The Problem of Evil (PoE)

I tend to keep my arguments as brief as possible. So I want to apologize to you for bringing a rapier to what he expected to be a sledgehammer battle. But,in accordance with your requests, I will make an attempt to be more complete. First off, if you expect anyone to agree with the "note on evil" that you provided at the beginning of your first round argument (as well as in your support for P2), then you are setting a trap for any contender that would want to challenge you. You define evil as suffering, pain, etc. and then in your note on evil, you add to this definition that suffering, pain, etc. is something which God would wish to prevent. You expect your opponent to simply agree with the premise that God's characteristics would require him prevent all of those things we consider evil, which is exactly what any opponent of yours would be arguing against should he disagree with P1 (which I do). It's question begging, so even though your argument may depend on this, I'm choosing to ignore it for the sake of having this fun sledgehammer battle. For this purpose, I have changed the definition of evil by simply shaving off the question begging part, and leaving it at suffering, pain, etc. Also note that I have not addressed the divine silence argument, because I am not exactly sure how it supports the idea of 'gratuitous evil'. I am not dodging the argument, but you don't really explain the connection. It seems to me that it's more of an argument that directly refutes the non-existence of a God rather than supports the idea of 'gratuitous evil'. Because I want to address things with your intended meaning, I'm leaving it alone for now because I'm not sure what your intended meaning is. Explain it in the next round so that I can incorporate it into my rebuttal. I disagree with the first premise because omniscence requires knowing things that we do not and can not know. So it is completely plausible that if there is a God that he is acting on knowledge we can never know, including a greater good. You concede this point. "I agree that all evil may have a morally sufficient reason..." However, that is inconsistent with your conclusion. If all evil may have a morally sufficient reason in the end, then your conclusion doesn't hold up because an omnibenevolent being can exist as well. For this to not be the case, the good that resulted from the evil would have to be apparent or evident at some point between life and death. So, yes, this doesn't deal with what is evident to us, but the things we are aware of are not the only things that happen to us that could be considered good, nor is what we are aware of ever sufficient for explaining an infinite being, nor is what we are aware of sufficient for explaining all of reality. You object to this by saying that this epistemic skepticism (although I prefer 'epistemic agnosticism') is of no help to us. This is fallacious. An argument does not have to favor or help us to be accurate. You also object to this by saying that I did not address your support for the third premise in your original argument. As I said before, I apologize for bringing the rapier. I thought my purpose was to bring your argument down, not annihilate every part of it. The fact of the matter is that the entire argument breaks down with this one objection. If what seems to be the case to us is sufficient for understanding a possible metaphysical and/or infinite being, morally or otherwise, then the word 'metaphysical' has lost all of its meaning and our minds have become capable of understanding an infinite being. The Prima Facie argument is false. The non-conceivium argument makes the same mistake. These two arguments are two sides of the same coin, with the prima facie argument saying that what we can perceive is sufficient support, and the nonconceivium saying that what we cannot perceive or imagine or conceive is also support. Both of these arguments appeal directly to human perception as legitimate faculties for not only understanding a reality that is independent of what we are capable of understanding, but also, and more relevant to this discussion, a proposed metaphysical entity that is supposed to be beyond our comprehension by definition. Besides that, the non-conceivium argument commits appeal to ignorance fallacy. The fact that we cannot think of a reason for or against something is not legitimate support for anything. http://www.fallacyfiles.org... You object to my rebuttal by saying that this objection amounts to saying that no amount of evil would make God less probable, and that we could suffer from birth until death and God could still be possible. I respond to this with a resounding "Yeah. So what?" We COULD suffer from birth until death, and omnibenevolence could still exist if that omnibenevolence existed metaphysically, and our compensating good happened after death, or in some spiritual form. You and Flew are correct. It's unfalsifiable. I'll add that it is untestable. But to restrict ALL of reality to what our limited minds can test and perceive is a mistake. This is why I stated that we would have to actually be omniscient in order to understand not only an omniscient being, but reality as a whole. I will explain more later. You have made the argument that this level of agnosticism towards the metaphysical and conceptual (good and evil) leads to indecision, which it does not. I do not have to be certain of anything in order to act. My perceptions, memory of past perceptions, and other brain functions allow me to make judgments about my immediate environment, and I may act on those judgments. In no way is it necessary for me to be absolutely certain at any moment about anything. And besides, whether or not my agnosticism leads to indecision is irrelevant, because it very well could and it still wouldn't do a thing to disprove the agnosticism itself. Your response to my argument that God is not limited by the rules of logic, you miss the point entirely by saying that it's illogical and self-refuting. Yes, it is. It's self-refuting in my mind,too. But that's because I am a human limited by my nature. God does not have these problems. The Bill Craig quote doesn't accurately address the issue because a square is a term for a shape that humans percieve and conceptualize with limited faculties, and the contradiction of saying round square is contradictory because we have defined the parameters of a square with our perception, and defined the parameters of a circle with our perception, and they are contradictory. These finite concepts are produced from finite minds and might not even apply to an infinite being. In other words, god doesn't see squares and circles like we do, he exists and perceives in an entirely different way. This is actually relevant to the problem of evil you have provided because, regardless of validity and soundness, it is still an attempt at a logical argument addressing the nature of an infinite being. Should your argument be completely valid and sound according to every human on earth, it still would not be enough. In summary, you have not sufficiently explained how my agnosticism fails to break down your argument. You have only appealed to what humans typically want to believe and attacked it as "extreme". You have misunderstood my argument concerning logic itself, and mislabeled it as irrelevant even though it is. Furthermore, you labeled my argument as skeptical theism, and it is nothing of the sort. This is not an argument for the existence of God. This is an argument that we cannot know and that God is still possible. As a side note, I am far from being a theist, and I do think belief in God or anything metaphysical is completely unnecessary.