On the Problem of Evil & Suffering

Atheists often argue against the existence of God, and specifically an almighty and good God on the basis of the existence of evil and suffering in the universe.   The argument goes something like this:

God is all-powerful, loving, and perfect.
A perfect, good God would create a universe that was perfect (e.g., no evil and suffering).
The universe is not perfect but contains evil and suffering.
Therefore, God does not exist.

So in short, either God is not good, or not all-powerful or he does not exist, because if he did exist then surely he could stop all the suffering. The atheist then concludes that both the idea of a bad God and idea of a limited God makes no sense, therefore God must not exist. Variations on this ages old theme exist but that is the gist of it.

So how does one answer this type of objection?

Most apologists go into lengthy arguments concerning why a good and almighty God could and does allow evil & suffering in the world.  They will usually get into the biblical fall of Lucifer and of man to explain how such evils and sufferings came to be.

Forget all that for now. There is a much simpler way to demonstrate why this argument is utterly flawed.

First you must see that in a universe with no God, there cannot be any absolute moral values. Most atheists admit this. For example:

“Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3)no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.” -William B. Provine, atheist professor of biology at Cornell University


“If there is no God, everything is permitted.” – Jean Paul Sartre on Ivan Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevski’s character

“Morality is no more … than an adaptation, and as such has the same status as such things as teeth and eyes and noses. . . . [M]orality is a creation of the genes”. – Michael Ruse

“Nature has no concern for good or bad, right or wrong. . . . We cannot get behind ethics.” – Naturalist Simon Blackburn

Evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson said that morality is just a survival mechanism. Ethics, he claims,


Now how does one refute the atheist argument against God based on evil & suffering?

Easy, without God, there is no good or evil. The atheist high priests, quoted above say so.

The atheist thus shoots himself in the head again with such arguing against God based on “there is so much evil”.  For such an argument becomes too obviously wrong given that “no God = no evil”, (as most atheist philosophers themselves state).

Suffering becomes a mere amoral, purposeless event in a cold uncaring cosmos. Or as Dawkins put it, a blind, pitiless, indifferent universe. Suffering but without God suffering is neither evil nor good nor “bad”. Thus we see how the atheist in using the existence of evil and suffering to refute the existence of God is unwittingly assuming the existence of God in the very argument itself!

Therefore, how can one claim God doesn’t exist while admitting the existence of evil? If there is no God how does one define evil?  Indeed, how does one claim that suffering is “wrong” in a universe without God?

One might even state,

“Evil exists.  Therefore God exists.”

The fact that all men everywhere and at all times have recognized the existence of evil, demonstrates the existence of a transcendent moral law, else, evil does not exist. Things simply are what they are – neither right nor wrong; neither evil or good.

Without an absolute law giver, there can be no such thing as evil or good and since atheists, as shown above, really do admit that without God there is no real good or evil, how can they then contradict themselves by claiming God doesn’t exist based on it?!

Thus the atheists show a rather amazing lack of perception, as always.  But in this case it is a lack of perception of their own arguments logical implications and flaws! To argue against God based on the existence of evil is to argue for God based on the existence of moral right and wrong! So when atheists use the old “problem of pain and evil” argument they are unwittingly admitting of a transcendent Law that defines evil by the existence of absolute good – which is the ONLY way evil can be defined!

C.S. Lewis wrote,

“Truth and falsehood are opposed; but truth is the norm not of truth only but of falsehood also.”
–The Allegory of Love

Indeed, without God (ultimate truth) there is no reason to call anything at all “evil”.

Thus the whole “evil and suffering” based argument falls apart under its own underlying assumptions! Thus, this argument actually does more to uphold the existence of God than it can ever do to refute it!

Sadly, atheists do not and will not see this, such is the hardness of their hearts (and heads).


