This is the conclusion of a response to an article about the Problem of Evil by apologist Mikel Del Rosario (read part 1 of this response here).

Del Rosario raises three points. Let’s continue with his point #2.

2. The Problem of Evil Doesn’t Mean There’s No God

The Christian worldview gives us another option that atheists often leave out of the equation. … God can have good reasons for allowing evil—even if we don’t know what those reasons are.

This error is so common that it needs a name, so I’ll name it: the Hypothetical God Fallacy. Sure, if we presuppose an omniscient God, this gets us out of every possible jam in which God looks bad. Banda Aceh tsunami? God could’ve had good reasons. A young mother, beloved in her community, dies suddenly and leaves behind a husband and three children? A result of God’s good reasons. Genocide demanded and slavery accepted in the Old Testament? World War? Plane crash? Missing keys?

God.

This short article is peppered with this fallacy. React to it as an allergen:

If God is good and evil exists …

The mere fact that I can’t figure out why God allows some of the things to happen that he does … is not warrant for the conclusion that he’s got no such reasons.

It actually takes some humility to admit the role of human finiteness in understanding why God allows evil.

Just because something might seem pointless to us, doesn’t mean God can’t have a morally justified reason for it.

Yes, bad things in the world don’t force the conclusion that God can’t exist. Fortunately, I don’t draw such a conclusion. And yes, if God exists, he could have his reasons for things that we don’t understand.

The Hypothetical God Fallacy is a fallacy because no one interested in the truth starts with a conclusion (God exists) and then arranges the facts to support that conclusion. That’s backwards. Rather, the truth seeker starts with the facts and then follows them to their conclusion. (I’ve written more here.)

If God exists, he could have terrific reasons for why there’s so much gratuitous evil in the world. The same could be true for the Invisible Pink Unicorn (glitter be upon Him). Neither approach does anything to support a belief chosen beforehand.

3. The Problem of Evil Isn’t Just a Christian Problem

The Problem of Evil isn’t just a Christian problem. Evil is everybody’s problem!

Then you don’t know what the Problem of Evil is, because it is precisely just a Christian problem. The Problem of Evil asks, How can a good God allow all the gratuitous evil we see in our world? Drop the God presupposition, and the problem goes away.

You could ask the different question, How does an atheist explain the bad in the world? Quick answer: shit happens. Some is bad luck (mechanical problem causes a car accident), some is natural (flood), some is caused by other people (jerky coworker badmouths you to the boss and you don’t get the promotion), and some is caused by you (you didn’t bother getting the flood insurance). Adding God to the equation explains nothing and introduces the Problem of Evil so that you’re worse off than when you started.

Del Rosario again:

If atheism is true, there’s no basis for objective moral values and duties.

Sounds right, but why imagine that objective moral values exist, besides wishful thinking? What many apologists perceive as objective moral values are actually just shared moral values. That we share moral values isn’t too surprising since we’re all the same species. Nothing supernatural is required.

Del Rosario stumbles over another issue with morality.

You couldn’t have any kind of real, moral grounding to call it objectively evil—if atheism is true.

He’s using “real” to mean ultimate or objective. And here again, the ball’s in his court to convince us of his remarkable claim that objective morality exists and that everyone can access it. (Suggestion: find a resolution to the abortion problem that is universally acceptable. If there’s not a single correct resolution then it’s not an objective moral truth, and if we can’t reliably access it, then it’s useless.)

As for the ordinary, everyday sort of moral grounding, the kind that both Christians and atheists use, you’ll find that in the dictionary. Look up “morality,” and you’ll read nothing about objective grounding.

We have one final challenge:

The atheist position’s got another problem to deal with: The Problem of Good. In other words, naturalism has the challenge of providing a sufficient moral grounding for goodness itself—in addition to making sense of evil in the world. And that’s a pretty tall order for a philosophy with absolutely no room for God.

What’s difficult? We’re good because of evolution. We’re social animals, like wolves and chimpanzees, so we have cooperative traits like honesty, cooperation, sympathy, trustworthiness, and so on.

