The Free Will Defense - Isn't it Unusable?

[CapnAwesome]

Excellent.

Also note here, that we essentially are discussing what is termed "the problem of evil."

I think the first thing I would do if I were talking with an atheist about the objections they have regarding evil and the apparent contradiction of its existence and God's existence is what their view of evil is.

I would simply ask:

What, as an atheist, do you mean when you say evil? What is it? How did we get this idea of "evil"?

I would dialogue with them about that and try to come to some type of consensus about what they think it is. After all, they have to have something in mind if they raise the objection in the first place.

Many times, objections to Christianity are simply based on misunderstandings of some of its doctrines which can simply be explained and the confusion cleared up.

Basically you would change the topic to try to put Atheists on the defensive. I've seen about a thousand of those discussions going in a circle on the internet and no matter how much the Atheist parties explain the discussion never seems to go back to the problem of evil and always gets sidetracked to Moral Relativism vs Moral Absolutism. It's the same every time. Besides it shouldn't really matter what Atheists think as evil, since the whole problem of evil revolves around what Theists think anyway.

For example, I as an Atheist aren't concerned as to why evil exists. It doesn't contradict with my beliefs at all, you'd expect some humans to act evil because the things we'd classify as evil (unwanted violence mostly) exist in every species.

The problem of evil is addressing the Theistic position. Where an Atheist believes morality or evil comes from is not relevant to the discussion. Once again it is not a discussion about the Atheist's beliefs.

The second big big objection I have to your post is about the objections to Christianity mostly being a misunderstanding of their doctrines. Christianity is not a single religion with a single doctrine. In fact it's thousands of different sects and cults and religions with an equal number of doctrines. It's impossible to know the doctrines of them all so I'm not sure about your own particular branch or brand of Christianity. Maybe I have serious objections and maybe I have minor ones, but you can't say that it's just a misunderstanding of Christianity because Christian thought is so diverse.