A problem well defined is half solved.
The problem of evil is one of the greatest challenges to
Define Evil:
One answer is “Evil and good are equal are equal but opposing forces.”
Evil is a corruption of good. You can have good without evil, but you can’t have evil without a standard of good that can be corrupted.
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“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called in unjust?” --C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity
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A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. Injustice is parasitic on a standard of justice. Truth is when a belief matches up with reality. Truth is telling it like it is. A lie is when you tell something that intentionally doesn’t match up with reality. You can have a truth of which no one tells a lie, but you cannot have a lie unless you first have the truth. Lies are a corruption of truth.
Evil is taking food, technology, medicine, and sex (etc.) and corrupting it for something bad. Evil is when things are not the way they are supposed to be, or they are the way they are not supposed to be. Understood this way, evil assumes that there is a way the world is supposed to be. But this only makes sense if there is purpose and intent and a mind and a design behind the world. Raising the problem of evil assumes or implies that there is a way the world is supposed to function.
Atheism can’t account for design or purpose or that the world is supposed to be a certain way. In atheism the world just is. It popped into existence from nothing and through time and chance and the laws of physics the world just arranged itself the way we see it today. If an atheist complains about the problem of evil, that have to assume a theistic worldview to do so.
Pantheists also can’t consistently raise the problem of evil. In pantheism distinctions are artificial. There really is not a distinction between me and you, mind and matter, today and yesterday, good and evil. According to pantheism, you can’t have a problem of evil, because evil doesn’t exist. It is an allusion.
Properly understood, the existence of evil is one good reason to believe there’s a standard of good. And if there is a standard of good, the best explanation is that there is a god. This doesn’t explain why God allows evil, but at this point, it is critical to understand that when we properly understand the nature of evil, it’s one good reason to believe that God actually exists.
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