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gwern comments on Theists are wrong; is theism? - Less Wrong
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That is emphatically not what people like Alvin Plantinga are talking about. Simulation argument provides no support for omni-benevolent omni-potent omni-scient omni-present entities; I don't know why you bring it up.
And if you've been reading Luke's blog, you probably already know that one of the best arguments for theism is the free will defense of the omni-s being consistent with the existence of evil, but since we don't think free will is even a coherent concept, it leaves us unmoved.
gwern,
Plantinga's Free Will Defense is not an argument for theism. The conclusion of the free will argument is that it is not logically impossible for God and evil to co-exist. That is an extremely modest conclusion on the part of the theist.
We observe a lack of evidence of contradictions in the concept of god; and absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
Of course the FWD increases our probability for God if we accept it; what else could it possibly do, decrease it? The most charitable interpretation I can put on your comment is that you are confusedly saying 'yes, but it doesn't increase it by much' when I'm pointing out that 'it increases by some non-zero amount, however modest that amount may be'.
Okay, I see what you mean. Thanks for clarifying!
Beyond that, it's just not a very good argument. If the entity was omnipotent, it could have given us free will without creating evil. At the least, it could have created less evil by giving all humans force fields, so all we could do to harm each other would be to gossip and insult.