Problem of evil is a flawed argument

"I am making no hidden assumptions. Omnibenevolence means that God will always choose the action that causes the greatest good. Having no evil is the greatest good. God knows of this, and is capable of carrying it out. Therefore, if God existed, He would have an obligation to remove all evil." How do you know that omnibenevolence will always cause the greatest good and remove all suffering? The problem of evil never explicitly explains that. I will now argue for why good and evil are interdependent and must co-exist. By looking at the original Hebrew, we will understand the concept of "evil" better and thus understand their relationship. The Hebrew word "rasha" means "the one who departed from the right path" (1) Tov is a word used (in Gen. 1) to describe his work as being functional, thus ra is dysfunctional (2). Hebrew chattaah comes from a root meaning "to miss the mark." (3) The tree of knowledge of good and evil is a merism which is a figure of speech describing something by enumerating it's different parts (4). As you can see, evil is dependent on good. Death is simply the absence of life. Evil is simply a violation of good. Suffering is merely the lack, a disorder of physical and emotional health. You can only know evil if you know what is good. To eliminate absolutely all evil would also eliminate the greatest good. However to overcome evil is to simply display the greatest good. "Then God should make it that way without having anyone actually having to suffer. Before you rant on about that being impossible, I will remind you: omnipotence." You just admitted that the problem of evil isn't really a problem because even you agree that he should make the world in such a way that conforms to your desires rather than logically contradicting his very nature. You brought up omnipotence, but you also brought up omniscience, and omnibenevolence. They all must co-exist, thus you cannot simply focus on one attribute and ignore the rest. God can stop evil, but that doesn't mean that it's the morally best thing to do at the given moment. I simply elaborated on my definitions, not change them. God did not create them evil, their desires rose from knowing that which is good. Romans 7:7-8 "7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, "You shall not covet." 8 "But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. " It goes back to the argument of free-will, if God created man wholly good then that would be selfish. "If saving life is ultimately what God cares about, what purpose do the commandments serve, especially if you can violate them for some greater purpose. That undermines the idea of defining morality by the commandments." Not always, we are to obey the commandments to live in holiness from wickedness. "God would not need to build a world of perfection. If he were perfectly good, he would simply instate a perfect world right from the start" Like i said, that's an assumption of what a perfect being would do. A perfect God can create any world that he wishes according to his attributes. "Removing evil is good and God is capable of doing that." No where in the Bible is there such a concept of "removing evil." There is only choosing to do good despite temptations to do evil or retribution for evil deeds done in violation of good. "If God were truly omnibenevolent and omnipotent, he would not need us to experience suffering to understand Him. He could simply have instated us with that knowledge" If you eliminate the experience to suffer, you also eliminate the experience to be saved from physical and spiritual troubles which is contradicting omniscience and omnibenevolence. I'm arguing that we do not possess the capacity to judge a God's actions as evil when we do not know all the facts of how the world works. Free-will exists because you have already inclined yourself to obey certain principles, morals, ideas, etc. "How does forcing good display selfishness? If people could only perform good acts, then everyone would benefit. That is the opposite of selfishness." That's the problem: not everyone wants to do good. Some want to do evil (Hitler, criminals, etc.) To remove their choice to do so would be violating love. "The possibility of good in the future is inferior to the certainty of good for all time. Which God allegedly can create, being omnipotent, and should create, being omnibenevolent." Not sure what you mean here. Conclusion: The problem of evil is in no way a logical argument which we can deduce that God is an evil being. It's more of a personal problem, a disagreement with the way things are in the world. The problem of evil is technically saying "This is not how things should be, it should be like this!" Sources: 1. http://jbutzu.wordpress.com... 2. http://www.ancient-hebrew.org... 3. http://biblehub.com... 4. http://www.wisegeek.com...