The God hypothesis adds nothing to the conversation, and we must watch out for it being smuggled in as a presupposition. And we’re back where we started from, wondering where the good Christian arguments are.

You don’t need religion to have morals.
If you can’t determine right from wrong
then you lack empathy, not religion.
(seen on the internet)

Photo credit: Wikipedia

In an article titled “Everybody’s Got the Same Problem,” apologist Greg Koukl attempts to turn the Problem of Evil, often admitted by Christians as their biggest challenge, into a selling point for Christianity.
The Problem of Evil is this: how can a good and loving God allow all the bad that happens in the world? The simplistic answers fail to explain the woman who dies leaving young children motherless, the child that dies a lingering death from leukemia, or the Holocaust.
Koukl begins by saying that he’s found a debating technique that turns this problem into a benefit. Instead of being solely a problem for the Christian, he turns the tables on the atheist.

Evidence of egregious evil abounds. How do I account for such depravity?
But, I am quick to add—and here is the strategic move—I am not alone. As a theist, I am not the only one saddled with this challenge. Evil is a problem for everyone. Every person, regardless of religion or worldview, must answer this objection.
Even the atheist.

Of course evil is a problem for everyone, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Koukl made clear that we’re talking about the Problem of Evil. We’re talking about how a good and loving God can allow all the bad that happens in the world.

What if someone is assaulted by personal tragedy, distressed by world events, victimized by religious corruption or abuse, and then responds by rejecting God and becoming an atheist (as many have done)? Notice that he has not solved the problem of evil.

The atheist hasn’t solved the Problem of Evil; he’s eliminated it. A God who loves us infinitely more than we love ourselves and who stands idly by as rapists or murderers do their work is no dilemma for the atheist. But, of course, the problem still remains for the apologist. Koukl can’t simply redefine the problem away.

The atheist cannot raise the issue, turn on his heel, and smugly walk away. His objection is that evil actually exists, objectively, as a real feature of the world.

Where did objective morality come from?? That’s certainly not something that I would argue for. Are some moral truths objectively right or wrong? If so, show us.

The atheist still has to answer the question, “How do I explain evil now, as an atheist? How do I answer the problem of evil from a materialistic worldview?”

Why—is this difficult?
Richard Dawkins observed, “The universe 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.” The atheist embraces the obvious explanation for evil, that in a natural world bad stuff happens. It’s just that the Christian doesn’t always like that explanation.

There is only one solution for him. The atheist must play the relativism card. Morality is either the product of a social contract or a trick of evolution. That is the best materialism can do. His own answer to the problem of evil, then, is that there is no problem of evil. Morality is an illusion. Whatever is, is right.

Ah, it’s our old straw man friend, moral relativism (I explore that more here). This is the idea that (1) you decide what’s moral for you and I decide what’s moral for me and (2) I have no right to object to your morals. I’ve never met anyone who accepts point 2, which means that I’ve never met such a moral relativist.
One explanation for morality is that there are absolute or transcendental or supernaturally grounded morals. This kind of grounding is what Koukl claims.
But take away divinely grounded morality, and you still have morals that come from humans’ shared moral instinct and the moral customs of each culture. Koukl imagines that this is an illusion?
Here’s some homework, Greg: look up the word morality in the dictionary and show us where it says that morality must be grounded in something absolute, transcendental, or supernatural.

The great 20th century atheistic philosopher Bertrand Russell wondered how anyone could talk of God when kneeling at the bed of a dying child. His challenge has powerful rhetorical force. How can anyone cling to the hope of a benevolent, powerful sovereign in the face of such tragedy?

Okay—this is an example of the injustice that prompts the Problem of Evil.

Then Christian philosopher William Lane Craig offered this response: “What is the atheist Bertrand Russell going to say when kneeling at the bed of a dying child? ‘Too bad’? ‘Tough luck’? ‘That’s the way it goes’?” No happy ending? No silver lining? Nothing but devastating, senseless evil?

