There is an obvious error in the The Problem of Evil (aka Theodicy), and I'm surprised more philosophers and theologians don't point it out. I'm sure most people on this forum are familiar with it, but just in case, here's a thumbnail sketch:

God can't be all good, all powerful and all knowing at the same time because the world is full of suffering, and if he was all of those things he would stop it.

Actually, there is no contradiction. The error comes with the definition of "good." Most people who think about the Problem of Evil use their intuitive morality to define "good" as "that which creates happiness, health, comfort, and so on"; and "evil" as "that which creates pain, suffering, grief, death, and so on."

However, the ENTIRE POINT of the Hebrew, Christian and Islamic scripture is to inform humans that God has a quite different idea of the concepts of "good" and "moral." God's plan REQUIRES suffering and death. Being good and acting morally are very clearly defined in scripture as "doing that which pleases God." Pleasing yourself and pleasing others are quite beside the point. Sure, both God and Jesus say "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," but it is said as a commandment, not as advice. He could just as easily have said, "poke everyone you meet in the eye" and that would be -- by definition -- the moral thing to do.

When people follow God's command to fly planes into buildings, blow up buildings, shoot doctors, stone people caught working on the sabbath to death, murder women who have no "proof of virtue" on their wedding night, torture heretics to death, send children on crusades, encourage the spread of AIDS by banning condoms, and on and on, they are being submissive to God's will and are therefore behaving morally. Their innate morality might make them feel ashamed, and their rational minds might try to talk them out of it, but if they really believe what they say they believe, "human morality" and rationality have to be ignored.

In fact, it makes more theological sense to define innate human morality and reason as "evil" because they so often keep people from following God's plan.