The Problem of Evil is Reasonable

PrefaceIn his final rebuttal my opponent starts out by clarifying what he took this debate to be.He takes "He or she has to show how evil/suffering can coexist with God" as a merely hypothetical, not a literal burden, meaning that he thought he only had to show a possible solution, not to show how things are in reality.Two things come to mind.First, the resolution is formulated like this:"It is reasonable to not believe in God on the basis of the problem of evil."I think it should be obvious that this in conjunction with my explanation of what I mean by "reasonable" is supposed to mean that we are talking about adopting or not adopting a certain actual belief about the existence of the classical monotheistic God if one was to base his judgement solely on our performances in this debate.Secondly, even if it was only about proposing a hypothetical possibility, the definitions of "God" and "evil" stand and his only proposed solution, the FW defence, was rebutted thoroughly. Unless he was talking about a completely fictional world where people actually have LFW, then this objection doesn't have ground anyway. But if he thought he could argue for fictional worlds, entirely unlike our actual, then he could have just as well invoked a world where, say, only God and an omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly evil demon, who suffers a terrible headache all day long, exist.Since he did no such thing I conclude that his clarification is an ad hoc justification for misinterpreting a otherwise clearly outlined debate.I never claimed that Con broke the rules, I said the reader should decide how to evaluate a certain statement he made.In summary:Unexplained Suffering, How much Evil? & Linguistics and OntologyAll three were never addressed and dismissed, because my opponent claims they are irrelevant. Over the course of two rounds I have shown why this is not the case. Unless of course my opponent drops his "Opposition in all things"-objection, which would be worse for him than for me.He cannot argue for the vagueness of the resolution (hypothetical burden), then use an objection to the argument that, if successful, would amount to a serious demur for the PoE in reality (literal burden) and then argue that my responses were irrelevant to his ad hoc interpretation of an hypothetical burden.He: "A"I: "not A"He: "your objection is invalid because I was talking about the number 13"Libertarian Free WillHere Con claims that I am the one presenting a false dichotomy and that he is not actually defending LFW.If he is not actually defending LFW then he could have pointed that out to me as early as round 2. To present a defence using FW without specifying what kind of FW is used is ridiculous (especially if it deviates from the norm). How am I supposed to respond to such an objection if the terms are not clear at all? Moreover the FW defence does commit the theist to LFW, I have demonstrated this in round 2, but I will (again) cite the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the Free Will Defence: "God's creation of persons with morally significant free will is something of tremendous value. God could not eliminate much of the evil and suffering in this world without thereby eliminating the greater good of having created persons with free will with whom he could have relationships and who are able to love one another and do good deeds."This "presupposes the view of free will known as "libertarianism"""It is the view that causal determinism is false, that—unlike robots or other machines—we can make choices that are genuinely free" (1)We might agree that we have some kind of free will. but if I am supposed to be able to respond to this in any way shape or form, I have to assume that "we both accept that there is an element of free will" means he commits to the same view as I do (he rejects both hard determinism and LFW so compatibilism is the only remaining option). But then the FW defence does not defend God anymore.Not only are professional philosophers in agreement about the necessity of LFW for the FW defence, but under compatibilism it is entirely possible for God to give agents only good desires (as I have argued in R.2). Claiming that this would constitute an infringement of an agents FW is to presuppose libertarianism. Therefore the free will defence still fails.Minor note: he argues the freedom of our will is empirically obvious. However some would disagree and instead propose that this is an illusion (2). ConclusionOver the course of this debate I have defended all of my original responses, whereas my opponent was either not able to defend his objections or secretly dropped them (depending on your interpretation of the burden). He understood the burden to be hypothetical as opposed to literal, but I have demonstrated why this does not rescue any of his objections to the problem of evil.The resolution is affirmed.Sources(1) http://www.iep.utm.edu...(2) http://breakingthefreewillillusion.com...