Whaaa … ? “No happy ending”?? The child is dying! No, there’s no happy ending, you insensitive idiot!
And you imagine the atheist has nothing to say? Maybe you mean that the atheist has no happy but groundless stories to weave. That’s true. Atheists won’t tell as true the afterlife stories from the Egyptian Book of the Dead or the Greek myth of Hades or the Hindu idea of reincarnation. Atheists won’t tell the afterlife story of whatever religion happens to be dominant in their culture.
But anyone in this situation with any rudimentary compassion would offer sympathy and try to make the child feel better. They’d read books or tell jokes or weave stories or sing songs or reminisce about happier times or play games with the child. Isn’t that what you’d do, Greg?

They cannot speak of the patience and mercy of God. They cannot mention the future perfection that awaits all who trust in Christ. They cannot offer the comfort that a redemptive God is working to cause all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. They have no “good news” of hope for a broken world. Their worldview denies them these luxuries.

Yeah, let’s think about that. Christians could say, “You’re going to heaven,” but is that grounded on anything more substantial than that it’s the predominant myth in our culture? Or do you recommend just lying to make people feel better?
They could say, “Your death is part of God’s plan,” but what kind of comfort is this? And what kind of SOB deity would kill a child, especially an omniscient deity who could surely find a workaround? What kind of savage religion must you invent to support this platitude? (And Christians wonder why atheists get annoyed with their religion.)
Atheists don’t speak of “the patience and mercy of God” just like they don’t speak of the patience and mercy of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Atheists usually prefer the truth, and they tend to believe only things well-grounded in evidence. And this approach has benefits. As George Bernard Shaw observed, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” People seeing things for what they really are gave us the medical and technological progress we see in society today.

Which brings me to the most important question to ask of the problem of evil: Which worldview has the best resources to make sense of this challenge?

Do we take the approach that Ricky Gervais’s character did in the film The Invention of Lying? We just tell people stuff that will make them feel better?
Notice that Koukl has made no attempt to argue that the Christian view (including any rationalization to explain the Problem of Evil) should be accepted because it’s true. I don’t want to mischaracterize his conclusion, but it appears like he argues that it’s preferable simply because it’s nicer. Are we children here? How can any thoughtful, rational adult promote this route to truth?
Let’s recap and see how Koukl did with his stated goal, turning the Problem of Evil into a tool against the atheist:

• Koukl claimed that objective morality exists, but he provided no evidence.
• He imagines that without objective morality there is no morality, despite what the dictionary says to the contrary.
• He imagines that explaining the existence of evil is impossible for the atheist (apparently meaning that it’s impossible to explain in a pleasing way). In fact, atheists do just fine at explaining reality, and whether it’s pleasant or not isn’t the issue.
• He advocates telling the nice story rather than the accurate story.
• And he tried, unsuccessfully, to slide away from the Problem of Evil by redefining it.

The Problem of Evil stands, untouched by this clumsy attempt to dismiss what may be Christianity’s toughest problem.

If you want to assert a truth,
first make sure it’s not just an opinion
that you desperately want to be true.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

(This is a modified version of a post originally published 11/9/11.)
Photo credit: Wikimedia

