The Problem of Evil (XXVII)

[SteveII]

@wiploc

I am finding this conversation helpful to me in two ways. 1) it makes me think/research very carefully so that I uncover things I missed the first time I read about them and 2) by practicing, I will hopefully better articulate this and other things in the future. I freely admit that had I to explain all this again, I would have done it differently. 

You are getting hung up on the phrase "possible world". You are taking the phrase literally (understandably) but is has a meaning in philosophy and logic that is important to understand in order to use the concept properly. This was helpful to me in understanding the "possible worlds" concept:

• True propositions are those that are true in the actual world (for example: "Richard Nixon became president in 1969").
  
• False propositions are those that are false in the actual world (for example: "Ronald Reagan became president in 1969"). (Reagan did not run for president until 1976, and thus couldn't possibly have been elected.)
  
• Possible propositions are those that are true in at least one possible world (for example: "Hubert Humphrey became president in 1969"). (Humphrey did run for president in 1968, and thus could have been elected.) This includes propositions which are necessarily true, in the sense below.
  
• Impossible propositions (or necessarily false propositions) are those that are true in no possible world (for example: "Melissa and Toby are taller than each other at the same time").
  
• Necessarily true propositions (often simply called necessary propositions) are those that are true in all possible worlds (for example: "2 + 2 = 4"; "all bachelors are unmarried").[1]
  
• Contingent propositions are those that are true in some possible worlds and false in others (for example: "Richard Nixon became president in 1969" is contingently true and "Hubert Humphrey became president in 1969" is contingently false). all from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possible_world
  

I agreed that in some possible world, given the tri-omni properties, God could "pre-plan" it so that there would be no evil. The reason I agree that is true is because the PoE argument is logically valid (not contradictory)--not because I think there is a world out there where God did such a thing "on paper". There is nothing wrong with the argument: it is broadly logically possible, that such a proposition could be true. 

I am claiming that #2 is a contingent proposition (see above) whereas you are claiming that it is necessarily true proposition. To support your conclusion that God does not exist, you need #2 to be a necessarily true proposition. I think it is a contingent proposition because of free will. It seems highly probable that God cannot actualize a world where every one of the trillions of decisions are freely made good (instead of evil) in spite of any attempt to "pre-plan" it.

The defeater is aimed at the omnipotence because omnipotence does not mean "can do anything" rather it means "can do anything logically possible" and not in the broad sense but in the narrow sense because we are talking about actually doing something for real.