First of all, I will use the free will defense and argue that we cannot hold God accountable for freely chosen actions. Evil exists because we chose it to. We, as free agents can choose between right and wrong. Through this we can justify our actions. What kind of world would we lead if everything was already decided for us and all we would have to do is perform it? God, although knows how we will choose, plays absolutely no role in our process of choosing. When we choose the wrong from right, we are creating evil, but that’s our choice. Just like Hick portrayed in his theodicy, when Adam sinned, he took his first step towards freedom. We enter this world undeveloped and through experience and hardships we will come to a self-realization. How would we learn from our mistakes if everything would go smoothly and there would be no wrong? An atheist would say that God could have made it that humans choose only the good, but we need variety in the world so that we can be able to differentiate. If our world lacked this variety and complexity, it would be pretty boring. God allowing unnecessary evil to exist was thoughtful in his creation because only through choice and free will we can maximize our happiness. This leads into another question that the atheist may ask, like what about the natural evil?
Just as Leibniz and Plantinga employ, what if this is the greatest possible world that God could have created? Of course we can imagine better worlds but that isn’t the case since we live in this world. We can imagine a lot of things to be better but that would be a perfect world and maybe God realized that a perfect world wouldn’t do us any good. It would be great if the twin towers were still standing but that’s another world. There are many problems in this world that seem unnecessary but maybe these perilous aspects of life are essential for our world to be as perfect as possible. Lets take gravity for example; it is necessary for us so that we would be able to perform our daily routine functions. However, gravity is also a danger because it causes rocks to fall and ground eruptions, which are harmful to humans and animals. What ever the case may be, the benefits of gravity outweigh the consequences and are necessary for our world to be the best it can be. It is also impossible for God to change the physical laws that lead to natural evil because if he can do that, we humans would not be able to understand anything logical. Logical laws restrain God, but that does not mean that there is something he can’t do. Illogical abilities are not included since they are not things that God can do. (Mavrodes and Aquinas)
I would like to conclude by saying that nothing that God does fits into our realm of understanding. This is why he is God and we are just regular human beings. His ways of organizing the world will never clash with the way we suppose or want things to be. He may be all good and perfect but the world that he created does not necessarily have to be. For everything, there is an explanation of why it is the way that it is and not otherwise. This is known as the principle of sufficient reason. If we knew the reasons and explanations for everything, we might as well call ourselves God.