Post 1 : A response to Tryhard’s post regarding his/her/their argument against the objections of the problem of evil. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12666/the-problem-of-evil

Hi, tryhard,

First of all, your arrangement of the PoE seems a little problematic. I realized that you have explained your rationale for your premise 1 “If God exists, he would remove evil from the world” in the second paragraph, maybe you can list a sub-argument to clarify it. I suggest you change it into a more propositional logical form, such as “ If God exists, there is no evil.”

As for your own argument, I find the second premise to be objectionable.

“There are cases where evil does not lead to the fruition of some greater good”

I guess you mean “ there is gratuitous evil.” But a skeptical theist could say that it is impossible for we as humans to know whether something is gratuitous evil, because we aren’t omniscient, and we will always miss some information when making a moral claim. When we think something is gratuitous evil, it could just be the case that we haven’t recognized the positive part of it. For example, you might think that the fact that there are starving children is gratuitous evil. But it might be the case that the starvation of these children is a necessary process for them to gain a better future, and God will make up for their suffering in heaven.

I am not saying that I recognize the holocaust or children's starvation to be good things by any means. I intuitively think these things are really really bad as you do, and it is also hard for me to come up with a proper explanation to justify those tragic events. However, I also realize that ethical problems can be really obscure, and we humans have constantly made wrong moral judgments in our history. And it is possible that we are simply incapable to be certain about whether something is absolutely a gratuitous evil. Therefore, your premise 2 is, maybe not totally proven wrong, but at least significantly weakened by the skeptic theists' argument. Please reply if you found a solution for this skeptic theists' argument.