The Problem of Evil obtains given the observation of preventable suffering in the world and the premises that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent (understood to mean something like never malevolent, concerned with suffering of sapient creatures without fail, etc.) The Problem isn't specific to any particular faith; just to any concept where each of the premises are held to be true. If the glove fits, then one has to work out how to wear it.
There are two problems with that viewpoint:
1. You misunderstood the point I was making:
Which is that if I am giving you logical explanations for how the God of the Bible can be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent by referencing Biblical theology, then it would be wrong for you to demand that my answer to the issue must abandon Biblical theological and philosophical premises and align to your non-Biblical presumptions about what you think your idea of “God” can and can’t do.
It is important to point out that when I say that it does not mean I am abandoning the premises of omnipotence, omniscience, or omnibenevolence for God as revealed in the Bible.
An example of what you couldn’t do, for instance, is claim we are forced to accept your premise that mankind has no power by their free will to act upon the world in a way that goes against it’s normal or intended physical function. Ie. Presuming a type of materialistic restraint upon mankind which grants man no ability to operate in the universe outside of what his physical body can bump against.
That is a viewpoint that is not consistent with the Bible, or many other religions for that matter, but is a philosophical premise coming out of the philosophy of materialism.
Such a materialistic philosophical presumption is not logically required as part of the “problem of evil” formulation which only puts three stipulations on the character of God and says nothing about what man’s design and capabilities are. To put limits on what you think God can create man to be capable of doing would itself be violating your premise that God is omnipotent.
There are many other instances where you must be careful not to impose your unnecessary philosophical presumptions onto what is otherwise a logically valid answer to the “problem of evil”.
2. This is not really related to the original point I was making, but I think it is worth acknowledging since it was brought up:
I believe it is actually wrong to claim that the “problem of evil” is not by it’s nature an attempt to refute the Biblical idea of God. Because, practically speaking, only the Abrahamic religions (which have their roots in Judaism) as major religions even postulate the idea of such an omni being existing. You would be hard pressed to find any other religious traditions around the world that believe in an omni being meeting the attributes in the PoE, and it would only represent a small population of the overall religious belief if you did.
The PoE, as it’s formulated, therefore has virtually no relevance as an argument outside of the Biblical tradition as that is virtually the only place where you find a being of such attributes said to be real.
We don’t see the PoE come into existence until the 4th century AD where it is attributed to epicurus who lived in the 3rd-4th century BC – but this seems to be a spurious claim considering that epicurus’ doesn’t appear to have considered such a being with these attributes to even be a possibility that needed to be refuted. He lived in the ancient Greek worldview where the prevailing idea was multiple gods all of whom were not omni good, knowing, or powerful.
The PoE argument would have actually refuted epicurus’ own belief about the gods because as I understand it he believed the gods were perfect but so perfect that they were detached from our life and had no interact with it. I don’t know that he claimed they had any omni knowledge or power, but at the very least he claimed they were omni good but then claimed they were detached from the affairs of man. Which would go against the idea that an all good being would be required to interfere in the affairs of man to put a stop to evil if they were actually all good.
So there would be no need for him to formulate an argument against the idea of an omni god because I don't see any indication that was something the Greek people considered to be something real or even potentially real.
Likely the only way he would even be exposed to that idea as a possibility would be by being in contact with ideas coming out of the relatively nearby Judea. But if that’s the case then it just brings things full circle and makes him proposing the PoE still an argument that necessarily comes out of a Bible worldview.
It seems far more likely to me that the PoE was a post Christian roman invention drawn out of a Biblical worldview which was then attributed to epicurus in order to lend an air of credibility to it.
There is nothing about free will that necessitates the existence of physical suffering, though: you would be free whether or not you're able to stub your toe; but you would not be free if you're unable to insult a friend and ruin your friendship. Later on we discuss physical vs. emotional suffering: physical suffering isn't necessary for free will, emotional suffering is.
Your conclusion is based on two false premises.
False premise #1: Emotional suffering is unavoidable and required to be experienced by anyone with free will.
That actually isn’t true according to the Bible.
Revelation 21:3 says there will one day be no more death, sorrow, crying, or pain.
God is going to do away with sorrow and crying.
We therefore have no reason to believe that Adam and Eve experienced emotional pain prior to their rebellion to God. Because other things God is going to do away with, such as death, were not present prior to the fall either.
How is that possible, you ask?
Your false premise comes out of a misunderstanding of the nature and source of emotional pain, as well as misunderstanding the nature of God.
If God is the source of love, then no one can be loving apart from God.
If God is perfect love, perfectly right, and of perfect character, and one abides in perfect union with God’s character and nature to express perfect love, then it would be logically impossible for those people to wrong each other by their actions.
If relationship with God also provides you all that you need to be happy, then you are never in a state of emotional lack that would give you reason to feel sad or emotionally pained by the actions of others.
Because if you ask yourself what emotional pain essentially is: It comes down to people acting unloving towards you or you feeling like you lack something you want or need.
Therefore, emotional evil would, much like physical evil, be a state of existence only experienced if one chooses to use their free will to leave union with God because God is the source of love and the only one who can provide everything you need.
It is not required, as you claimed, for someone to always experience emotional evil and emotional pain in order for free will to exist. They can make a choice about whether or not they want to experience that.
And it is not a choice that God is capable of preventing from happening if God doesn’t want to force man to remain in relationship and union with God – because to break union from God is the definition of how one starts to experience emotional evil and pain.
So the Biblical account of God is actually more good and awesome than you imagined because it’s possible to have both free will and not have emotional pain – it’s your choice.
False premise #2: That physical suffering cannot be linked with the necessity of free will.
Your false premise comes out of a similar misunderstanding of the nature of physical pain/death and the nature of God in relation to man.
If physical pain, corruption, and death, are all the result of what happens to the body as a natural consequence of being disconnected from the source of life (God), then it would be logically impossible for there to exist a world in which someone could experience eternal life without physical suffering while also being disconnected from union with God as the only source of life.
It would come down to the individual’s choice about whether or not they want to reject relationship and union with God.
God cannot force someone to be in union with Him without violating their free will to choose.
Therefore, God cannot force someone to make the choice that will prevent them from experiencing death/pain/suffering.
We could argue, indeed, that it would be immoral for God to force someone to stay in relational union with Him – which is then why He doesn’t, because He is perfectly moral by nature and cannot do anything that would go against who He is.
Therefore, there is no basis for accusing God of not being good enough to create a world without physical or emotional suffering because doing so would necessarily require Him to either do something that was not good by forcing people to be in union with Him against their free will, or it would require Him to not give them free will which then it’s questionable if they even exist as conscious beings at all in that case because they’d just be robots no different than the physical laws God set up to govern the movement of the planets.
These weren't unspoken actually: these are all defended openly throughout the PoE series I've been writing (this is over three posts, though, so it's understandable that it's a little spread out).
In that instance I didn’t say they were unspoken premises. I said they were unproven.
