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[deadlycairn]

Evil DOES exist - because of free will.
According to Christian belief/sub-belief, God gave us free will - as Lucos said - because if we didn't, what would our worship mean? He wants his followers to love/worship him, but really, it means nothing if they have no choice. So EVERYONE has free will - and that means some people will make the 'bad' choices. But if there was NO choice althogether, there wouldn't even be a 'good' - after all, everything needs an opposite to exist. Then the Devil comes in - a supernatural, though lesser than God, being, who chose to rebel, and now influences people to make the 'evil' choices.

Anyway, my humble 2c on the matter - evil comes from the very free will that allows good to exist.

[bjlong]

Hoo, boy, I shouldn't have dragged myself into this.

(For notation purposes, God implies Omnipotence, Omniscience, Omnipresence, and Omnibenevolence. God with a lower-case g does not. Good is human pleasure and fulfillment, and Evil is human suffering.)

So you're arguing that Evil, by its evil nature, cannot coexist with God. That a truly benevolent God would have designed the system so that Evil would not ever exist anywhere, and be unthinkable to humankind, even if a good reason existed for its existance.

If this is true, then we have a quandary--if a truly good reason exists for Evil, then removing that Evil would cause a loss of Good that one wouldn't know about. It would be like lobotomizing a child so that it couldn't cause later suffering. This must undoubtably be something Evil, as it removes Good, or causes an unfelt pain which could only be probed at through philosophers and skeptics.

As a note to future posters, there are two types of Evil to talk about--natural and moral Evil. Moral Evil is caused by human actions, and Natural Evil is caused by non-human actions, such as forces of nature.

[Jude]

Its still evil though. Omnipotence, omniscience omnipresence and benevolence (lotsa ences there) imply that the very concept of evil shound't exist, at all,

Wtf are you talking about? No they don't. Your definition of "benevolence" is skewed, and so was Epicurus', and that's why his argument is a crock.

Incidentally, somebody mentioned that atheists "shift the burden of proof to theists." As they should; that's where it belongs.

[Dakk]

Which would inevitably be translated into human ideas, eventualy leading to his argument again. Even if god or God or goD or even gOd exists and is so super complex that his very reasons and ways cannot be grasped by the currently existing human mind, his ends would still be translated into good and evil, which leads back to the first argument.

It doesn't say god doesn't exist, it says that god cannot exist in a logical, comprehensible way. Therefore god is ilogical. The whole doing a lesser evil for a greater good doesn't change anything on the argument. If you kill a baby who is destined to become a dictator taht will kill millions of people, you may have saved millions of people, but you still had to commit evil to cause good.
The problem is omnipotence and benevolence, if there's a good reason for evil to exist, then god cannot be truly and completely benevolent, and if god absolutely has to use evil for a greater good, then he's not truly omnipotent either. If he can but doesn't know how, then he's not omniscient.

The thing with the problem of evil is that you cannot come with a logical answer for it, god will aways somehow lack one of the qualities, or else the idea of god is ilogical. With all we currently know, you cannot fit the omni-all benevolent god in logic and reality as we understand and know it. So yea, unless someone finds out something neither of us know that will somehow enable us to solve this problem, god will remain unfit for reality as we know it.

[Jude]

Which would inevitably be translated into human ideas, eventualy leading to his argument again. Even if god or God or goD or even gOd exists and is so super complex that his very reasons and ways cannot be grasped by the currently existing human mind, his ends would still be translated into good and evil, which leads back to the first argument.

I don't even know what you're saying.

As for the rest of your post, you're not getting what I'm saying. The whole idea rests on your assertion that "God cannot be benevolent if he allows evil to exist", which as I've said before, is not an assumption you can take for granted. That's without even getting into semantic arguments about what "benevolence" and "evil" mean.

[bjlong]

Oh...kay. Looks like you've just stopped listening all together. I'm done here.

[LegoLord]

For notation purposes, God implies Omnipotence, Omniscience, Omnipresence, and Omnibenevolence. God with a lower-case g does not. Good is human pleasure and fulfillment, and Evil is human suffering.

