The problem of evil and the concept of God are irreconcilable

"He has conceded that he dropped my claim that evil is indirect evidence for the existence of God. " Have I? What I recall doing was giving my opponent my own definition of evil, which does NOT necessitate the existence of a God. "In the previous round, my opponent admits that he dropped my claim that Adam and Eve truly existed. He also didn't respond to my claim that a mind can exist outside of a brain" As everyone can plainly read in my previous round, I did not conceded either of these points; I was simply out of characters. I will address them now: Adam and Eve: For the Earth to be 6000 years old, every known decay rates must be erroneous and our current light speed value must be erroneous. Article from the examiner: Unfortunately, the article does not tell us about any evidence that would indicate that minds can exist outside of brains, it simply says vaguely "this person has made some research that supposedly leads one to think that it is possible". Without having the evidence, I can not assess this case (and neither can my opponent). On the other hand, there are very good reasons that would lead one to believe that minds are products of the physical brain: We can alter your mind by damaging your brain, we can reset your memory, some people acquire more than one personality after brain damage, etc. "I don't know how my opponent wants me to "demonstrate"'my claims are possible. .. . " With all due respect, that is not my problem; my opponent's inability to demonstrate possibility after we have agreed that he must actually do it is his problem. "My opponent had several issues with this. Below you will find his concerns preceded with a -. After each of his concerns, you will find my response. " Regarding the issue of "distributed suffering", my opponent said: "No. Again, evils are not something God "distributes". It's something He allows to happen. " But in my opponent's model of reality, God created a Earth in which he KNEW that these things would happen, so he is ultimately responsible for them. Regarding the issue of Christians suffering, my opponent said: "Salvation is a two sided coin: Justification and sanctification. The sanctification part is a process where we're made holy. This sometimes involves suffering" (and quotes Romans 5: 3-5) The problem here is that the quote he gave is literally telling us that suffering is actually a GOOD thing ("we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance") which, if it is true, would mean that God actually SHOULD torture people in addition to letting natural suffering occur, which is ridiculous. Regarding the issue of a requirement-free Heaven, my opponent said: "He could, but wouldn't BECAUSE He is omnibenevolent. Forcing someone to spend eternity with you is not benevolent. " Ah, this is interesting: my opponent is equating "Heaven" with "spending eternity with God". If heaven is indeed limited to that, then why would he care so much about sending us there? Wouldn't it be WAY more benevolent to prevent all the suffering and then let us live eternally without him then allowing us to suffer just so we can be by his side? What if I do not want do be by his side, can he prevent MY suffering then? Or is God so arrogant that he actually believes that being by his side is worth a lifetime of suffering? Regarding the issue of instant death, my opponent said: "Again,these exist because of the sin of Adam. And it doesn't necessarily take years to be reconciled" Then we are back to the unjust system; people are being killed (sometimes by the hundreds) for the crime of ONE MAN. Does my opponent believe that this is just? And I was not arguing about something that takes "years", I was specifically talking about INSTANT death. Regarding the issue of "violating our free will", my opponent said: "No. Influence does not equal coercion. " Influence through suffering IS coercion. What could possibly be my opponent's definition of coercion if it does not include that? Whether or not God is causing that suffering is irrelevant, the fact remains that he can prevent it and chooses not to, making him responsible (analogy: by-standers as just as responsible as the bully if they do not act, especially if they CAN act). Regarding the issue of "going to Heaven despite not loving God", my opponent said: "No He wouldn't. Forcing someone to love you isn't benevolent. " It would seem that my hypothesis was correct; my opponent's view of Heaven is indeed limited to "living with God and loving God"­. That being the case, my objections remain the same: Why does God care so much about us being eternally with him and if I do not want to be with God, can I be exempt of suffering? "My opponent said: "But allowing them to suffer (sometimes greatly) until they do IS omnibenevolent? Isn't it better to restrain SOME freewill if it ensures that we are not going to suffer greatly? " My response: Not if suffering, in the long run, brings about more happiness. " Hm, it seems that my opponent is assuming that happiness is a necessary component of "living with God and loving God", which seems weird. I, for one, would not be happy to live with God, especially if his character is accurately described in the Bible. Moreover, can one really be eternally happy when there are still people (sometimes close to them) suffering on Earth? Or does God make it so we do not care about anyone (except him) anymore? Regarding the "cancer" example, my opponent said: "Not if it's the best way to bring about the most salvations. The family members may also begin to realize how short life is, and how preparing for the next life is more important. " And yet I'm pretty sure that the most usual scenario is a LOSS of faith, not a gain, but I'll leave it to the audience to decide. In response to my comment about the incoherence of "existing outside of time", my opponent said: "Existence is only a temporal concept for things that begin to exist. God has always existed. Even before the creation of physical time. " Where did that come from? How could my opponent possibly conclude that existence is a characteristic that applies only to things that begin to exist? Does he have anything to compare, or perhaps a set of things which are in fact eternal that my opponent can study? No. In his worldview, only God is infinite and this argument becomes a fallacy of special pleading. "The Big Bang could have simply been the process He used to create the universe" But Occam's razor deals with the God hypothesis because God is NOT required to create a Universe (look up Sean Carroll vs. William Lane Craig debate on youtube). On the issue of free will, my opponent said: "Or a third option: Linear progression of time doesn't exist outside of our universe. In that scenario, there is no past or future, only now. So the knowledge God would have wouldn't be of the future" There is no third option, either God knows or he doesn't, these two options are mutually exclusive. HOW God knows my future is irrelevant and so is his perception of that future, if he knows it, I do not have freewill. As a side note, I find it pretty amusing that I managed to get my opponent to argue against the validity of prophecies. "In order for someone to say something is unjust/wrong, they must have a basis for doing so. I have shown my opponent does not, so his arguments in this issue are invalid" What my opponent is consistently failing to understand is that my ability to account for justice is absolutely irrelevant in my argument; my argument is that my OPPONENT CAN NOT RECONCILE (WITH HIS VIEW ON JUSTICE) THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL WITH THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. I am baffled by the fact that this seems so hard to understand. "Second, I HAVE been showing how God and the existence of evil (gratuitous or otherwise) can be reconciled. " Actually, he has completely avoided to do so for the following issues: - So basically, we are now ALL in position to be judged because of what ONE MAN did? This still seems pretty unjust. What didn't we ALL get the chance to live without being judged - A system in which one man's action can lead to repercussions that affect ALL humans is an unjust system. "The one who creates the rules has the authority to decide what the rules are. When driving a car, it's not up for debate what a stop sign means. You can say it means "go", but you'd be wrong. You'd be wrong because the authorities who put it there get to decide what it means, not you. " The law is not analogous to morality, and labelling God's moral pronouncements "laws" is simply a semantic trick. Moreover, laws are not absolute, they change over time, that is how we got rid of slavery despite it being sanctioned by God (I had to put that in there). If my opponent wants to have a debate on the objectivity of God's laws, I would gladly accept the challenge. "He said: "My definition of evil is actually "the set of things which decreases general well being". My response:I don't accept this definition. " I didn't expect him to. We each have our own definition of what is good and what is evil, this why morality is ultimately subjective. For what it's worth, I don't accept my opponent's definition of evil, which is basically "that which God does not approve of". "I'd be happy to re-word my comments: A good father allows his child to suffer less happiness by keeping meth away from his son because in th long run, it will bring his son more happiness. " So what happens if the child actually has the meth in his hands? Taking it away from him at this point would be violating his freewill, but it would still be the moral thing to do, wouldn't it?