Are all atheists this ill-informed about religion?

[Mudhammam]

This article http://www.str.org/articles/augustine-on...jZv9zZdESk describes a number of objections, to the question if a good all knowing God, could allow evil.  It discusses that evil is not a thing, but a lack of good.  Similar to darkness being a lack of light.  It also discusses a number of virtues, which would not be present, if evil was not possible.  Similarly it encompasses a larger view of the overall picture where allowing evil or suffering may be a greater good, even if in the specific we cannot see it or understand it.  That the struggle produces a character which cannot be achieved if there was no choice or free will.  That temporary suffering is allowed in regards to a greater eternal good.

Yeah, the Neoplatonist Plotinus advocated evil as the privation of good. Augustine and later Christan philosophers adopted it like so much else from the Platonists. It asserts that evil is non-being, or the lack of existence, as all existence is essentially good as it subsists in deity. Interestingly, it renders God responsible for evil in that a perfectly good being must either create that which is perfectly good, or that which lacks His perfect goodness, and that is, according to the Neoplatonists/Christians, evil. Your appeal to free will fails for the reasons I already submitted, putting aside the fact that free will is a poorly defined concept that has no relevancy here once remodified; there's the further problem that your God, if he is perfect, lacks free will (as a result of his other attributes, namely, omnibenevolence and omniscience), so there's no reason why we should possess it for any greater good - as it's apparently not necessary for the greatest good, God. If we are able to do evil, we are, contrary to what a perfect God would seemingly be able to effect, created imperfect. Your appeal to what may be called the "Mysterious Ways Principle" is shoddy reasoning that relies on the same inferences a young-young-young-YOUNG earthist might use to justify his belief that the world is less than a 100 years old. Namely, he might say things appear older for a reason only God understands. It's a misapplication of inductive argumentation and demonstrates the weakness of your claim in that it calls for a blind leap of faith rather than the simpler explanation which only relies on the data that we currently possess: apparent unnecessary and excessive suffering exists all around us; therefore, a non-apparent omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity does not.