This is a two-part critique of an interview with Oxford professor John Lennox on the topic of the Problem of Evil. Read part 1 here.
Let’s continue with Lennox’s comments in bold, followed by my responses.
There is no logical incompatibility between evil and a God who is all powerful and all loving. God could have his reasons.
Yes, if you presuppose God, you can rationalize that he must have reasons that we just don’t understand. But that’s backwards from how anyone approaches a remarkable truth claim. Instead, we start with what we know (evil exists) and work forward to the best explanation (it doesn’t look like an omnipotent and all-loving God does). No seeker of the truth would start with the presupposition that God exists.
From the atheist’s standpoint, the vast majority of humans will never receive justice. The human heart rebels against the idea that there is no justice.
(What’s the deal with retribution with so many Christians? Life’s just unfair; you can’t just let it go at that?)
Imagine that everyone has a karmic bank account. The best among us leave life with a net positive, and the worst have a net negative. What evidence is there that after death we meet the Celestial Bank Manager to take our surplus or answer for the deficit? And why imagine that Christianity’s idea that all deserve infinite torment in hell is any less unfair than no supernatural audit at all?
Natural evil is sometimes manmade. Desertification can be caused by thoughtless farming practices. Earthquakes are made worse by people building in earthquake zones.
It’s hard to have God involved with and concerned about life here on earth and yet so uninvolved so that he’s not responsible for anything. This attempt to let God off the hook is embarrassing. He can’t speak for himself?
Lennox visited New Zealand just after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. Yes, earthquakes are devastating, but tectonic movement is essential for life.
(Well, maybe life as we know it, but not life.)
Sure, we can find silver linings in disasters, and we must realize that many aspects of nature (fire, storms, earthquakes, etc.) can cause good and bad effects. Earthquake magnitudes follow a power law distribution, but what is that to God? It would be child’s play for him to clip all earthquake magnitudes at (say) 5.0. He could distribute the energy in a magnitude 8.0 earthquake over thousands of magnitude 5.0 earthquakes.
And why is it always the atheist who has to point out the amazing things that an omnipotent god could do?
“The problem of pain, suffering, and evil must be answered not just by theists but also by atheists. There are no simple answers.”
Sh*t happens. Nature doesn’t care. There is no celestial rule maker who shares our sense of right and wrong.
Simple enough for you?
Lennox had cardiac surgery that saved his life. Yes, he thanks God for that, but in that same year, his 22-year-old niece died from a brain tumor just a few weeks after diagnosis. Can God have intervened with Lennox but deliberately didn’t with the niece? He must be consistent.
Good for you for trying to be consistent, saying that it was the same God behind both medical issues. Let me propose a simpler explanation: there is no God, and medical science is what actually saved Lennox. Now there is no difficulty juggling a God that loves people but lets these disasters happen.
“What has atheism to say to my niece? Absolutely nothing. It’s hope-less. It’s got to say that that’s just how life is.”
Christianity offers empty hope and atheism doesn’t? Okay, I can live with that, but I have no use for a “hope” grounded on little more than wishful thinking. (But I understand that life can be very difficult. I appreciate that some people may drop the need for evidence to embrace this hope. I’m in no position to criticize. My complaint is only with the Christian who says that the evidence points to God.)
This reminds me of a podcast discussing a father who had lost a son, about 20 years of age. Anyone can sympathize with this tragedy, but the father had another problem: his son had not been “saved,” so the father’s theology placed the son in torment in hell. That’s a problem caused by Christianity. From an atheist’s standpoint, this problem simply doesn’t exist.
“Any hope at all is infinitely better than what atheism offers because it offers nothing—simply death and that’s the end.”
So you’ve got no use for evidence then? A Pastafarian afterlife with a beer volcano is more hopeful than the atheist nothing, so therefore it’s worth believing in? I would’ve expected a lot more from an Oxford professor than this childish faith.
This contribution from Lennox reminds me of Nobel prizewinner Linus Pauling’s ill-advised vitamin C megadosing or Nobel prizewinner William Shockley’s dabbling in eugenics and race politics.
Lennox is entitled to weigh in on Christianity and atheism just like anyone is. But his well-earned stature within mathematics does nothing to argue that his arguments are any better formed than any others.
What a waste of a brilliant mind. Maybe he should stick with mathematics.

