The Problem of Evil (XXVII)

[SteveII]

In response to both the free will and the knowledge of God defense, you say that if God thinks these things are more valuable than preventing suffering he is not omnibenevolent.

I deny and repudiate that line of argument.  

The PoE (problem of evil) is bulletproof regardless of how you define evil.  

Let us stipulate, temporarily and for the sake of argument, that "good" means three things:  
- First and most importantly, it means knowing god.  
- Second, and second in importance, it means having free will.  
- Third, and last in importance, it means being happy.  

Posit a benevolent god of limited power:  If he had to choose between these three, he would give up happiness and free will to get knowledge of god.  If he had to choose between free will and happiness, he would prefer free will.  

This god may be omnibenevolent, but he is not omnipotent.  An omnipotent god would not have to choose between these.  An omnipotent god can do anything that does not contradict logic.  

Having happiness and free will and knowledge does not contradict logic.  So an omnipotent god could do it.  

Even an omnipotent god couldn't have pure happiness, but also unhappiness.  It couldn't have complete knowledge of god but also ignorance of god.  It could not have everybody having free will but some people not having free will.  Those would be contradictions.  Not even an omnipotent god could achieve contradictions.  

But there is no contradiction between happiness, knowledge, and free will.  An omnipotent god could effect that effortlessly.  No problem.  

The PoE is bulletproof regardless of how you define good.  If there was a god who wanted us to be happy, and who wanted us to know him, and who wanted us to have free will, then (if this god was also omniscient and omnibenevolent) we would have all three of those things.  

If we do not have all three of those things, then such a god does not exist.  

Moral perfection in a universe of physical laws and free will does not entail preventing suffering if 1) there are greater goods to acheive or 2) someone makes a choice that results in suffering.

"A universe of physical laws"?  Are you saying that your god can't throw magic?  If you posit a less-than-omnipotent god, then of course it can coexist with evil, just as a less-than-omniscient or less-than-omnibenevolent god could. 

The PoE has nothing to say about such inferior gods.

You are resting your case on the fact that God could orchestrate a scenario that achieves all three of your points above with omnipotence. You are not providing arguments that it is illogical, you are arguing that it is improbable. It all comes down to your position that omnibenevolence = obligation to use all means to avoid anything that isn't good. That would mean preventing any and all suffering. It does not seem to me that we could have a world where we have free will and not have suffering because every wrong choice we made that resulted in suffering (however small) would be met with a supernatural intervention. Such a state of affairs would result in a singular lack of morally sufficient freedom --effectively eliminating free will. So it would seem that a world in which everyone had free will but no possibility of suffering would not be able to be actualized.