The Problem of Evil falsifies the Christian God's Omnibenevolence

Introduction I'll address my opponent's arguments in order of importance. Let's examine the POE, which is what we're here to debate. A lot of my opponent's other arguments, honestly seem like fluff. I'll address the fluff after first addressing the important stuff. POE Let's examine the topic we're actually supposed to be debating momentarily. From Round 2 P1. If the Christian God exists THEN gratuitous suffering will not exist P2. Gratuitous suffering exists Conclusion. The Christian God does not exist. We're only disputing premise number 2. My opponent has to prove premise #2. If he fails to prove premise 2 then he loses this debate. The voters need to heavily weigh the arguments concerning premise #2, and give little to no weight for the rest of the arguments. Let's examine if he did. Unknown Purpose Defense I don't like calling it an unknown purpose defense, because I've actually shown a purpose. However the title doesn't take anything away from it. "This means, any purpose that God has intended for a certain example of suffering and certainly every single example Con gave, could have been accomplished by not going via. that intermediate stage (as he is omnipotent). There is nothing inherently logically contradictory with this conception, and given that God has free will and deliberately chooses to go through unnecessary intermediate stages that will inevitably cause suffering (God is omniscient) he would need to be either malevolent, or impotent (falsifying God)." Here is a reminder of what I said in the previous round. New Living Translation Romans 11:36 "For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen." Part of the reason that evil was created, was to be able to appreciate God's glory. How could we ever know God and appreciate him fully unless we fall from his grace first. Now you might ask; Why wouldn't God just have you appreciate his glory and know him and his love without all the suffering? The answer to this is something I didn't bring up, because my opponent had already brought up the free will defense in round 2. Here it is: "Free will is a redeeming good that balances out the perceived gratuitous suffering that exists, that is gratuitous suffering is necessary for us to have free will" My opponent goes on to explain that free will only accounts for moral evils and not naturalistic evil. This is why I didn't bring this up sooner. We already had the argument narrowed down to naturalistic evil. If I would've known my opponent's rebuttals were going to be so good, I would've touched on this up sooner. The free will defense actually goes hand in hand, with the defense I used this previous round. A benevolent God, won't force you to love him. He won't force you to know him, glorify him, or even believe in him. God wants all these things, but he knows it's wrong to force them on you. I'm going to go ahead and quote Plantiga directly on this. "A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all. Now God can create free creatures, but He can't cause or determine them to do only what is right. For if He does so, then they aren't significantly free after all; they do not do what is right freely. To create creatures capable of moral good, therefore, He must create creatures capable of moral evil; and He can't give these creatures the freedom to perform evil and at the same time prevent them from doing so. As it turned out, sadly enough, some of the free creatures God created went wrong in the exercise of their freedom; this is the source of moral evil. The fact that free creatures sometimes go wrong, however, counts neither against God's omnipotence nor against His goodness; for He could have forestalled the occurrence of moral evil only by removing the possibility of moral good." Plantinga, Alvin (1967). God and Other Minds. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. LCCN 67020519. This explains the natural evils as well. God removed any awareness of his presence from this world. He may have left behind some holy books, so those who choose to know him can, but he's not going to make himself obvious and destroy our free will to believe. I agree with my opponent. If you prove gratuitous evil. You prove god isn't Omni benevolent. My opponent has failed to give us enough reason to believe that gratuitous evil exists. Now I'll move on to all of my opponent's bonus arguments. Starting with the ones most in need of addressing. Evil God As I stated previously. I don't think this argument has much if any relevance to this debate. My opponent's argument is that an evil God is just as good of an explanation for this so called evil as a benevolent God. My response to this is: So what? It doesn't do anything to disprove a benevolent God. It just shows a melevolent one is just as likely. I think the best thing that could be taken from this argument is that it shows an evil God would be indistinguishable from a benevolent God. Showing that a melevolent God would be indistinguishable from a benevolent God, does nothing to disprove the Christian Omni God. Further more. This argument does nothing to support my opponent's POE argument. To win this debate, my opponent must prove gratuitous evil. He has not done that. Modal Argument from Evil Here it is: P1. Necessarily, God is a being that necessarily exists (must exist in all metaphysically possible worlds) P2. If God necessarily exists THEN, necessarily no gratuitous suffering exists (exists in not one metaphysically possible world) P3. Gratuitous suffering is possible (it exists in some metaphysically possible world) C1. From 2 & 3, God does not necessarily exist C2. From C1 & 1, God necessarily does not exist ~(in any metaphysically possible world, including this one) I don't have the space to completely explain modal logic to the voters. So I'm done trying. I'll just speak from common sense. Here is what my opponents arguments boil down to. P1 Gratuitous evil is possible. It might not exist, but it's possible it does. C God can exist even if gratuitous evil doesn't exist, merely cause it's possible. The argument is pure bologna. It's an attempt to reduce the BOP. Instead of actually showing that gratuitous evil exists, my opponent wants to show it might exist. Sorry pro, it's not good enough to show that gratuitous evil "might" exist. You have the BOP to show it does exist. If you want to use this argument that goes against common sense than you need to fully explain modal logic so the voters understand it and you need to explain why it's a good way at arriving at the truth. modal logic also proves the existence of a benevolent God in the Modal Ontological Argument. At best the modal argument for evil cancels out the MOA, but it does nothing to prove gratuitous evil and it does nothing to prove God isn't benevolent. Just so everyone knows what my opponent is up to let me show you a quote. " if gratuitous suffering is 99% likely, 1% likely or 0.0001% likely, the fact that it is possible renders God unnecessary, and from premise 1, non-existent (falsified)." That last one is 1/100 of 1%. Let's forget we aren't even arguing the POE anymore. Now we're arguing the modal argument from evil. My opponent is trying to say if gratuitous evil is a possibility of 1/100 of 1%, he wins. This is a huge attempt to switch the BOP. It is literally impossible for me to show that gratuitous evil has a 0% possibility of existing. It's also ridiculous to ask me to. Conclusion My opponent hasn't fulfilled premise #2 of his POE argument.