Anything is possible,
but the historian wants to know
what is probable.
— F. C. Baur

Photo credit: Crazybananas

Childish? Childlike? You tell me.
I’ll admit to being a bit awed by an Oxford mathematics professor weighing in on Christianity. John Lennox makes a good impression. He’s a clean-shaven Irish Santa Claus with three doctorates. A nice guy with a formidable intellect and much practice as a public speaker—that’s an impressive package.
I heard him speak in Seattle a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, I wasn’t much impressed then … but perhaps I missed something. I recently listened to an hour-long interview, mostly on the Problem of Evil, which only solidified my unfavorable opinion.
I summarize his argument in bold below. Let me encourage both Christian and atheist readers to pause with each salvo to see what they think. Is the Christian point a strong one? What is the best atheist response? Is there something missing from either side here?
Atheists whine about the Crusades and the Inquisition, but why don’t they take seriously the violence and harm caused by atheist regimes like those of Stalin and Mao?
Because the atheism was a consequence of the actual problem, that these regimes were dictatorships. Stalin was an atheist because he was a dictator. He wasn’t a dictator because he was an atheist!
Atheism was central to the Soviet Union’s policy. After all, Marx said that religion was the opium of the people.  
Sure, atheism was central. Churches had to be shut down because they competed for power. Atheism was simply a consequence of the dictatorship; Stalin didn’t do damage in the name of atheism.
As for “religion is the opium of the people,” that was a compliment! Opium is medicine, remember? Here is Marx in context:

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Marx wasn’t saying that religion dulled the senses of people; rather, he was saying that in a society with terrible conditions, it provides solace. His complaint was simply that religion could do no more than address a symptom, leaving the underlying problem untouched.
Atheists complain about the evil that God allows, but by what standard do they judge something as evil? If there is no god, good and evil are just a matter of opinion. There’s no rational justification for moral concepts if you abolish God.
I don’t reject the idea of morality and evil; I reject the idea of absolute morality or evil. Look in the dictionary—the definitions don’t assume absolute or objective grounding. Imagine that morality is absolute if you want, but don’t pretend that the dictionary backs you up.
We all believe in absolute values; we all acknowledge a standard outside ourselves. Atheists prove this when they argue for right and wrong. For example, we all agree that baby torture is wrong.
We don’t have absolute values; we have shared values. That’s not surprising since we’re all the same species. We agree that baby torture is wrong because we have the same moral instinct.
Atheists can be moral, but they can’t justify morality.
The natural explanation explains what we see without relying on anything supernatural. Morality has an instinctive part (from evolution) and a social part (from society).
The instinctive part explains the certainty we have about fundamental moral rights and wrongs and explains why these are shared across societies. We even see elements of morality in other primates.
The social part changes with time and place. For example, slavery is obviously wrong in the West now, but it wasn’t a problem in centuries past. Some aspects of morality vary greatly by society—honor, for example.
Atheists can’t explain where absolute morals come from.
Agreed. Neither can you. I keep hearing this confusion of shared morals with absolute morals. And I keep seeing no evidence for the remarkable claim that morality is grounded outside humans.
By rejecting God, in what sense has the atheist solved the Problem of Evil?
Do you not know what the Problem of Evil is? It asks: How can an all-good God allow evil? Drop the idea of a god, and the problem vanishes. Completely.
But evil and pain haven’t gone away.
Yes, that’s true. You’ve got a fundamental contradiction with the Problem of Evil that attacks the very foundation of your religion, but from an atheist standpoint, there is no problem.
Note that you’ve also gotten rid of all hope.
How childish are you? You care about solace but not truth? I don’t know about you, but I’m looking for the truth. The pleasantness of a doctrine doesn’t change how I evaluate its truth. “The simple believe anything, but the prudent give thought to their steps” (Proverbs 14:15). Don’t we want to be prudent?
Sure, God could’ve made us so we wouldn’t do bad things, but we’d be robots without free will.
So you think God is a champion of free will? When victims of murder or rape have their free will violated, God doesn’t step in to do anything about it. Why then imagine that he’s deliberately not acting so that the free will of the criminal is allowed?
Is there free will in heaven? There must be if free will is so important. Then why isn’t heaven full of evil just like the earth is? Perhaps the beings in heaven are enlightened, and they know how to use free will properly. They would simply not be tempted to do bad things.
If this enlightenment is the instruction manual to make free will work, why didn’t God give it to us?
(Read part 2 here.)

The universe 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.
— Richard Dawkins

Photo credit: JohnLennox.org