The Problem of Evil, Christians, and Inconsistency

[Mudhammam]

I'm sure everyone here is familiar with the standard problem of evil argument and the typical conception of the Christian God as the omnipotent and omnibenevolent Absolute of all things...well almost all things, as his will is apparently unable to oversee the abolition of grotesque evil in the world. Christians regularly tout free will as the impediment to his omnipotence; they like to say, "Well, this is the best of all possible worlds because a world without any grotesque evil would also be a world with severely limited wills" (as if our wills aren't already severely limited by physical determinants). Anyway, putting aside the issue of free will and accepting the intelligibility of the concept as Christians would have us do (for the sake of my argument, not because I think it's intelligible), I would like to press this issue more to the point as I think it will demonstrate the vicious and utter vacuousness rampant in their philosophical outlook.

It appears obvious that here we see a problem with the "best-of-all-possible-worlds" scenario arise. If this is truly the best possible world God could create, then what's all the fuss about heaven? If heaven is an even better domain to live in than earth (and I would sure like to think so), then Christians would seem obliged to revoke any notion of their sacred free will in heaven.

"But, ah!" the Christian is likely to retort, "in heaven, we choose to be good all the time! Our freedom is not impugned because we have made our choice on earth, since that is the purpose of our free will here, that it allows us to choose God, and that makes heaven an even better possible domain to dwell in! Therefore, no one in heaven will want to do evil!"

So, we're free in heaven, and it's even better than earth. If that seems consistent to you, just wait, because it gets worse. You see, from what I have gathered, Christians like to think that the aforementioned retort negates any objection that God could have just foregone this creation altogether and transported his children to this even better existence called heaven. Apparently, that we "choose" God is very important.

And this brings us to the rampant vacuousness and inconsistency in their logic. Anyone with a cursory interest in history will easily observe that for the past 100-200 thousand years, the vast majority of humans who have been conceived (which is apparently when the soul gets miraculously created) have either died in the womb, at birth, or before the age of moral accountability, which for our purposes, we'll say is no less than ten years of age. So, granted the position Christians commonly take, there are BILLIONS of people in heaven (kids do go to heaven, right?), perhaps far more than are in hell, and none because of their "free will."

If this isn't inconsistency, I don't know what is.