BTW, the general problem of Evil and God is called “Theodicy”, for those who’ve not encountered it before. It’s a classic problem in philosophy: How can a “good” God allow/command “evil”?

Craig knows it’s the achilles heel of Abrahamic religions (since they all tend to disagree with each other regarding the issues, not to mention differing with other religions/beliefs.)

It is indeed the stepping stone into arguments about the nature of God, how moral characteristics derive from or conflict with the supposed omniscience and omnipotence of the Abrahamic monotheistic deity.

It’s also one of those areas that yields the toughest questions for the fundamentalist believers and when you press them with these questions they can really find themselves in a tight loop out of which they can’t seem to escape. Thus Craig, before he writes his essay, puts up two sample questions he’s received about this subject.

And, as Craig also notes, the best way to deal with the particular question in mind is simply to dump the “Inerrancy of the Bible” doctrine. Now, he doesn’t want to do that, so he has to do his gymnastics and pull-the-rabbit-out-of-the-hat tricks.