, why would God ever need to do that? God is omniscient, remember? He already knows whether or not Job would stay faithful. It the purpose of putting him through all that is just to show the Devil, it's still useless because he can just make the Devil know as well. He is omnipotent. And even if he is rewarded with more than he had before, God could have just let him have all of that before" God knows all things, but we as humans do not. Job needed to experience suffering and from that, gain knowledge of God's great goodness. The Devil was simply an instrument to test Job, God simply wanted to disprove his claims that Job would lose faith. "Yes, it is true that events which can have disastrous consequences can also have some good ones. Is it also true that with God's alleged omnipotence he could have allowed for a world with none of the bad side effects and all of the good ones? Yes. The answer to that question is yes." You agree that disastrous consequences can be for the greater good, but then seem to imply that God could have completely erased all that and thus removing the greater good which contradicts your statements. "Don't even try to compare human development for the greater good to God causing harm for the greater good. Humans are not omnipotent. Humans have no other way of obtaining a greater good, so we do what we can. If we had the capability to make surgery painless, we would. If we had the capability to get rid of war, we would. You know who does allegedly have that capability? God." If you agree that we cause pain for the greater good then you must admit that it is "a necessary evil." "See my first refutation for this last point. If free will is a source of evil, why would God create it? Additionally, there is no reason to believe that free will even exists. Empirical evidence is needed to validate ideas, and free will is dependent upon multiple possible realities existing. We can only observe one reality, so free will is unprovable, and therefore unsupported. In all likelihood, we have no free will." Free-will is a source for both good and evil. This debate is not focused on the existence of free-will, but on the problem of evil. If you remove the ability to do good, you force only evil upon a person and that act is selfish, violating God's love. If you remove the ability to do evil, you force a person to only do good and that also displays selfishness. Our inclination to evil is simply how things are and our actions can never be blamed on God. To answer your last question: "If everything evil in the world has a purpose, what is the purpose of a starving child?" I don't know, it's not in my place to say. I can only say that the starving child has an effect on those who see him/her, creating the possibility for good. Sources: 1. http://en.wikipedia.org...