I'm not sure if it is the sort of view you're looking for, but Plato considered 'God' to be closely linked to the Good and the beautiful. In that sense, the Platonic "god" is omnibenevolent (though the Platonic concept of God or 'the One' is a bit complicated). He also considered the Good to be closely related to reality itself, thus glimpsing the Good was synonymous to glimpsing reality.

Evil did not exist in Plato's philosophy. Plato (or perhaps Socrates in Plato's accounts of him, I don't remember) claimed that all men desire the Good, however most live in ignorance of what is Good. Pursing things that weren't related to the Good was mostly done at one's own peril, because it equals living in ignorance of reality and therefore one would miss out on the experience that is true beauty. This is perhaps what many would call 'evil', though it provides a different angle on the matter.

I think in many views of evil, one is evil because of the harm one does to another. Plato turns it around and says the real harm is being done to oneself. What we perceive as evil is merely an absence of the Good.

This is once again just the free will theodicy and like all instances of it depends entirely upon an incompatibilist conception of free will. On a compatibilist conception of free will, like mine, there is no reason that God (if he existed) couldn't have created humans to be always perfectly moral, and also have free will. In fact on accounts like mine, freedom of will is equivalent to the efficacy of moral reasoning on behavior -- your will is what you judge to be the best thing for you to do, and that will is free when it, not something else, controls what you do -- so giving humans freer will would have made them more moral, not introduced evil into the world.

Yeah, the fist counter argument is wrong.

He let pain happen because of several reasons of which I will name 3

That his glory may be shown to us (the Christian) and to those who have rejected him

We would have no need for a God if everything was going well always

Because he had to punish us because we all fall short, one day he will restore those who believe in them to there full glory.

You have hit the nail on it's head.

God has given us free will and a mouthwatering incentive to be good - eternal joy in heaven - and an extremely disagreeable deterrent to be evil - eternal pain in hell.

Surely to exercise true free will we must choose to be evil, throwing all constraints to one's thoughts and actions into the garbage heap. Freedom is real only when we disregard the rules that actually limit your choices.

One could say that to be good is harder and evil comes naturally, quite literally. However within the context of the problem of evil, to do good is to not be free. After all God's limiting our options quite severely I must say. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to choose between heaven and hell. Evil is the true expression of real free will.

Seneca Advocate — Seneca Advocate

I have no problem in seeing the greater good that encloses the small human to human evils that we do to each other. I hope this old O.P. explains this concept well enough to create a discussion.

We naturally default to doing good, to the point that evolutionists are hard pressed to explain why we are so good to each other.

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Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
And if you cannot, why would God punish you?

Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by putting forward their free will argument and placing all the blame on mankind.
That usually sounds like ----God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy. Such statements simply avoid God's culpability as the author and creator of human nature.

Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.

If all do evil/sin by nature then, the evil/sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not do evil/sin. Can we then help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?

Having said the above for the God that I do not believe in, I am a Gnostic Christian naturalist, let me tell you that evil and sin is all human generated and in this sense, I agree with Christians, but for completely different reasons. Evil is mankind’s responsibility and not some imaginary God’s. Free will is something that can only be taken. Free will cannot be given not even by a God unless it has been forcibly withheld.

Much has been written to explain evil and sin but I see as a natural part of evolution.

Consider.
First, let us eliminate what some see as evil. Natural disasters. These are unthinking occurrences and are neither good nor evil. There is no intent to do evil even as victims are created. Without intent to do evil, no act should be called evil.
In secular courts, this is called mens rea. Latin for an evil mind or intent and without it, the court will not find someone guilty even if they know that they are the perpetrator of the act.

Evil then is only human to human when they know they are doing evil and intend harm.

As evolving creatures, all we ever do, and ever can do, is compete or cooperate.
Cooperation we would see as good as there are no victims created. Competition would be seen as evil as it creates a victim. We all are either cooperating, doing good, or competing, doing evil, at all times.

Without us doing some of both, we would likely go extinct.

This, to me, explains why there is evil in the world quite well.

Be you a believer in nature, evolution or God, you should see that what Christians see as something to blame, evil, we should see that what we have, competition, deserves a huge thanks for being available to us. Wherever it came from, God or nature, without evolution we would go extinct. We must do good and evil.

There is no conflict between nature and God on this issue. This is how things are and should be. We all must do what some will think is evil as we compete and create losers to this competition.

This link speak to theistic evolution.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/pope-would-you-accept-evolution-and-big-bang-180953166/?no-ist

If theistic evolution is true, then the myth of Eden should be read as a myth and there is not really any original sin.

Doing evil then is actually forced on us by evolution and the need to survive. Our default position is to cooperate or to do good. I offer this clip as proof of this. You will note that we default to good as it is better for survival.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBW5vdhr_PA

Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
And if you cannot, why would God punish you?

Regards
DL

Although I agree with the conclusion of your argument (“if an omnibenevolent God exists, then evil is a necessary side effect”), I disagree with your second premise.

First of all, I don’t think your conditional follows. The existence of a standard of morals is not the reason that God must allow free will in order for good to exist.

Second, I disagree with your statement that “there must be free will in order for good to exist.” Can’t good exist independently of human’s free will in the matter? For example, God is good – independent of our free will in relation to him. His goodness exists before our free will, not as a result of our free will. So the existence of good is not dependent on the existence of free will. Here is this argument broken down into a modus tollens form:

1. If free will is necessary for good to exist, then all good things must be products of free will.
2. There is good that is not a product of free will (see example above).
3. Therefore, free will is not necessary in order for good to exist. (1, 2 MT)

As an improvement to your argument, I’d like to offer the following instead:

1. If an omnibenevolent, all-loving God exists, then he must grant humans free will (to freely choose to follow him instead of forcing them to do so).
2. An omnibenevolent, all-loving God exists.
3. Therefore, he must grant humans free will. (1,2 MP)
4. If humans have free will, there must be an alternative to choose from instead of following God.
5. Therefore, there must be an alternative to choose from instead of following God. (3, 4 MP)
6. If God is omnibenevolent, all-loving, and all-good, alternatives to following God must be worse than following God.
7. Therefore, alternatives to following God must be worse than following God. (2, 6 MP)
8. If alternatives to following God must be worse than following God, then evil is necessary to produce those alternatives.
9. Therefore, evil is a necessary side effect of free will. (7, 8 MP)

I hope this argument still resolves your dilemma about the problem of evil and free will. And to answer your final question – yes, I do believe that God’s gift of free will along with other necessary things, like the grace and salvation from Jesus’ death, means that God is an all-loving, omnibenevolent creature despite his allowance of evil in the world.

Therefore, God is not omnibenevolent, which means God is not all loving. — Seneca Advocate

if you love your kid does that mean you always have to give him nothing but pleasure? does it mean you can never allow anything unpleasureful to happen to him? because if you do he might blame you for not loving him. haha

this life is but a university for the soul.