The Problem of Evil does not Disprove a Benevolent God

Sub-Argument 1Premise 1Pro begins by pointing out that we might not recognize when we are helped. However this is covered in in my passage about omnipotence: no need for means to reach ends entails no need for actual processes of protecting to reach some state of safety.He continues to talk about the importance of recognizing how good you have it, but I fail to see how this is defeating my position, because it implies a very narrow view on human well-being.Consider today's transhumanists. People like David Pearce who advocate the abolition of suffering and breaking of our evolutionary chains (1). To them it is merely a technicality before we achieve long lasting "super happiness".Next, he argues "it must be possible to not experience God's love in order to recognize it and to appreciate it as good". However to say God could not make his presence ever-appreciable is to question his omnipotence, the coherence of which was assumed for this debate.Sadly, the follow-up is a strawman. I never said anything about "unthinking beings". This confusion might originate from my use of the term 'soul' and I think my opponent has a unfortunate interpretation of it. I use 'soul' in the Cartesian sense of "that what thinks" or more broadly "that what has experiences".Pro's poker analogy falls prey to my argument from omnipotence as well.He then brings up the definition of 'suffering' being molded to natural possibilities, but I now I would quite simply question why we should have a definition or rather a concept of suffering at all? It seems to me like my point about the possible world where the soul-making theodicy works was left unaddressed.My opponent misunderstands the point I was making about carnivores. The fact that the suffering they cause would be unacceptable for God is peripheral, my main contention, perception of suffering aside, is that a loving God would not create creatures who need to feast on the rest of his creation in the first place. As such my point stands.Pro argues we don't compare our situation to fictions, for we cannot perceive then as natural possibilities.First of all I contest the idea that we do not make such comparisons, a moment of shudder or joy has probably been experienced by most people who have at some point thought about how life would be if they lived in a fictional world. Secondly it is not at all clear what perception of natural possibilities have to do with this.Lastly, he draws an analogy to demonstrate how ridding the world off the evil would also rid it off the good. I think this analogy is misguided, since suffering and well-being can be (at least for humans) described in terms of brain activity and neurotransmitters. A lack of (or rather inability to produce) pain inducing ones does not by any means necessitate a lack of well-being instantiating ones.Premise 2Pro further clarifies the term Moral Fulcrum and visualizes this by comparing it to a "Good/Badness scale" from one to ten. But my position is not really concerned with morality at all. To me suffering is quite simply a sentient being's mental state of unhappiness, unwell-being or pain. A definition that is quite applicable to beings in most conceivable worlds. Perhaps we should ha been clearer on what we mean by 'suffering' in the beginning.Although my opponent's reassessed argument's validity is still questionable, it's clarity is vastly improved.I still don't think it's convincing. Since the rest of the argument is contested elsewhere in this rebuttal, I will only focus on one point that was not as obvious before:It equivocates 'a being'.It may seem as if this refers to a being like us, living in our world. His defences of P1 and P3 are based upon human-like perception of the world, giving it some intuitive appeal. However since it is expressed as a generalization and for his argument to work this covers very unfamiliar beings as well. Such as the souls I was talking about earlier.Premise 3Here Pro essentially implies Leibniz's best of all possible worlds-theodicy(2): "God would have created this world with unlimited perception, and can make comparison to that which we cannot"But it is hard to see how this is sufficient justification. To put it in Russell's words:"Do you think that if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the KKK or the Fascists?"(3)Sub-Argument 2Premise 6Here my opponent argues that evil exists only in man's limited perception, but not God's. However this raises the question as to why such a God would let all of his creation in the dark, without any apparent reason to allow for the gratuitous suffering of this world. After all, this would constitute a huge relief of suffering.C3/C4See Premise 1.ConclusionThanks again for Chaosism for this great debate. It was one of the most fun ones I had so far, since I implicitly had to argue from two perspectives at ones: first, a theist who defends his God against several charges of subjective evaluation and second, an atheist who defends the PoE.This gave the debate a unique flavor and I wish Chaosism all the good for the voting period.Sources(1) https://en.wikipedia.org...(2) http://plato.stanford.edu...(3) Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not A Christian, 1927