Quotes by C.S. Lewis


On evolution:



On Science:




–The Abolition of Man





– God in the Dock

On morality:

– Mere Christianity

–The Case for Christianity









–The Case for Christianity

–The Abolition of Man


–The Problem of Pain






On Christianity:





–The Problem of Pain







-C.S. Lewis

–’The Seeing Eye’, Christian Reflections (150)




The Secular Humanist Conspiracy







Secular Humanist Charles F. Potter wrote,
















Humanist John J. Dunphy wrote:








And this one beats ’em all:


The lovely but poisoned apple of humanism







Khoren Arisian
Senior Leader, NY Society for Ethical Culture

Bill Baird
Reproductive rights pioneer

Frank Berger
Pharmacologist, developer of anti-anxiety drugs

Lester R. Brown
Founder and president, Earth Policy Institute

August E. Brunsman IV
Executive director, Secular Student Alliance

Rob Buitenweg
Vice president, International Humanist and Ethical Union

Vern Bullough
Sexologist and former copresident of the International Humanist and Ethical Union

David Bumbaugh
Professor, Meadville Lombard Theological School

Matt Cherry
Executive director, Institute for Humanist Studies

Joseph Chuman

Curt Collier
leader, Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture, New York

Fred Cook
Retired executive committee member, International Humanist and Ethical Union

Carlton Coon
Former US Ambassador to Nepal

Richard Dawkins (what a surprise huh)
Charles Simonyi professor, University of Oxford

Arthur Dobrin

Margaret Downey
President, Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia

Riane Eisler
President, Center for Partnership Studies

Albert Ellis

Edward L. Ericson
Leader emeritus, Ethical Culture

Antony Flew

Arun Gandhi
Cofounder, M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence

Kendyl Gibbons
President, Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association

Sol Gordon

Pervez Hoodbhoy

Fran P. Hosken
Editor, Women’s International Network News

Joan Johnson Lewis
President, National Leaders Council of the American Ethical Union

Edwin Kagin
Founder and director, Camp Quest

Beth Lamont
AHA NGO representative to the United Nations

Gerald A. Larue
Professor emeritus of biblical history and archaeology, University of Southern California

Ellen McBride
Immediate past president, American Ethical Union

Henry Morgentaler
Abortion rights pioneer

Stephen Mumford
President, Center for Research on Population and Security

William Murry
President and dean, Meadville-Lombard Theological School

Indumati Parikh
President, Center for the Study of Social Change, India

Katha Pollitt
Columnist, the Nation

Eugenie Scott
Executive director, National Center for Science Education

Michael Shermer
Editor of Skeptic magazine

James R. Simpson
Professor of international agricultural economics, Ryukoku University, Japan

Matthew Ies. Spetter

Oliver Stone
Academy award-winning filmmaker

John Swomley
Professor emeritus of social ethics, St. Paul School of Theology

Carl Thitchener

Maureen Thitchener

Kurt Vonnegut

Edward O. Wilson
Professor, Harvard University,





No conspiracy here?


Winston Churchill commented,




More Atheist Folly







Continue reading

Atheism is ‘lack of belief’? Sequel

I’ve been told over and over again, and in the most passionate if often vehement fashion, that atheism is not a religion but simply the absence of belief.   I wrote an article refuting this claim here.  In debates with atheists on the subject I am always being assured that newborns are essentially atheists because they are born without any beliefs.  I’m told that atheism, being lack of belief, means that newly born babes qualify as atheists.  Of course that is ridiculous and in fact rather anserine.

Today, I came across this article on the web entitled Children as young as four to be educated in atheism.

My, but my atheist antagonists ought to be embarrassed at this!

Surely even the most ignorant and incompetent atheist can see that there can be no need to educate young children into atheism if atheism is truly their inborn lack of belief! They are born atheists, according to them!

Isn’t it amazing how atheists contradict themselves at every turn? If newborns are already atheists why in the world would they need indoctrination in atheism? Surely just being left alone would suffice to leave them atheists. Ah, but the atheist will claim they will be inundated with theistic or deistic ideas during their lives so we must protect that innate atheism! Really? Why?

