The Problem of Evil does not Disprove a Benevolent God

Since I got really hooked on this debate, I felt like changing my profile picture back to something appropriate. J.L. Mackie, the father of the modern problem of evil.Sub-Argument 1Premise 1:My opponent starts out by drawing an analogy between parents having their child "harmed" with a needle for a greater good (like vaccination) and God letting humans suffer for a greater good. He hints towards a soul-making theodicy (1).God is not restricted to such profane means, we are talking about an omnipotent being after all and if being omnipotent means anything at all, it means to have the power over causality (2). There is no need for him to harm mankind with a needle before it can be vaccinated.Afterwards my opponent argues that 'loving' and 'protective' are suspect to subjective human judgements. He demands a demonstration to the contrary, which I will of course provide.It is not the case that humans can judge God to be loving or not, for God is love. It is God's nature to be loving. Everyone who came to know God would identify love with him.Therefore, every tiny interaction between God and us would make us feel his strong affection.Next, he argues that it is impossible for us humans, confined to our perception of reality, to properly imagine an "expansion of our perception", as he calls it. To visualize this he draws an analogy to our inability to imagine the pentachronic vision of butterflies.The problem with this analogy is that we do not actually have to try imagining such an expansion, since a suffering-free world is, if anything, a world where we would have less things to perceive, not more. I for once find it quite easy to imagine a world without any suffering.His intention might again be to say God has some reason to allow for suffering we are simply not able to understand.However, as I said earlier, God is omnipotent and therefore not restricted to causality at all.Afterwards he draws an analogy to a gift store.And I can happily accept this as compatible with God's love, without it undermining the problem of evil.Even if God has the need to make his creation endure life in a mortal coil where occasionally they get frustrated by, say, gift-shopping, it does not explain a vast array of other kinds of evil:God created carnivores and he made humans in a way such that eventually they found dead animals rather tasty.The suffering non-human animals outweighs that of humans by far. Certainly I don't have to remind the reader that 99% of all species that ever roamed the earth are now extinct (3).What kind of loving God creates beings who need to kill others and feed on the flesh of their corpses?None I say.Even if there is a very good reason for why humans have to receive lame gifts which cause them mental distress, there is absolutely no reason to create murderous animals in the first place.Lastly he argues that improvements, like less starving children, would not be perceivable in the respective world, because of the inability to compare it to the original world.But I fail to see why this should be the case. We humans have always come with stories and nowadays movies bursting of hornets, like The Human Centipede (4) or the Alien franchise (5).Now imagine living in a world abundant of mad scientists transforming innocent people into centipedes. You might ask yourself whether this cruelty is really necessary and another one might respond like Pro did, stating that you could not compare such an "improved world" to the original, since you would not be able to perceive of the evil you were spared. I doubt you would be anything close to convinced.I am at least able to have a rudimentary idea of what living in such a world would be like, just as I have an idea of what living in a world with 500 less children starving everyday would be like.Therefore I reject my opponents defence.Premise 2:I thank Pro for clarifying his terminology. However now I am left wondering what his justification for this premise is. In round 2 he merely explained the Moral Fulcrum, he did not justify the existence of such neutral subject. I am not sure what would classify as such. An enlightened Buddhist perhaps? Moreover it makes me further question the logical structure of his syllogism:P1 : Evil is subject to personal judgment and is a comparative concept.-> Ax (Ex > (Px & Cx))For all x, if x is Evil, then x is subject to personal judgment and x is a comparative concept.P2 : There exists a possibility of least Non-Evil by which Evil is judged.Ey Ax (Ex & Nyx & Jy)There exists a y and for all x, x is Evil & y is in a neutral state of x & y is the basis of judgement.P3 : The definition of Evil is based upon real, perceivable possibilities.Ax (Ex > Rx)For all x, if x is Evil, then x is judged based upon real, perceivable possibilities.C1 : One's perception of Evil is dependent upon one's perception of possible reality.Ax (Ex > Rx & Px)For all x, x is Evil implies that x is judged based upon real, perceivable possibilities and x is subject to personal judgment.C2 : If possibilities exist, then Evil necessarily exists.Ez ((Rz & Pz) > Ew (Ew))There exists a z such that if z is judged based upon real, perceivable possibilities and z is subject to personal judgment, then there exists a w such that w is evil.It is inexplicable how my opponent arrives logically at this conclusion. You can't get a "there exists" from a "for all" like Pro attempts here with Ax (Px & Rx) and Ex (Px & Rx).Premise 3:Here Pro insists that judging someone to be suffering is subjective. Perhaps that is true but it's also irrelevant, since it's only God's judgement that counts. Of course God would recognize the gratuitous agony of ebola victims, no human judgement required. Human observers are of course subject to bias and lack of information, but that does in no way change that fact that suffering is a objective state of affairsI don't see a reason to limit the definition to exclude possible harm to the soul. If harming the souls results in some form of pain, then I fail to see why we should not label that suffering, too.It is quite true that if there was no pain then we would not have a concept of it, but it's not at all clear how this is supposed to undermine the PoE. In a world without pain, yes, we would not be able to formulate the PoE, but after all we currently live in a world full of suffering.The concerns my opponent raises about perception are addressed under premise 1.Sub-Argument 2Premise 6Pro accept the rephrased premise and states "I agree with Con's rewording, this premise stands". But my concerns about the support this premise gives to his position were unaddressed.He refers to his diagram from the previous round and states that "the Creator can create a world that lacks evil (suffering) according *His* judgment and omniscience".God is omniscient, therefore he is not subject to misinformation about the objective states of affairs describing the suffering of human and non-human animals. Since he is loving and omnipotent there is no reason for why he should not intervene. At least until Pro presents one.Conclusions C3/C4Although I don't think Pro demonstrated the incoherence of a suffering free world, the PoE does not actually depend on the entire absence of suffering. I think it is quite possible for God create a heaven on earth with literally no suffering. My opponent contests this, but every time he does so he is viewing it from a very anthropocentric perspective. He never considers the possibility of us being created as immaterial souls in heaven, forever happy and pure.Moreover I lined out under premise 1 how (if the scenario above should in fact prove to be impossible) the existence of some suffering is entirely compatible with the existence of God. In a world where the only evil we experience is that of, say, lame presents, a soul-making theodicy would work perfectly fine, but evidentially we do not live in such a world.Sourcescomments