The Problem of Evil and Why Atheists Can’t Deal With It
You say “Christianity is a CRUTCH”?? Let’s talk about the real crutch…
Welcome to the New America. Dubbed ‘God’s Comic’ by the New Yorker, for 16-years, Brad Stine has been the comedic trailblazer of politically incorrect, Christian and Conservative comedy. His new show, ‘Brad Stine Has Issues’, covers cultural issues with his signature brand of comedic sarcasm and satire with insight that will be appreciated by everyone who loves laughter, liberty, and the freedom to tell the truth without fear.
Hey atheist, have you ever noticed all the evil, destruction disease and chaos in the world? What if I told you I know where it comes from and when I tell you who’s responsible you won’t like it? Stop crying and c’mon in.
One of the top three knocks by atheists about why they don’t believe in God is: If He existed, why would He allow evil in the world?
I mean, they say that if God was loving, He would never allow cancer in children, wars among nations, and slavery and rapes amongst the innocent right?
On the surface, that kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, even humans, when they see something evil or harmful being done to someone else, they will often times try to defend them, right? So, if a human being believes that’s the just way to live, wouldn’t God – who gave us justice in the first place – be obligated even more so?
But, what the atheist always leaves out of that equation is something they’ve never considered: The very fact they believe that it is their right and their entitlement to even be able to ask that question.
You see, any question about God assumes that: 1) we are rational creatures capable of assessing a situation logically; 2) that we can differentiate between good and evil in the first place.
You see, if evil actually exists and all you have to do is look at human history to find out, then that has to mean that goodness exists as well. We all want goodness, clearly, but there is no such attribute unless someone can deviate from it. Because evil is the opposite of goodness.
So, you can only have the possibility of blaming God for allowing evil if every time you experience goodness you are thanking God for the pleasure of that experience.
But no one does that do they? It’s actually the opposite. Whenever someone does experience a good thing, by giving it or receiving it, who do we give credit to? Ourselves! Why? Because we intrinsically realize that we could have chosen to do the opposite. That is why we have a thing called a “hero”. Because someone found themselves in a dangerous situation and they chose to risk their life to save someone else. In other words, something heroic only carries weight because we could have chosen to do the opposite.
That, by the way, is what the atheist treasures the most – his autonomy to be able to choose not to believe in God. If God made you believe in Him, then you didn’t actually believe in Him at all. Instead you were just programed to respond a certain way.
So, keep in mind that when someone does an evil thing, it isn’t God doing it, it is the individual. So, God allows evil people to do evil things. Otherwise we wouldn’t be autonomous or free. We would just complain God is making us be nice all the time.
There are a thousand babies butchered at Planned Parenthood every day. Why don’t you do something about it? Oh, you don’t care? Then you’re evil. Why doesn’t God make you care, make you do right? But suddenly you wouldn’t like that would you.
Why is there cancer in children always strikes me as odd. They never frame it, “Why does God allow cancer in a middle-aged accountant from Tupelo?” as though maybe he deserved it? No, it’s always, “Why does God allow cancer in children?” It’s as though they are less worthy of cancer, but a 30-year-old is the same child who has simply been alive longer. Couldn’t a 90-year-old say, “Why does God allow cancer in a 30-year-old?” Yet, children represent innocence to us. And since we all can remember moments of childhood, there is also the reality that we were once vulnerable and ripe for abuse.
Notice, though, that the atheist is making a leap of faith. They are indicating that humans have some sort of innate worth by which they should live a life unaltered by disease or sudden death. They are giving a superior moral value to humans that they don’t give to animals and yet insist that’s all we really are. No one is complaining why God allows tigers to hunt and eat an antelope alive… even a child antelope.
We have this instinct, as humans, that there is something morally unbalanced and unjust in the untimely death of a child. If they were true to their materialism, they would remember that they believe death ends all consciousness for eternity. Thus, not only does a cancer riddled child have no concern for their death once they have died, since they’ll never be aware they existed anyway, but those who complain about the deaths and blame God also will die soon and move in to eternal unconsciousness so in the scheme of things to be consistent with your nihilistic worldview. You should be saying, “Who gives a crap if a four-year-old dies of cancer? The dead kid doesn’t care, and it leaves more food on earth for me and one less kid crying on an airplane.”
The atheist is constantly behaving and reasoning in ways that would only be of any value if there was, in fact, eternal life, ultimate justice and punishment for doing evil. Otherwise, as the religion of Darwinism teaches, life is simply meaningless.
Now, here is where I have to bring up something I have observed for years since I have been engaging atheists in dialogue. What I am about to say will at first sound like some kind of insult… but it isn’t. What I am about to say is my actual experience dealing with the new atheist in real time. Are you ready? Ok.
Atheists are literally incapable of grasping the concept that if they believe life, in the meta sense, is meaningless then everything they do every day…. is meaningless as well.
Now, that might seem simple to grasp, but it isn’t for the atheist. They can’t grasp it. Why? Because they have trained themselves to believe that only material things exist. They believe in a closed system of the universe that contains all the properties of matter, energy, time and that’s it. There is nothing transcendent or immaterial that exists. There is nothing on the other side of what we can grasp using our five senses and our intellect; and so the concept of the immaterial or God simply cannot exist.
Now, there are many arguments to defeat this concept, but that’s not what I am going to speak to today. No, today I only want to focus on the reality that was reached by some very well-known atheists. Atheists, I might add, who are much smarter and philosophically influential than Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris or Daniel Dennett. I’m talking about David Humes, or perhaps who we could refer to as “the father of modern atheism” Fredrich Nietzsche, as well as Bertrand Russell and others. Nietzsche, of course, was most famous for the concept “God is dead”. But, what is usually ignored by the new atheism is the conclusion he reached after reaching the dead god conclusion. He said that if there is no god, all things are permissible. So, what Nietzsche understood better than most modern atheists is if Darwinism is true, we arrived on this planet without purpose or design and there is no absolute truths by which we can make sense of it all, then cancer in children, wars and rapes and torture and murder are simply the way our bodies work, some survive for a while without cancer, and others get cancer which is just nature’s way of weeding out the week.
As far as “EVIL” things humans do to each other, that’s an illusion and its encoded in our brains as simply a way to survive.
So, if you are an atheist let me make this very clear: You can no longer complain or be outraged about evil and disease and disasters and pain. It’s simply the result of evolution and Darwinism. BUT, if you can’t shake the feeling that there ought to be justice, that there should be punishment for bad behaviors and there should be some hopeful place of rest and peace for those who choose to humble themselves and put others in front of their own personal needs, desire’s and survival and you have just observed existentially just one of the myriads of evidence for God that heretofore you claimed didn’t exist, you have just experienced the God of creation gently drawing you to the truth you have instinctively known all along but were too filled with pride to accept.
The reason evil exists is because YOU exist. God paid the price for that, by the way.
Welcome to reality. The red pill isn’t so bad after all is it?
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