Atheism is an idea that doesn’t matter. It leads to no good, it helps no one and it tends to either universal anarchy and chaos or totalitarian despotism (remember the more than 170 million killings under atheist regimes in the 20th century alone).

If, by atheist reasoning, the universe really created itself out of nothing (the atheists only origins option), and if the universe consequently really has no meaning, no purpose, no good and no evil, why should anyone care what anyone else believes anyway? Why are atheists so adamantly evangelistic on making sure all remain, as they allege, “atheists from birth”.

Obviously they feel they need more.  Should theists now start using PANIC HEADLINES of the atheist genre?

Atheists, now they’re coming for  your children!

– to mimic the Times article on Dawkins’ latest idiots drivel on which I commented here.

Of course, this kind of headline would be entirely justified in this case, if only because they want to preach their inane religion in public schools (as though they don’t already under the guise of science and secular humanism which possesses the entire public ed system in the West). These people are fanatically against teaching any kind of religion in schools and even having any kind of religious symbol displayed in any public place, yet here they come! They now want to indoctrinate kids in schools into their religion, all while claiming kids are naturally atheistic!! Can you say HYPOCRITES!

Now here I will quote Dr Michael V. Antony, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Haifa, Israel. Dr. Antony addressed this “lack of belief” argument thus (my bold):

It is often said by atheists that atheism is not a positive position at all – a belief or worldview – but merely a disbelief in theism, a refusal to accept what the theist believes, and as such, there is no belief or position for there to be evidence for. Evidence is not needed for ‘non-positions’.

While the word ‘atheism’ has been used in something like this sense (see for example Antony Flew’s article ‘The Presumption of Atheism’), it is a highly non-standard use.  So understood, atheism would include agnosticism, since agnostics are also not theists. However, on the common understanding of atheism – no divine reality of any kind exists – atheism and agnosticism are mutually exclusive. Some insist that this non-standard sense of ‘atheism’ is the only possible sense, because a-theism means without theism. But if that were a good argument, the Space Shuttle would be an automobile, since it moves on its own (mobile=move, auto=by itself). Ditto for dogs and cats.

Yet none of that really matters, for even the non-standard sense of ‘atheism’ does nothing to neutralize evidentialism’s demand for evidence. As we saw, evidentialism applies to all ‘doxastic’ attitudes toward a proposition P: believing P, believing not-P, suspending judgment about P, etc. Therefore evidentialism says, with respect to the proposition God exists, that any attitude toward it will be rational or justified if and only if it fits one’s evidence. Now it is true that if one had no position whatever regarding the proposition God exists (perhaps because one has never entertained the thought), no evidence would be required for that non-position. But the New Atheists all believe that (probably) no God or other divine reality exists. And that belief must be evidence-based if it is to be rationally held, according to evidentialism. So insisting that atheism isn’t a belief doesn’t help.

Mere absence of belief is not a position.  It’s a passive psychological state.  Atheism is position, it is a chosen position, not the natural one.  Atheism, as denial of reality, is a form of insanity, therefore it is doubtful we will ever cease having to deal with atheist nonsense.  Will we ever see the end of this blatant insanity?

Has Dawkins lost his mind?

Dawkins’ latest  book “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution”,  reveals an enormous amount of new evidence, facts, calm clear reasoning, fair play and true altruistic objective motives from the part of your fave atheist … or not.

Let’s see, here’s how the article from the Times on the book was presented:

“Creationists, now they’re coming for your children”

Sounds like the latest Stephen King title doesn’t it. This is fear mongering propagandizing at its worst.  Notice the use of a key technique in propaganda spreading– that of the PANIC HEADLINE!.


But hey, when you’re an atheist trying to sell something to the public, anything goes right?

