[general_re]

What! No Aristotle?

Yes, Aristotle too. I just happened to be thinking of some folks who contributed to formalizing induction.

A can of possibility will never yield a does existentially (unless it is cooked up in a sentence and salted to taste with logic).

For Mill, it would run something like this, though:

Everything that exists, exists because God permits it to exist.
Evil exists.
Therefore, God permits evil to exist.

Kinda hard to deny, really. And then:

A perfectly good being cannot permit evil to exist.
God permits evil to exist.
Therefore, God is not perfectly good.

Or

No being that is both perfectly good and omnipotent can permit evil to exist.
Evil exists.
God is perfectly good.
Therefore, God is not omnipotent.

IOW the comic general_re inside the tyranny of a serious tpaine.

Perhaps you are familiar with Douglas Adams's rendering of God's final message to His creation? ;)

[unspun]

And there's no room whatsoever for a greater good that outweighs an even temporary toleration of evil by free moral agents? Not even when God expressed the terms and those who decide to be evil assume full (I sah "full") responsibility? That's "sophistry" (gotta love dismissals -- they often point out one caught up in one's theories).

So sheesh. That's hardly fair -- especially to someone so good, powerful... and so very authoritative to boot.