Good post. Regarding point 2, evil being an unavoidable part of God's plan that'll make sense in the end, this fails also because God is supposed to be omnipotent - that means that he is not restricted to any particular means to achieve any conceivable goals. In other words, God, if he is omnipotent, has the option of achieving the very same plan he has now, without all the suffering. To deny this is to deny God's omnipotence.
In the free will defense, bringing up heaven is a real stumbper for the theist, I've found - if God could not have made the world without evil in it, and still preserve free will, then heaven, which supposedly has no evil in it, cannot allow for free will. So it's either robots in Heaven, or the free will defense is sunk.
There's one more attempted answer that I can come up with off the top of my head: that the evil in this world is necessary for providing opportunities for admirable qualities of character. So poverty gives us the option of demonstrating charity, a fire in a building allows us to demonstrate courage and heroism, and so on.
This defense is open to the criticism that the extent of evil in the world is far worse and more frequent than would be necessary for allowing the refinement of such good character traits - a fraction of the suffering present in the world would suffice for this purpose. Further, there's a degree of arrogance and particularly distasteful self-centeredness in this explanation - are thousands of children starving after a droubt in Africa, really starving for our benefit, so that we may make the appropriate sympathetic noises, and donate to charity? Is this really the only solution an infinitely wise, omnipotent being could think of for this function? Does the suffering even begin to be evened out by the opportunities for valor it creates? I don't think so.
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Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
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To many, the above logic seems airtight. Responses to it are called theodicies, and are the topic of this thread.
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The problem of evil is often the tiebreaker for religious debates that get past teleological arguments.
I will give evil a fairly narrow definition for this thread:
Evil - actions morally reprehensible by human standards such as early deaths from natural forces OR what would be considered "sin" by whatever religion you are thinking about.
As a non-theist, pick apart the following theodicies (these are the most common, but tell me if there are more):
1. Free will: God cannot eliminate evil without eliminating free will. The first objection to this argument is that it undermines omnipotence (bring in the concept of heaven, and ask if there is free will and no evil in heaven). However, if you accept that god cannot eliminate evil without eliminating free will, the next objection to this argument is that it does not account for natural disasters.
2. All part of god's plan: the evil now is necessary for good later. The first objection to this is that there is no shortage of gratuitous evil that does not further any "plan", such as malaria's 'relationship' to children in Africa and Asia. The religious objection to this objection is that humans with our feeble minds not finding a purpose for evil does not mean there is not one.
3. Sin, Karma, and Punishment: evil is punishment for sin, and people get what they deserve. The objection to this is the same as the objection to the God's plan justification--there is gratuitous evil that does not punish anyone who has done anything wrong (if someone brings in the concept of original sin to justify killing small children, your arguments are working
4. God is not omnipotent and/or not omniscient: this might work for polytheists, but not the Abrahamic religions which preach an omnipotent and omniscient god. Unless that Abrahamic person subscribes to the next one.
5. Satan: there is a god or demigod who brings evil into the world. The way believers in an omniscient/omnipotent god justify god allowing the existence of an evil force is usually one of the other theodices.
Discuss.