The  most hypocritical thing about all this tripe, is that Dawkins’ own university was founded by creationists!! But “BEWARE Oh public”, says the Times!  Creationists might build schools, hospitals, charity orgs, clinics and they may have founded the scientific method and most of the great scientists of history were creationists, but BEWARE!  These evil people, like Newton, Maxwell, Leibniz, Boole, etc., are secretly planning to take over your minds!!

Talk about demonizing the opposition, another propaganda technique that is supposed to NEVER be used in scientific controversies! (Here’s where the inane drone, ‘no controversy here’, nonsense claim comes in)

This is truly risible. This book is nothing but twisted pseudo-science, wishful thinking, terrible philosophy and beyond pathetic theology that the average atheist ignoramus will swallow whole without question.

If the title doesn’t do it for you well here’s some quotes:

People who reject the theory of evolution should be placed on a level with Holocaust deniers

Imagine you are a teacher of more recent history, and your lessons on 20th-century Europe are boycotted, heckled or otherwise disrupted by well-organised, well-financed and politically muscular groups of Holocaust-deniers. …They are vocal, superficially plausible and adept at seeming learned. They are supported by …Imagine that, as a teacher of European history, you are continually faced with belligerent demands to “teach the controversy”, and to give “equal time” to the “alternative theory” that the Holocaust never happened but was invented by a bunch of Zionist fabricators.



Notice the comparison of a scientific theory to a historical fact.  Two entirely different domains are brought in to cloud the issues and confuse the readers.

Theories are meant to be questioned, scrutinized and debated – not historical facts. And this even the relatively sane atheists know.

So now that we have been assured by reverend Dawkins that anyone who doubts Darwinism is equal in guilt to a holocaust denier, and now that we have seen the light of his new strategy for crushing all opposition by comparing those who doubt Darwin to those that doubt the Nazis ever did any wrong to Jews and others, I suppose we must all rest our case and concede, right?  Well no, of course not.

If I look at the evidence that tells me so very clearly that Darwinism is a crock and the greatest scientific blunder of all time I must not only be wrong but a history denier equally guilty with the holocaust deniers!  (though I can go and see the gas chambers and furnaces any day I wish to)

Talk again about demonizing the opposition by aiming for the sympathetic heart, among which no one sympathizes more than the creationist Jews and Christians!!!  Dawkins now reigns supreme for vile lies and attempting public manipulation.

Worse, Dawkins himself wrote,

“[the universe] has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference.”

Think about that for at least 1 second.  He claims there is no good or evil, no purpose.  So, um gee Dick, why do you imply that both the Holocaust and its deniers are somehow wrong, evil, not good? Duh! Can’t this guy see his own hypocrisy? You can’t have it both ways.  Either there is a God with moral character and demands upon moral agents, and humans are indeed moral agents, or there is no such thing as evil or good. This is pure trickery on Dawkins part.  He believes there is no evil but calls Darwin doubters “or wicked”! Amazing that anyone is still blinded by this shyster.

The phrase, “There is no God, and Richard Dawkins is his prophet”, comes to mind.

Dawkins of course is a master manipulator – a mind conditioner.   He makes sure not to stop his fanatical ravings to give the readers time to actually think about such accusations and foolish comparisons. Most of his fans won’t anyway because they let their high priest think for them.

Just a question of time before he and his goons actually start demanding the removal of such persons from society as “genetically defective” “menaces”.  Indeed, such has already been proposed.

Then he smoothly slips into a somewhat more “reasonable” mode claiming that we have all the evidence we need:

“Evolution is an inescapable fact, … Evolution is within us, around us, between us, …. Given that, in most cases, we don’t live long enough to watch evolution happening before our eyes, we shall revisit the metaphor of the detective coming upon the scene of a crime after the event and making inferences. The aids to inference that lead scientists to the fact of evolution are far more numerous, more convincing, more incontrovertible, than any eyewitness reports that have ever been used, in any court of law, in any century, to establish guilt in any crime.” -my italics

Outside of the fact that this is truly hilarious, he now attempts to insure the poor beguiled victim reader into believing that nothing else in all history has ever had the amount of evidence available that Darwinism has!

