system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What's the best response to the problem of evil for Christianity?

I'm aware that philosophers and theologians like Augsustine, Leibniz, and Plantinga have offered responses, but are any of their responses (and others) considered strong or satisfactory? What's the best of the bunch? I've read the SEP article but honestly it feels like a paper written from a starting point of 'none of these arguments work, and here's why', rather than any real attempt to defend the counter-arguments.

Also, how does Plantinga respond to the problem of natural evil?
gpt
Okay, so the standard argument from evil looks basically like this.

1.  If God exists, then there are no pointless evils.
2.  There are pointless evils.
3.  Therefore, God does not exist.

Standard theodicy approaches will reject the second premise by claiming that there are no pointless evils, i.e. every evil has a point or purpose.

What's popular these days is to take a different, more subtle approach to premise two.  Instead of being "atheistic" about pointless evils ("There are definitely NO pointless evils!"), the strategy is to be "agnostic" about pointless evils ("We don't know either way if evils have a point.")  This approach is called Skeptical Theism.  It basically argues that since we really have no way of knowing whether or not evils have a point, we have no reason to accept the second premise of the argument.  The burden of proof is on the atheist to show that the second premise is true.

Now, regarding Plantinga and his free will defense with respect to natural evil, what (I think) he does is to argue that it is possible that natural evils are the also caused by individuals with free will (e.g. demons or whatever).  Thus, this possibility is enough to show that the logical problem of evil (i.e. the existence of God is logically incompatible with the existence of evil) is unsound.