The Problem of Evil makes it unlikely that God exsits

Snoopy: You've made some interesting accusations, many of which I vehemently disagree with. I will address the most pressing (and fallacious) of these of these, but I won't be able to get to all of them, because it would take several debates to properly explain them all. First, don't accuse me of not having read the Bible enough to debate this. Have I read it cover to cover? No. But I am a former United Methodist and I used to go to church and all that jazz. We read plenty of the Bible in church and my reading of the Bible helped me reject Christianity. Further, you don't see me claiming that you can't debate this because you haven't read Epicurus (the man credited with first explaining the problem) or David Hume's more famous exegesis on it. Ideas are either good or bad regardless of what you have or haven't read. Don't make absurd claims and assumptions. Ok, so you also claim that my definition of God is the problem. I define him as omnibenevolent or perfectly good. I just do this because most Christians seem to think pretty highly of the guy. But maybe they don't think as highly as I think they do. Allow me to quote … myself here: "It's worth noting that I think my argument still flies if we substitute "goodness" for omnibenevolence. (Kvaughan from post 1). Ok, so I only REALLY need to defend that God is "good". Let me do that for you. "PSALM 145:8-9 8 The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, Slow to anger and great in mercy. 9 The Lord is good to all, And His tender mercies are over all His works." I'm surprised that I even have to defend this point, seeing as it is a basic tenant of Christian faith, but desperate times … Point is, I am entirely consistent with God's Biblical characteristics. Next, you make this "if there is no God, then there can be no objective standard of morality upon which to challenge God's existence" argument. First, I am distressed that you want to bring this up NOW in my last chance for rebuttal. But when I deal effectively with you other argument I guess you have to do what you have to do. I want to first point out, that I don't really see you defending the conclusion very effectively. You just claim several times that without God there can be no evil. Why must this be so? Why do we need God to define evil? So, the argument isn't sound as is, but assuming it was, I'm inclined to make two responses: 1) You're just wrong about this. We can use logic and reason to create an objective moral standard – Kant's categorical imperative would be an example of this. 2) This argument implies that without a belief in God, people would be less moral because God defines morality. First, this is empirically denied. If we look at percentages in prison for example, atheists are far underrepresented with only .21% of the prison population, but around 8-16% of the total population (http://www.holysmoke.org...). Second, if you knew God did not exist, would you go around committing heinous acts? I don't believe in God and I don't because I believe in morality. OK, so onto the diving knowledge argument concerning if we can know what God wants or not. Your response is that we can know what God wants, because it's in the Bible that God wants us to believe in Jesus or whatever. My response is that God wanting there to not be evil is also in the Bible. See the Psalms quote above. Also, Jesus claims "No one is good except God alone" (Mark 10:18) or "The eyes of all look to Thee, And Thou dost give them their food in due time. Thou dost open Thy hand, And dost satisfy the desire of every living thing" (Psalms 15-16) So, we do know that God is good and he "satisfies the desire of every living thing". The world, however, is irreconcilable with these claims. So, if we can know things about God from the Bible as you claim, we still have the PoE, if we can't know things, we don't have religion. Moving on to my "show some films" argument. As a sidebar, I want to point out that you claimed "You can't know about something that doesn't exist". This claim seems false to me. I know things about what a unicorn is supposed to look like despite its non-existence. I can know things about it conceptually. Next you claim that instead of showing films, God could use omnipotence to show us what evil is like and that's what this world is. I intended to claim that God could show us what evil is like without us having to go through pain and that he could do this with omnipotence. Now, your response is that evil can only be experienced and not learned conceptually. It seems to me that it is not self-contradictory for you to know evil without experiencing it. For example, I know that killing is evil. Have I ever experienced it? No. So, this argument is not even true in the human sense, but for omnipotence this just has to be possible as it is an action and God can, by definition, do any action. Finally, you attempt to refute my claim that the actual amount of suffering is unnecessary. I make this claim because your pro-evil arguments seem to imply that evil is useful for distinguishing good and that it makes life interesting. Some, but less evil would seem to accomplish these tasks. The reason I, or your philosophy professor can't answer your question is because it's irrelevant. First, there are no units for suffering, so I can't tell you the exact amount. Second, all I'm claiming is that we need only minimal suffering (maybe one bad even per life) to get what you think suffering gains us. Now, I can make this claim without a perfect amount in mind. I know, for example, that I need more money (I'm broke at the moment) and I can make this claim without knowing exactly how much money I want. I want less suffering, and that's all I need to claim. Let me end on this note. If suffering is good for the reasons you mentioned, then why treat people well? Why not stab the person you just met in the spleen instead of shaking their hand politely? After all, suffering teaches them about good, makes life interesting, and is the will of the creator of the universe. Why do good instead of evil?