Yes, the man has clearly lost his mind, properly answers the title question.

Yet notice his use of the very phrase he so publicly deplores when used by Intelligent Design proponents – “inferences”!
He infers one thing, but a whole slew of other equally or more intelligent and equally or better educated detectives than himself infer something entirely different – not so curiously he “fails” to mention this fact.

He may fool the non thinking ones and fool easily those who already hate God, religion and any science that supports such by inference, i.e  those who already have an “axe to grind” against anything that disturbs them in their materialist stupor.

Shame on this uncouth charlatan for writing in the name of science!

As any thinking, lucid person would have suspected, Dawkins new book does indeed contain something new – even more hysterical and highly injurious false accusations against any and all who oppose the high priesthood of materialism’s origins myth -Darwinism.

I found it hard to believe when I read through his evidence for evolution, that he actually presents dog breeding as solid evidence for Darwinian evolution!  Now that is either incredibly low and deceptive of him or incredibly stupid. If animal breeding, which humans have been doing for thousands of years, tells us anything, it is that you can’t produce anything but a dog by breeding dogs.  The taxonomic family remains, no matter how much one attempts to produce anything else. Breeding thus shows that there are strict limits, genetic lines that cannot be crossed with success, even with the help of intelligent artificial selection.

So yes, Dawkins has either lost his mind -at least on this subject- or he is far more evil than most have suspected … or both.

Capital Punishment, Right or Wrong

Today’s world is a seething morass of moral confusion.  We have much insanity running amok in governments and public life on the moral plane.  The inmates seem to be running the asylum. The criminals appear to be running the prisons. What was once holy is now profane and that which was once an abomination is now lauded from the highest pulpits of society as good.

On the one hand we have the death penalty being removed from the sanctions of law and on the other we have the murder of children being sanctioned as “good” because either they are still in the womb or because they are not really human at all yet (see Peter Singer et al.).

“Curiouser and curiouser” the world goes as God is rejected and replaced by Darwinian fitness based, collective cultural whims set up on the auction block for the highest bidder and sold by the use of sly marketing techniques.

Here I present some of the reasons why capital punishment is a necessary sanction for specific crimes.

It would be so nice if we lived in a truly peaceful world wherein all citizens lived by the Golden Rule.  Unfortunately that is not the case.  On the contrary, because humans have free will and motility, and because that means that selfishness can and does exist, we live in a world where selfish persons may make free choices to rape, rob and murder others for their own profit and reasons.

Perfect pacifism is simply not possible in such a world.

Violence is unfortunately sometimes the only means available for stopping selfish persons from destroying the lives of others. I personally deplore gratuitous violence of every kind. Thus I also necessarily deplore crimes of violence committed against innocent persons.

Therefore I ask the following questions:

  • If all violence (use of force) were always wrong why do we have armed police forces?
  • If all use of deadly force were always wrong why do we have armies?
  • What would the world be like if there were no police and no army?
  • If no amount of murdering can ever deserve the forfeit of the life of the perpetrator then what is life’s true worth? Given this, is the life of the perpetrator worth more than the life of his victims?

How long would an unarmed police officer last on the job? How many violent criminals would take advantage of the unarmed policeman? Then, how many policemen would be ruthlessly murdered on duty? Finally, in light of this, who in their right mind would want to become a police officer?

It becomes more than obvious rather quickly that in a violent world the removal of all capital punishment cannot produce peace, safety or justice.  A very superficial study of history is sufficient to reveal that where there is no law enforcement there is no real law at all, and where there is no armed law enforcement, such enforcement becomes impossible in proportion to the selfishness and criminality of individuals rises.

Generalized intelligence and virtue are the only reasons  to allow democratic freedoms, and as such intelligence and virtue are abandoned in favor of moral stupidity and hedonism, freedoms and safety are naturally lost.

