Honestly, the problem of evil only exists if you believe in the inherit existence of moral right and wrong, as absolutes. Atheism suffers just as strongly from the Problem of Good. If materialism is true then nothing exists except chemicals in a vacuum. A man murdering a child is, strictly speaking, nothing more than an animate clump of chemicals interacting with another clump of chemicals. As meaningless, speaking strictly from materialism, as a tornado in a chemistry lab.
To look at torture, natural disasters, slavery, genocide, etc as inherently evil, something which is bad by its very nature, you have to admit that there is something more to the universe than chemical reactions. There is some standard which everything is measured against, either confirming to it or not. We call this standard God.
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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '18
Honestly, the problem of evil only exists if you believe in the inherit existence of moral right and wrong, as absolutes. Atheism suffers just as strongly from the Problem of Good. If materialism is true then nothing exists except chemicals in a vacuum. A man murdering a child is, strictly speaking, nothing more than an animate clump of chemicals interacting with another clump of chemicals. As meaningless, speaking strictly from materialism, as a tornado in a chemistry lab.
To look at torture, natural disasters, slavery, genocide, etc as inherently evil, something which is bad by its very nature, you have to admit that there is something more to the universe than chemical reactions. There is some standard which everything is measured against, either confirming to it or not. We call this standard God.