Arguments Against God

Suffering

"Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)

The Problem of Evil (Logical and Evidential Argument)

This is one of the strongest philosophical objections to God’s existence, particularly the concept of an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent deity.

Logical Problem of Evil: If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good, why does evil and suffering exist? A perfectly good God would want to eliminate evil. An all-powerful God would be able to eliminate evil. Since evil still exists, either: God is not all-powerful (cannot stop evil), God is not all-good (chooses not to stop evil), Or God does not exist. Evidential Problem of Evil: Even if some evil has a purpose (e.g., free will), pointless suffering (natural disasters, childhood diseases) makes God's existence unlikely.

I invite your engagement with me on these questions. You may leave comments below, but please be sure to read our policy on commenting before doing so.

Atheist View

Honesty requires that the strongest objections to belief in God be stated at their full force, not knocked down as strawmen. Chief among them is the problem of evil: if God is all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful, why does he permit suffering — especially the suffering of the innocent? I will not pretend this question is easy, nor that every answer satisfies.
Alongside the problem of evil stand other serious objections: the hiddenness of God, the apparent sufficiency of natural explanation, and the diversity of religions. I take these seriously and return to them throughout this section. A faith that has never faced its hardest questions is not worth much; a faith that has faced them and still stands is another matter.

Catholic View

The believer is not without an answer — though it is an answer that respects the weight of the question rather than dissolving it. Classic theodicy makes several points in reply. Much evil is the price of a real gift: genuine freedom, without which love itself would be impossible, necessarily allows the abuse of freedom. Much apparent “pointless” suffering is pointless only from where we stand, within time and without the whole picture. And the Christian answer is finally not a theory at all but a person: a God who does not explain suffering from a safe distance but enters it, is nailed to it, and turns it, in the Resurrection, toward redemption.
None of this makes evil good, or grief less bitter. It claims only that the existence of evil, real as it is, does not make belief in God irrational — and that the Cross meets the sufferer where mere argument cannot.

Summary

My conviction — argued, not merely asserted, in these pages — is that the objections trouble the believer without dissolving the reasons for belief. Evil is real, and it is a genuine weight on the scale. But a world containing free creatures capable of real love, and a God who himself enters into human suffering on the Cross, is not the incoherent picture the objection assumes. This is a first draft to be developed.