Why would an all-powerful, all-good God allow all the evil things we see going on in the world? If he was so good, he would never permit the travesties of injustice and suffering we see all around us. If he was so powerful, he could stop it. The only possible explanations for the situation we find ourselves in is that God is either evil, or powerless, or that he doesn’t exist at all. This is called “The Problem of Evil” and it is the number one argument you will ever hear against the existence of a loving God.

But there is a big problem with the problem of evil:

Evil can only exist if good exists first.

You can’t identify something as evil without having a standard to measure it by. And that means we need an explanation for the origin of good. Atheists don’t have one. They have no way to explain “The Problem of Good.”

The Free Will Defense

The most logical response to the challenge of the problem of evil is simple to understand. God’s desire is for his created beings to love and obey him. Pre-programmed robots can’t do that. In order for their love and obedience to be meaningful, God had to allow the possibility that we could do otherwise.

So, he gave us free will.

Having free will entails that we have the capacity to make bad choices. And we do it all the time. Evil is the result of those choices.

You can’t define evil without good. You can’t choose evil without free will.

Complaints About Nothing

The existence of good and evil are obvious to all of us. Every human being experiences both. That’s why we complain about evil. It’s a real thing that impacts real life in ways all of us wish we could avoid.

But when an atheist complains about all the evil in the world, or denies God’s existence because of it, he hasn’t done anything to explain where it came from. He certainly hasn’t offered a solution to the “problem” he’s complaining about.

That’s the catch. Everyone sees evil as a problem. But Christianity has an explanation for it. Atheism’s got nothing. In fact, according to the atheistic worldview, there is no such thing as good or evil. That’s not just my opinion. I’ll let atheism speak for itself.

The “Pitiless Indifference” of Atheism

The blogger Wintery Knight offers some fantastic examples of how atheists shoot themselves in the foot on this topic. Here are a few excerpts:

Jerry Coyne

Here’s prominent atheist evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne’s editorial in USA Today. In it, he opines about the fact that we are nothing but moist robots who only have the illusion of free will.

“Our brains are simply meat computers that, like real computers, are programmed by our genes and experiences to convert an array of inputs into a predetermined output. Recent experiments involving brain scans show that when a subject “decides” to push a button on the left or right side of a computer, the choice can be predicted by brain activity [up to 7 seconds in advance]. “Decisions” made like that aren’t conscious ones. And if our choices are unconscious, with some determined well before the moment we think we’ve made them, then we don’t have free will in any meaningful sense.”

In Jerry Coyne’s world, there is no way to distinguish between good and evil.

William Provine

A historian of science, evolutionary biology, and population genetics, Provine was well-known for his bombastic defense of atheism. Provine died in 2015, but this video (transcript below) is a representative of his stance.

“Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear — and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposive (goal-directed) forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s going to be the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either. What an unintelligible idea!”

You have to give Dr. Provine this: he was honest about the implications of his worldview.

Richard Dawkins

Then, there’s the infamous Richard Dawkins, the de-facto ringleader of the “New Atheists.” In one of his earlier books, The River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (1995), Dawkins is also candid about where his atheism leads:

“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference … DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.”

The conclusion is simple but profound. An honest atheist’s worldview has no way to define anything as good. And that means it also has no basis from which it can complain about the problem of evil.

Don’t Be Fooled

Many Christians are intimidated and flummoxed by the challenge of the problem of evil. They cower in its presence, afraid that it undermines everything they claim to believe in. At a minimum, they accept the fact that it renders God impotent. At worst, it seems to negate his very existence.

Don’t buy it.

Evil is the most powerful argument we have that God exists. He is the perfect standard of good, the basis for any attempt to deal with the most obvious thing about the world in which we find ourselves. Not only so, but the Christian worldview gives us a way to understand and respond to evil. This is just another example of how Christianity offers the best answers to life’s most pressing questions.

God gave us free will. And we are obliged to use it. The atheist can make no such claim.