problem of gratuitous evil

I"m happy to see my opponent has attempted to address p2, but while argued well, his opposition to it, I believe, ultimately fails, I"ll attempt to show why: Response to counter 1: "If the god of the bible does in fact have the properties of all good, all knowing and all powerful (a point which was not contended by con), then he would be able to create a world where there was no suffering and everyone knew of him. ". I described before how in a world of no suffering, due to human nature, it"s unlikely that everyone would get to know god. Previously in the debate, my opponent has rightly taken into account the premise of free will, but he fails to take it into account here (Since god cannot rule over the human mind, and only attempt to convince it, a world without suffering may not be the most effective way of convincing the most amount of humans. We"re simply not in a position to say with anything resembling certainty that this is not the world where most humans get to know god, due to free will, some people may very well be impossible to save. -- "Unless my opponent can show that it is some way impossible for such a world to exist then I would again refer to Mathew 19:26, "But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible". it is my opponents burden to demonstrate a world with no gratuitous suffering and where all know god is impossible to exist or show that the bible makes a claim that would lead one to believe that such a thing is impossible for god, otherwise there is no reason to assume that an otherwise all powerful and all good god could not or would not create such a world." In order for my opponents argument to be successful, it would have to show a contradiction within the theistic viewpoint, and therefore the burden of proof is on him to show that there exists a world with less suffering than this one in which more people out of free will would get to know god. Currently, the argument fails to provide a contradiction, and Theism survives the problem of evil(Unless my opponent shows that gratuitous suffering exists without a doubt): P1): Gratuitous suffering may exist. P2): God exists. P3): An all knowing, omnibenevolent and omnipotent god would not allow the existence of gratuitous suffering. P4: Therefore gratuitous suffering does not exist. Response to counter 2: Again my opponent merely gives evidence, not logical conclusions, this time for the existence of gratuitous evil. -- " if someone has a memory or severe learning disorder, and suffers from any one of the problems I mentioned in my defense of premise 2 then the suffering must be gratuitous because such a person cannot learn from the suffering they experience, and thus could never come closer to god. " I would like first of all to bring attention to chaos theory, which tells us that small things can have huge effects later on, often getting there through a nearly unpredictable pattern. If a person has a memory or learning disorder, he/her may not get to know god themselves, but for example the family of the person may feel so much compassion that they see the light, or the suffering will simply prove to be non-gratuitous a thousand years later. While this may sound far fetched " remember, my opponent will have to show that it is logically impossible for such a thing to happen in order to have a successful argument. -- " yet another example is those who have suffered and died before ever hearing of god." After this my opponent goes on to speculate that an all knowing god could find a more effective way to spread the gospel, but again this is sheer speculation, without a logical conclusion to show it to be undoubtedly true. One also has to remember that the gospel teaches that we"re all sinners. Even if god only chose to save a few, he"s not amoral just like the governor that also pardons one man on death row instead of all is not amoral. -- " such people will have likely experienced suffering that was neither caused by the free will of others nor capable of furthering their individual knowledge's of god (how could it, they had no such concept). " Again, while it may seem unlikely, in a world where there exists an all good, all knowing and always present god, along with chaos theory, their suffering will(If it hasn't already) somehow turn out to be for the greater good. Defense of p2: Thus I maintain that my opponent has not managed prove the existence of gratuitous suffering, and thus p2 remains valid.(Remember that it did not say that the existence of gratuitous suffering is false, it merely says that it is not certain).