That's not quite true.  God, with an upper-case g, can have several implications, depending on religion.  In the Christian religion, for example, he is merciful and loving; not benevolent.  He punishes those who do wrong to an appropriate degree, while maintaining that we have the right to make choices and rewarding those who behave in a good way.  He loves his creations, but as a good father (one who does not spoil his child) would love a child.  Hence why he is referred to as father.  Benevolence implies otherwise; that he would simply fix all of our problems for us.  I wouldn't call a good father benevolent towards his children, but I would call him caring and fair.

One thing I like to think:  Just look at how much mankind has progressed.  When, as a whole, we encounter a major problem, we come up with our own solutions and carry them out by ourselves.  Do we need a God to hold the hand of the human race?  No - the time for that has long passed.  Imagine the early days of humanity involving God as as the relationship between father and son.  Humanity has, so to speak, graduated, and is now on its own.  That may help you understand the Christian idea of God a little better.  I am of the opinion that a great deal of conflict between theological groups comes from misunderstandings and assumptions, as are most conflicts, so please understand that I don't care if you believe that.

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
If god wants to prevent evil, then he is benevolent, but if he isn't able, even if the only thing stopping him is a limit he would've imposed upon himself for some reason, that, through pure logic, denies that god is omnipotent, for being omnipotent means being able to do anything, in any way, at anytime, with no limitations.

"I am not going to eat this banana," I could say, and promise that I will follow those words.  That does not actually stop me from eating the banana.  I still have every ability to, I just choose not to.  Self-imposed restrictions don't stop anything; they are only promises, and nothing holds a promise intact except to choice to continue following it.  The existence of a self-imposed restriction does not imply inability.

[Dakk]

And nothing of value was lost 

[bjlong]

LegoLord, I was going by the classical definition in the problem--perhaps your version works better. Feel free to carry on the argument.

[Neruz]

Just a small point; if you have an omnipotent being then in theory that being should be able to set things up so that free will exists and evil does not.

[Jude]

Just a small point; if you have an omnipotent being then in theory that being should be able to set things up so that free will exists and evil does not.

Sure. But of course, that doesn't mean that it would be malevolent for allowing evil to exist. (not that you're saying that)

[cerapa]

The evil-free will thing is kinda defeated by the fact that if god is all-knowing and has a plan, then there is no free-will, cause everything will go according to plan.

Not that I believe free will exists anyway. The human brain just takes in inputs and gives out outputs.

[Armok]

This thread is a mess, I think that for once the theists actualy got the better argumentation, or atleast the majority of the atheists are completly mising the point of the OP and/or the medium of debate.
That dosn't say a thing about who is right thou.
I'll now simply coment on the OP, to limit the risk of being dragged into all this:

The argumentation is actually decent, good enough that it is a fair chance considering the premises that it might actually be correct, or at least assumed so for the sake of argument; maybe it really IS impossible to make a world free of evil and still have the free will necessary for good.
However, the reason this is not a plausible agrument that the world we live in would be a world created by such a god: There are still many posible configurations of the world that gives LESS evil, and more good, and much freere choices, and more character building, and more of any quality any entity could posibly want or have for a reason to create an universe. What is more, even a simple finite being like me can think up ones that are one or two magnitudes better, so even if it is fundamentaly imposible to come even close to perfection no matter how omnicient o omnipotent you are, if there was a pupose behind the universe that in any way related to humans it would be clealy and visibly much better optimized towards that purpose with between 4 and 30 orders of magnitude.

[Judas Maccabeus]

A note:  A universe with free will and without evil might simply be impossible, in the same sense that a triangle with four angles is impossible in Euclidian geometry.  The very nature of metaphysics might well make it a contradiction (or, for that matter, make a universe without evil itself impossible).  Only throwing out a possibility to add to the debate.

[eerr]

My opinion: the bible describes god as such an ass, I refuse to worship him.

Evil only exists as a generalization of real world events, like the holocaust, for a specific group of people that doesn't like it (everybody, I hope)

Evil is just there to make understanding faster, and does not represent a true universal constant other than "I really don't like that, and do not want it to happen"

In other words, Evil is relative to each person, something they abhorr.

I assume god doesn't exist, but even if that is true, relative to what I've seen in the bible, I really do want god to stay the fuck away from me, and satan too.
Better predictable evil you can stop(satan) than unpredictable cruelty which is itself, evil, and frequently comes from god- ACCORDING TO HIS OWN BOOK.