[Philo]

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It is not possible to plausibly deny that there is evil in the world--there are natural disasters, there are diseases, there are man-made evils. These are all facts.


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A natural disaster is a fact. That it is evil can in no way be construed as fact. How do you propose to establish it as an objective fact. Evil is an utterly subjective defintion and therefore can never be given the status of fact.

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I don't think you understand the concept of evil as it is understood in the context of the problem of evil (the original problem I posted). Nevermind--it is enough to note that there is pain in the world (would you deny that?), or even better, that it seems to us at times that we are in pain. That itself is enough to derive the contradiction; an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-benevolent god would not allow pain in the world, yet there is pain in the world. It doesn't matter if the pain is there for a higher good, and it doesn't even matter if there really is no pain (that it's all somehow an illusion that there is pain in the world), because the illusion of pain by itself is painful.