Reason #1: The Problem of Evil

Current verdict: Against the existence of God
Certainty (-5 to 5): -3

"Perhaps the greatest obstacle for religious belief met by a christian believer in his or her own reflections and coming also from unbelievers, is the obvious existence of evil in the world evil seems to negate any possibility of a loving God and of a revelation from Him. I am not thinking here of moral evil (sin) Sin is perhaps inevitable considering the fact that man is free to obey or disobey God's commandments Rather I am thinking of things like natural catastrophes (floods, earthquakes, fires, plagues) which apparently destroy indiscriminately the good and the bad alike Plainly this is not a perfect world. If Godi s all-powerful and all-loving, why did God create a world in which there is so much suffering? One answer is that the Creator did not, but suffering came in as a retribution for the sin of the first man ("original sin") when he disobeyed God. While this answer still tries the faith of the Christian believer it offers nothing to the unbeliever. For the , unbeliever a more acceptable answer might be that God created a world good enough to serve as the theater of man's activities, yet imperfect enough to force man to use his own ingenuity and skills to control the forces of nature Including the destructive ones. A third answer, satisfying again only to a Christian believer, is that all sufferings, all injustices and inequities, will be set right in the next life. In the final analysis, the problem of evil in the world remains unsolved."

Ever heard of the silly question: "If a tree falls in the forest and no one sees or hears it, did it fall?" Well, suppose that a tree falls in the forest and kills an ant that happened to be passing by, which I am absolutely sure has happened before. Now, could it not have been that God could have made is such that the tree fell without killing the ant. Surely there are moments when no ants are underneath. The ant need not have died needlessly. Isn't it in some sense evil that it died when it need not have?

But that is the reality of the world that this supposedly perfect God created. Nature is not really perfect. The reality of nature is that many animals die horrible deaths and only a few survive to reproduce and almost none survive to a 'ripe old age'.

For me, there is no satisfactory answer why a God that is all good would make the world the way it is.