The Problem of Evil Disproves an All-Loving, All-Powerful God

Con begins by saying: "God wants man to make his own choice about being good or evil. " This is effectively Alvin Plantinga's free will defense, which is generally considered to be a powerful theodicy. However, it is not without flaws. First, it leaves natural suffering (suffering not due to man's decisions, such as earthquakes) out of the equation, so this theodicy fails to completely explain evil from the start. Second, for it to be valid, libertarian free will must exist; however, I believe I can demonstrate that it does not with a short argument that goes as follows: P1: All chosen actions are determined by their agent's values and preferences P2: Agents do not freely choose their values and preferences P3: If an agent's choices are ultimately determined by factors outside it's control, those choices are not free P4: All choices are determined by factors which are not freely chosen (from 1 & 2) Conclusion: Free will does not exist (from 3 & 4) Con will have to demonstrate that libertarian free will can still exist by either attacking one of my premises, or attacking the logical validity of the argument. I'll be interested in seeing what Con's response to this is. The second point made by Con is as follows: "Those that walk in the light & believe in his son Jesus Christ will be blessed indeffinatley. Those that disbelieve will burn forever in hell as their souls rip apart over and over. He wants to let those that are truly good to walk among him in heaven. " First of all, Con's argument here seems to lead him into both the problem of non-belief and the problem of hell. In other words, Con's point seems to raise the questions, "Why doesn't God prove his existence directly in such a way that everybody has an equal chance at salvation? " and "Why would a loving God send somebody to hell in the first place? " Second, the idea that God is testing us fails for a couple reasons. First, or the test to be fair, it assumes that we have free will, so Con will need to refute the above syllogism I presented for this argument to go anywhere. Second, the idea of a test only makes sense in the context of a being with limited knowledge, there's no point in testing something if you already know the results. Third, for a test to be useful, it must be applied to its subjects equally, a test is both useless and unfair if some people are born into different cultures and families and therefore are less likely to pass the test. This would be akin to an high school math teacher giving one test with basic arithmetic to half of the students, and another test with calculus to the other half. Next Con claims that "God works in mysterious ways, which is much greater than any one can comprehend. " This argument is unpersuasive because the only way God can justifiably allow suffering is if the suffering is intrinsically necessary to achieve a value greater than the minimization of suffering; however, if we do posit this value as greater to God than reducing suffering, then it begs the question, "Why doesn't God create more suffering to achieve more courage/sympathy/love/whatever? " For example, if suffering is worth it to give the opportunity for courage, then why don't we all get to experience courage, which must be a higher value for the argument to even get this far? The forth point made is that God's power is proved by the stories in Exodus, Leviticus, and Genesis. This is a flawed argument because it assumes the historical validity of the Bible, which I dispute. Con will have to prove the Bible's validity as a historical document for this argument to hold any weight This sums up the substance of Con's reply. For him to win he must either refute each criticism I have levied against at least one of his theodicies. I again thank Con for replying and look forward to his response.