What do pacificists think would happen if all death penalties were outlawed? We all know they themselves would not live very long. Certainly they would lived shorter lives than the man that arms himself.  Criminals that resort to deadly force will not be stopped by some mere written rule without enforcement.  Indeed, there is no such thing as law without sanctions and enforcement.

Now this clearly leads to the question: if capital punishment were always wrong why are our police officers and soldiers armed with deadly force?

When a soldier shoots and kills an invading enemy he is practicing capital punishment. When a police officer shoots and kills a criminal on the verge of committing murder he is applying a death penalty on the spot.  Therefore, if all capital punishment is wrong then is this soldier, this policeman also wrong? Would any victim-to-be think so? Obviously not.

Were there some other way of stopping an invading army we’d all be for it. Were there some other way of stopping a murder – same thing.  Of course in the case of an imminent murder police may use some other non fatal force like a taser if possible.  But there we get into specific circumstances of whether deadly force ought to be used or not and I’m not going to go there in this article.  The point is that there are indeed many incidents in which the response of deadly force, i.e. capital punishment, to an unlawful threat of imminent and severe harm, is the right response.

The question arises however, on whether one that has committed murder ought to be himself killed after the crime? This is the real crux of the debate.

Those opposing capital punishment most often state that if we kill the killer we are doing exactly what he has done and are thus no better than he.  This kind of thinking means that, in that view, no amount of murdering, torturing or raping can bring about the forfeit of the perpetrators own life.  It is however clear that such a view implies that the life of the killer is in fact worth more than all the lives of those that he has killed!  Does anyone seriously believe that?

The no death penalty view also implies that strict principles of justice ought not to be applied to the killer.  How so? Under strict justice if you steal 100 dollars you must repay 100 dollars plus damages to the robbed party. If you steal a car then the value of the car must be restored to the victim plus damages in lost wages etc.

Again there is no such thing as law without sanctions.  But sanctions must be equal to the value of the laws in question. Jay walking, for example, is by no means worthy of life in prison. Going 20 over the speed limit is not worth having ones arm cut off. Stealing a loaf of bread does not deserve having ones hand amputated.

Such penalties are not just in proportion to the offense but in fact severe injustice.  The scales of justice would be seriously off kilter if such severe sanctions were applied to such minor offenses.

So what of murder? Hardly a minor offense.  So, does one life not equal another life? Where do we get off pretending it doesn’t? Those who preach this kind of severely imbalanced “justice” by claiming that in fact a life does not equal another life are do not understand the very nature of justice itself.  If the sanction to “you shall not murder” is less than the value of the precept itself, less than the consequences of the crime itself, then justice is not being served at all. By removing the death penalty for such crimes we have in fact defeated justice itself and are declaring that the life of the murderer is worth more than the life of the murdered.

Under such a crippled view we can find no justification for having either armed police forces or armies at all. All killing would be murder.  The soldier defending his country from invaders as with deadly force as much as the police officer preventing murder would both be murder as well.

Another example: any man has a right and duty to protect his family from an intruder into his home.  If there is clear intent to rape, steal and to kill, deadly force is justified, if no other means is available.  Any man that would not do so would be a coward and a disgrace for allowing his family to be subjected to such horrendous crimes.

Therefore if the use of deadly force used under the circumstances is not morally wrong, how can we possibly see the delayed use of deadly force after the crime as morally wrong? A life equals a life and thus strict justice requires life for life.

About two thousand years ago and man of great learning and experience stated, concerning officers of the law, “He does not bear the sword in vain” – the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Christians in Rome.

To remain logically consistent, those opposing capital punishment are thus forced to oppose the existence of armed police and national armies as well. Is there any sane person that would indeed plead for such? Allow me to seriously doubt it.

Am I promoting persistent capital punishment in all capital crimes? No. There is indeed a place for mercy, leniency and pardon.  However nothing but leniency and pardon is exactly equal to no justice at all ever. Mercy triumphs over judgment but if no judgment is ever applied the law is without sanctions and no law at all.