@Mainländer @Opus132 @Teutonic Knight What counter arguments can you present? I'm genuinely curious.
The counter argument is simply that, just because the logic of an argument seems to be ironclad, doesn't mean it is metaphysically tenable.
I'll give you a simple example. Take the problem of infinity. If something is infinite, by definition that something must contain everything, including that which is finite, which means that, "logically" speaking, in order for something to be truly infinite that something has to also be finite therefore infinity cannot exist.
This is essentially what Epicurus was doing. Can God create a rock he cannot lift? No, he cannot, but that does not mean he is no longer "all powerful", for what the argument amounts to here is whether something that is absolute can be more powerful than itself, which is metaphysically nonsensical. It's like asking whether infinity could be greater than it is, and if it cannot, therefore it cannot be infinite.
Epicurus is essentially what happens when you cut off reason from metaphysics and you create this self contained way of thinking where metaphysical absurdities are argued in the name of a "sound logic".
Quoting Schuon as i consider him to be the best and most complete authority on metaphysics we had this century:
Epicurean reasoning is based on ambiguities regarding the very notions of “evil”, “willing”, and “power”. First of all: will and power are inherent in the Divine Nature, which is Absoluteness and Infinitude; this means that God can neither go against His nature nor will anything that is contrary to it on pain of contradiction, hence of absurdity. It is impossible, because absurd, that God would have the power to be other than God, to be neither absolute nor infinite, or not to be at all; and He cannot will what lies outside His power in that it is contrary to Being. God is all-powerful in relation to the world, His creation or His manifestation; but Omnipotence can in no way act on the Divine Being Itself, given that this Being is the source of Omnipotence and not conversely.
So God's omnipotence cannot act on God himself, because he is both Absolute and Infinite and therefore and the way i see it the problem with Epicureanism is an inability to conceive of either the absolute or the infinite and to see everything in relative terms, including God, who can only be omnipotent in relation to us, but not himself for he is power as such.
As for the question of evil, refer to the following source:
The gist of the argument being simply that Absolute existence, which is what God is, is also by necessity infinite, but to be infinite it means that it must contain everything, including that which is finite, but that which is finite cannot obviously share in the same ontological status of the infinite, therefore, all those lower possibilities must manifest themselves in a lower plane, which is the realm of contingency and relativity. This is known as "emanationasim", which is the idea that the universe and everything that exists comes out of God but is NOT God, unlike pantheism, which proclaims and God and creation are one and the same. God inhabits a place that is outside contingency altogether, but being infinite, he must manifest various level of "relative" possibilities hence the universe and everything in it, including good and evil, for if the universe were to be perfect than it would absolute which means it would just BE God and therefore the whole question goes back to the beginning.
So the problem of evil is not so much "why" evil exists, but why certain people are more subject to it than others, and that has everything to do with the being or the "soul" or however you want to think of it of a person defecting from the perfection of the divine and miring itself further down the levels of relative manifestation, and the further they move away from the perfection of God the more they "suffer" because of this loss.
If God was real, we would all have a beautiful family and a peaceful world to live in.
If God had a choice on the matter, nothing would exist apart from him. There is no reason to have anything existing beyond anything which is already perfect, thus, the fact we have a plane of existence where imperfections exist implies this plane of existence must exist out of necessity and its imperfections are its very reason for being. A universe "without evil" would just overlap with God himself so that nothing would exist except for God.
