The Problem of Evil (PoE)

Unitedandy unfortunately dropped all objections to the argument presented aside from the first and even then just hinted at a defense and from that point forward just repeated the original assertions. I will summarize the objections, note some comments and then recap and conclude. O1) "Con has conflated the debate resolution (merely the title of the debate topic), with the argument in support of that resolution. " The resolution is just a topic, Unitedandy was asked for clarification and responded clearly that it was a probabilistic argument. It was then noted that this assertion was so vague as to be meaningless because it was neither quantitative in nature nor even had an attempt at a defined metric. "Likewise, when he talked about the physics problems going against intuition, how does one measure this?" That is the exact point. The quotes concerning the reflections that physicists made when confronted with the apparent absurd nature of quantum theory were just that and nothing more. They were obviously not truth-apt propositions and in no way at all could be used as arguments against quantum theory in anything claiming a probabilistic sense. They of course were not used in such a manner, they were just physicists trying to resolve how they felt the world should be with how it appeared. Richard Feynman, one of the greatest modern physicists would often say (paraphrase) "If you think you understand quantum theory - you don't." This does not mean he argued that it was not real, that it was true that it was "the problem of quantum theory". If the problem of evil is going to be used as an actual probabilistic argument against the existence of God then this probability has to be quantified and this means a metric has to be defined. Let me know what probability you are talking about, how you are calculating it - give me something to refute! Without this there is nothing to contend and all that remains are again nothing more that the statements of physicists in regards to early quantum theory. O2) Unitedandy makes no attempt to deal with this objection. The point is clear, the next step in a functional argument from evil once O1 is resolved is to then describe the world in which this "more probable" situation exists which has no "problem of evil". What exactly, being very specific, is supposed to be observed if God exists? Note how Unitedandy can give very specific, but highly isolated examples, which apparently show how God is "less likely" to exist, but can not provide even the barest of outlines of what the world should be like if God exists. What is this world like which does not have the problem of evil? Surely that can not be impossible to answer if evil is such a claim against God - if you do not know what you should be observing then how can you say you should not be observing what you are. The point here is clear, probabilities are comparative. If Unitedandy is going to argue using modal logic (many worlds theory) and saying that what we observe here in this world shows God is "less likely to exist" then surely he can describe even one world which would have observables which indicate God is more likely - he has to in order to complete the argument. Unitedandy can not claim one world shows a lower probability if he can not produce a description of this world without the problem of evil as probabilities can not be argued in isolation. Probabilities are always asserted with the question in mind "as compared to what". Thus for the argument of the problem of evil to even get off the ground Unitedandy has to provide the "what" that he is supposedly comparing this world to. O3) "Surely, if there always will be evil, Con must accept that evil exists in the first place?" Again, humans do not judge evil as an absolute - it is relative. Would you call a hangnail suffering, would you say God does not exist if you had a papercut, if God supposed to make sure that you could even by accident get a mild muscle cramp? That all seems silly and even petty - but what about if you lived in a world where that was the only and therefore maximum amount of suffering you experienced? Again, Unitedandy make no comment on the issue of evil being relative and exactly how God is supposed to actualize this world without the problem of evil. Uuitedandy can list a number of what he calls truly objectionable evils and he claims - "see God would not allow these surely". The point here is simple, in a world where they do not exist, would Unitedandy not make that claim, of course not. He would pick the next most evil thing and make the exact same claim and so on no matter how many "evils" God removed. The point here is that God could remove and remove and remove down to events so small, so trivial, so minute, that people in this world would not regard them as evil at all, they would not even register as events of significance - but in this new world where they are the only suffering, the only pain, then they would be viewed as extreme acts of suffering no matter if they were as simple as a a light discomfort from the shade as the sun passes into a cloud. Thus you are left with O3 which should have been more clearly written as O3) There will always be "evil" as long as there is anything remotely resembling life as we know it" This of course is linked very closely to O2 which argues that a world with no evil in an absolute sense is not a world which can of course be created because evil is a relative and can never be reduced to zero. The amusing thing here is that while Unitedandy can not even provide the barest hint of detail, the minimum description of this world which does not have the problem of evil - he has no problem claiming with full confidence that it has to be the way things should be - but he has never even said what "it" is supposed to be in the first place. A point of clarification, the final objection was numbered incorrectly, it was : O4) There are lots of reasons/evidence for God This was completely dropped as well. "Con's position seems to be that anything is more favourable than accepting the conclusion of the PoE, taking comfort in any source, be it the appeal of absurdity from physics to denying the existence of evil altogether." To clarify, all of the above objections can be summarized very clearly. If you are going to advocate, in general, that you have a set of observations which make a hypothesis unlikely - then it is absolutely necessary that you also have a set of observations which can be provided to show that the hypothesis is more likely, in fact one can not even be defined without the other. But that is just what Unitedandy has tried to do here, and what is worse his observations are relative in nature. If God removed the ten worst possible things from this world and all memory from them then in this new world would the people see any difference - no, because evil is always normalized to experience. Thus what exactly is Unitedandy proposing that God should do? If Unitedandy wants to make an argument from evil which is probabilistic in nature (he has admitted that the logical argument from evil is invalid) then he has to do the following : 1) Make a specific claim. Probabilities are quantitative - this means math, it means Bayes Rule, it means make a statement that requires evidence and can be thus either refuted or supported. I can then get Thaddeus's slide rule and get to work. 2) Describe, at least in the barest of marginal details what is the alternative. What does the possible world actually look like without a problem of evil. How do we live and grow and gain character and wisdom and love and create and feel passion and thrill and excitement and joy (and of course argue and debate) - all of what makes being human, well actually worth living.