The problem of evil

That defeats the whole point. God wants us to choose Theosis. Forcibly making us perfect defeats the purpose.

It would be no more forceful than any other form of revelation. If anything, the insight gained via Theosis would grant us a higher level of discernment, a greater degree of freedom.

None of God's revelation was forceful. God chose the prophets and apostles, but they freely accepted His Spirit - they could have rejected it. Even St. Jeremiah, who expressed distress regarding his mission, did not shy away from it. St. Jonah, who initially ran away from the ministry of prophecy God had wanted for him, ended up being a true prophet and writing scripture about his own failure to appreciate God's lovee for the Ninevites. Holiness is not something God imposes upon us, but it is something God strongly wills for all of us.

It is such after the Resurrection in Heaven, and will be such in New Creation. Because there is the ilumination of the Heart/Intuition through Grace/Energies. What you want already exists, albeit incomplete.

In short, do you think between the fifth and sixth day there was a mistake made? If not, then between the Fall and New Creation there is also no mistake. Suffering is not a mistake and neither is it evil (when confined to this temporary plane of existence, of course). It's difficult to accept this truth when we're suffering, but it does not mean it is not true.
I had similar views to you, though St. John of Damascus helped me in "On the Divine Images". I used to, and I think so do you as of right now, dislike incompleteness. Incompleteness is not evil, therefore neither is this plane. Childhood is not evil because it's not a fully developed Man. Images, such as Man carries and that of Icons, do not fully describe the Prototype/Original/Model. Yet they are good.
Man will never fully carry the nature of God, only the image filled with Grace which will always fail to fully represent God in its entirety. And is so it will be for all of eternity, which is a long time. We need to accept our incompleteness before God and accept our position as icons rather than God.

And what I'm saying is that the gift of immediate Theosis could hardly be called forceful for the same reason. You cannot say this would contravene the doctrine of free will because Theosis would merely provide a greater capacity for discernment; a greater potentiality for making the right choices.

I have no problem with incompleteness. I recognize that, as imperfect beings, we can never attain total perfection as we would cease to be ourselves if this were ever the case.

I'm not , if you thought I was. My point is that evil is kind of like an illusion, since God is the only true reality and the world, which has lived apart from God from the beginning, is living apart from true reality and sustainer of all – and so evil can only be experienced by evil people who focus their senses on themselves and not on God.

btw our living apart from God is why, as Paul writes, Jesus died apart from God, saying on the cross "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

To my mind the answer ties into allof the different ones provided so far and are related to each other. For one thing, as far as I'm aware for free will to have any meaningful weight philosophically it is often defined by the ability to choose between good and evil. Only being able to choose good, even while being aware of the existence of evil, is not, as it's commonly defined, philosophically speaking, free. Additionally, if we were only able to choose 'good,' we would be morally perfect, which hits on the other reason provided: One of the definitions of God is that he is the 'greatest concievable being' (sometimes referred to as a 'maximally great bring'). One of the attributes of such a being, by definition, is perfection, including moral perfection as, well, in term's of being maximally great or the greatest conceivable, you don't really get greater than perfection. But wait, if we're only able to choose 'good,' and by definition are morally perfect, well then God is no longer the maximally great being, and therefore by definition not God, by virtue of our moral perfection, the duplication of which between us and God means he is no longer the 'maximum' or the 'greatest,' but rather on par with us. This is where Augustine's response comes in, by virtue of God being perfect, and us necessarily being imperfect by virtie of not being God, its literally logically necessary for us to vlbe able to choose and experience evil. Furthermore, one of the attributes of God is that he is, in addition to being goodness itself, is love itself. Love by definition cannot be forced, or it is not love, and rather must be freely chosen /given. It is also for this reason that God allows evil so that we may choose love, and partake in his nature and community with him.

Side note too - omnipotence as defined by being able to do the logically impossible possible is also not a common definition philosophically, as far as I'm aware; It's unhelpful and renders language, and therefore any discussion or argument, meaningless.

Hope all that made some semblance of sense.

Careful now. This sounds awfully masochistic. What do you mean by evil? Surely you don't think a child with leukemia is evil for focusing on the pain that his cancer induces?

Slick answer, but that only raises the problem of God creating anything in the first place.
Specially since if God HAD to create something imperfect that taints his existence by default.
Also, the argument was about good things. Plenty different good things out there.