the problem of evil.

This is a message between me and a good friend:

Hey! How are you? I have couple of philosophy related questions. If you have any time do you think you could help me? I am writing a paper about religion, my topic is “can God allow innocent suffering?” I wrote it but then my teacher gave me some comments on it and I’m not completely sure how to fix them.
First, I have a sentence “Contradictors say that even if suffering helps people build their character, which how they claim is doubtful, the character is not worth the cost in pain and anguish.” Do you know why do atheists think that character is not worth the cost?
Second, free will reconcilers believe that free will is a greater good (meaning the world with evil and freedom is better that the world with no freedom). Why is free will so good? thank you!

OK this is going to be fun for me. I love talking about philosophic issues and I can help you anytime. so I think you are talking about the problem of evil based off of your statement 'can God allow innocent suffering?'.

To answer your first question: Atheists are working from their own presuppositions about the world. (as am I) They look at the world and all the suffering in it and ask why? They will not find an answer though, if pain and suffering does not build character or serve some other greater good than it is absolutely purposeless. Saying that character building from pain and suffering is not worth it, is making a truth claim from ignorance, which is a fallacy. You cannot test whether or not it is worth it, unless you are omniscient (all-knowing). You cannot know whether or not suffering creates some kind of greater good with any certainty without knowing everything that has ever happened. The only person who could make this claim would be God himself. Even if you cannot see the character building in your life it could still be taking place.

To answer your second question: Without free will, moral responsibility does not exist. Why would I throw a murderer in jail for murdering my wife if I knew that he was determined by the laws of nature to kill my wife? Doing so would be greatly unfair. Secondly, under determinism all of our decisions would be made for us. For instance, if I decided to marry a women I would marry her not because I loved her, but because I was predetermined to love her. I had no choice in the matter it was decided before I was even born. If the Creator God exists, (which I believe He does) we would be forced to love him no matter what, because He created us to love him. We would be little robots who worship God without control. How can robots truly love anything? That is not love.

A few objections I have to the problem of evil:
1. We are not in a position to claim whether or not we can know of greater goods. i.e. We are not all-knowing.
2. God could still exist in a world with purposeless evil.
3. The problem of evil borrows from theological concepts of good and evil.

Now to show that the problem of evil comes solely from presuppositions about the world:
The atheist believes that God cannot exist. So he builds his argument off of that premise:
1: If gratuitous evil exists, then God cannot exist.
2: Gratuitous evil exists.
C: God must not exist.
Although a Christian, like myself, can rearrange the argument like this:
1: God exists.
2: If gratuitous evil exists, then God cannot exist.
C: Gratuitous evil must not exist.
So the atheist presupposes that gratuitous evil exists, and the Christian presupposes that God exists. Both presuppositions cannot be proven with certainty, which makes both arguments very weak, because their key premises cannot be proven.

*Free feel to raise objections or questions to my ideas in the comment box.

**If you want more information on the problem of evil I would recommend William Lane Craig's podcast on the problem of evil. It can be found at www.reasonablefaith.org.