It seems that the problem of evil is the most powerful argument against the theist argument. To provide context to the dialectic, the problem of evil argument at its simplest looks something like this:

1.If God exists, he would remove evil from the world
2.Evil has not been removed from the world
3.Therefore, God cannot exist [1,2]

The support for the first premise is the assumption that God is a perfect being by definition. God has the ability to remove evil, and the attribute of benevolence attached to his nature seems to compel God to remove evil. Otherwise, he is complacent in allowing his creations to suffer and responsible for creating a world in which suffering is inevitable.

Assuming that we grant the theist position that God does exist, how can we reconcile the fact that evil exists in the same reality as a perfect God?

It seems that the only hope of combatting this objection is for the theists to justify evil's existence. Evil exists because a world without evil would somehow be worse than the world we currently inhabit. Evil exists because it’s necessary for soul building, saint creating, or the possibility of free will.

However, my objection is this:
1.If God exists, he would have created the best possible world.
2.There are cases where evil does not lead to the fruition of some greater good (ex: holocaust, starving children, etc.)
3.God could have created a world without these types evil
4.Therefore, God did not create the best possible world [2,3]
5. Therefore, God does not exist. [1,4]

My objection rests heavily on the inconsistency of there existing a perfect being in the same reality as an imperfect world. Can anyone provide an argument that provides justification for the existence of evil while taking into account the unnecessary evils, or gratuitous evils, that we seem to observe throughout our life experiences?