Are Theists Illogical for Believing in God?

[fr0d0]

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

I've always found that illogical. It presupposes an alternate reality where God would be different to the logical God we define that fit's this reality.

God chooses to defeat evil and does. Gods plan is obviously not to prevent evil, or there'd be none. God by his nature defeats evil. Being a positive force he could do no other.

A classic philosophical answer is Leibniz' (lampooned in Voltaire's famous novel, "Candide")
The answer is that this is the best of all possible worlds. What that means is that it would be possible for a world to exists with less evil, or even no evil in it. But such a world would not be as good as the actual world that exists. Why is that? Because all evils are necessary evils. Which is to say, that unless that evil existed, a compensating good would not exist.
An example: consider the good of compassion or the good of pity. It would be impossible for there to be compassion or for there to be pity unless there was the need for compassion or the need for pity. Thus, for compassion or pity to exist, there has to be pain.

So the idea is this:
1. Every evil is necessary for some good,
2. And the good more than compensates for the evil which is necessary for it.

Origen, an early Christian scholar and theologian, suggested that the problem of evil was a misnomer. Origen's response to this was the concept of Apocatastasis. Simply stated, the ends justify the means. That is, all of creation is reconciled by its purpose of facilitating freewill.

The fifth century theologian Augustine of Hippo mounted what has become one of the most popular defences of the existence of God against the Epicurean paradox. He maintained that evil was only privatio boni, or a privation of good. If evil, like darkness, does not truly exist, but is only a name we give to our perception of privatio boni, then our widespread observation of evil does not preclude the possibility of a benevolent, omniscient, and omnipresent God.

--Augustine basically states that good and evil are, in some circumstances, asymmetrical.