The Problem of Evil (PoE)

IntroductionThe first thing I feel I should point out is that the counters I have given to Con’s objections to the PoE have been largely accepted. It is now the case that the objections that Con holds to the PoE is no longer the Is-Ought problem, and he has changed his second argument beyond recognition. What we are left with therefore is a new objection, a significantly modified objection and a question of burden of proof, none of which were presented in the last round.I will attempt to show in this post that none of these new objections work, and that the PoE is undaunted by the myriad of responses Con throws at it.PoE vs EvilCon’s new objection basically takes one sentence which I made, and tries to use it to show that if we have to assume that God exists, then any evil in the world will necessarily have a morally sufficient reason and thus gratuitous evils cannot exist. Indeed, he argues that on the basis of defending my argument, I have essentially relegated P3 as a “logical impossibility”.The problem here is simple. The assumption that God exists is not, and never has been, a permanent one for me to hold. Rather, and as P1 explicitly stated since its inception in the first post, it is an assumption which serves explicitly as a hypothesis. It's a bit pedantic, but a hypothesis is:"Something taken to be true for the purpose of argument or investigation; an assumption." (1)Let’s just be clear about P1 here, and to repost it as it was written:P1 - If there were an all-powerful and all-good God, then there would not be any evil in the world unless that evil is logically necessary for an adequately compensating good.Is P1 a hypothesis, given the definition above, or an assumption which rules out the existence of gratuitous evils, as Con implies? The word “if” is a dead giveaway here. The advocate of the PoE assumes God for the sake of argument, then derives what one would expect to find (or in this case, not find) in the world, if He exists. This is the way all hypotheses work, and IF these hypotheses are consistent with what one would expect to find, then it is possible that the hypotheses themselves have explanatory power. The PoE concludes that given the existence of gratuitous evils, God cannot explain this, so does not exist as defined. So while Con may hold that God is an unshakable assumption, the PoE (with the explicitly conditional “if” in P1) holds this assumption tentatively - as a hypothesis. As such, when the evidence that evils really are gratuitous outweigh the reasons for thinking a God of the relevant kind exist, then it this which we affirm. I have give apt justification of P3 in R1, and Con has yet to respond to any of these points, so we can conclude that until Con shows otherwise, the evidence for P3 is far stronger than its negation. The argument stands.Secondly, notice here that Con explicitly changes P1 in order to make his argument here. Instead of copying P1, he replaces the word “if” with “assume that”, changing it subtly enough for his point to be applicable to the new argument. Thus, not only is he wrong, but he is essentially straw-manning the syllogism initially presented, by changing the content of the premise in order to defeat it. A final point to make here is that Con essentially begs the question by blankly asserting that all evils are justified because God exists. One has to be willing to evaluate evil, and whether it is gratuitous or not on the basis of the what it appears like to us. Assuming from the start that these evils must be accounted for in some way is to refuse to engage with the problem at all. It is a non-answer.You need good to have evilFor this argument, Con acknowledges that he explicitly denied the existence of God in his last post, while trying to show that the PoE was not a problem. He tries to rectify this by changing the argument. Now, there were lots of problems to this argument in the first place, but given the self-refuting nature of it, I felt the need to only tear it down once. Now Con gives us a slightly different argument to contend with:1) If God exists then good exists2) Evil exists (pros argument)3) Evil can only exist if good exists 4) Good exists 5) Therefore God exists The first and most obvious point to make is the contrived nature of this response. Con initially asserted that “Good does not exist”, to show that evils do not exist. Now he says that both exist! Not only that but the point Con was making before was this:"It has not been established what good is, therefore you can't have something in contradiction or opposition to it, thus you can't have "evil"."Now he affirms both good and evil, so the whole denial of evil is now rejected by Con himself, and most of what he has written against the PoE is dismissed at a stroke by his own pen (or keyboard)!The point that Con is making now is to say that we need a contrast between good and evil, and that by having good, evil is necessary in the world. Notice that the PoE presented does not affirm that evils themselves pose a problem for God, but as Con earlier noted, it is“based on the existence of gratuitous evils”His argument does not address gratuitous evils (P3), affirms that evils exist (P2) and actually serve as an example to reinforce P1. Given this, the argument reformulated is again at best irrelevant to the debate.Evil is a problem for who?Lastly, Con asserts that I have to explain the existence of good, given that evils exist. Firstly, this is only true if I share Con’s assumption that good and evil are necessary contrasts of each other. I don’t. I could perfectly conceive a world which has solely either good (heaven) or evil (hell), or a being that is omnibenevolent (which again shows Con’s latest objection to the PoE as being antithetical to the existence of God). Secondly, my moral marginality argument applies here. Even if I couldn’t show that goods or evils exist, all I have to demonstrate is things that an all good, all powerful God would want to eliminate if He existed do in fact occur (gratuitous suffering), therefore the PoE still stands. Thirdly, it seems to me fairly easy to find examples of situations where there are goods even if one measures them differently (in terms of maximising utility, virtue, or acting as a perfectly just being would), because of the agreement across all these positions of the right thing to do. Such a case may just be the prevention of suffering and dying babies, as P3 states.Preventing suffering babies from harm would seem to be a good on a wide variety of moral epistemic positions that we are perhaps left to wonder whether this would be classed as a good, even if the parties involved all disagree on the reason for classifying it as such.Conclusion and SummaryI think it is important to note that after 5 different responses, and very little interaction with the justification for each of the premises of my argument, Con has yet to seriously challenge the PoE. His position on moral realism has changed, his Is-ought argument has been shelved, and his last gasp is to attempt semantic games and attempts to shift the burden of proof desperately fail. Now that he himself affirms P2 after previously denying it, the only contentious issue is whether gratuitous evils exist. Given the complete neglect of my justification for affirming this, Con has one round left to argue that P3 is false or unsupported, and I invite him to make his case.Sources(1) http://www.thefreedictionary.com...