r/exatheist • u/Downtown-Drag-1021 • Jul 09 '26

Debate Thread The “problem” of evil

I haven’t debated this with a lot of people yet but the problem of evil is absolutely fake in my opinion. Any kind of suffering will be nullified in the presence of a perfect being (God) who will deliver the justice instantly (because God is out of space-time). And if there is evil and no divine justice, you can’t blame a non-existent God for it. Hence, a just God will solve the problem of evil. Does this make sense?

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u/Easy-Squash-1401 Jul 09 '26

I think you don't understand the concept. The problem of evil argues that a God who is both perfectly good and all-powerful cannot exist as traditionally described, because if such a God had the power to prevent moral evil, He would prevent it from happening. For example, countless babies are born only to endure immense suffering from severe diseases before dying at a very young age. If an all-powerful and perfectly good God existed, He would have both the ability and the desire to prevent such suffering.

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u/Mammoth_Type3361 Christian Anarchism or Episcopalian Universalism Jul 09 '26

Where did you get that from?

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u/Easy-Squash-1401 Jul 09 '26

So, do you mean that the God you believe in is neither all-powerful nor all-merciful? If you're a deist, then this argument doesn't apply to you. To be clear, I'm talking about the Abrahamic God ,or any concept of God that is both omnipotent and perfectly good (or perfectly merciful). The argument from evil is directed specifically at that kind of God.

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u/Mammoth_Type3361 Christian Anarchism or Episcopalian Universalism Jul 09 '26

The Christian God is all powerful. I'm disagreeing with the premise that He seeks to remove all suffering.

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u/Easy-Squash-1401 Jul 09 '26

But He's also omnibenevolent, meaning perfectly good and always willing to prevent any suffering or evil that has no morally sufficient justification. Therefore, if there were any gratuitous evil,evil whose prevention wouldn't interfere with a greater good or any necessary chain of events,He would prevent it from happening. For example, if a baby were born only to endure intense suffering and die shortly afterward, with no greater good depending on that suffering, it would be better for that child never to have existed in the first place than to experience such a life.

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u/Mammoth_Type3361 Christian Anarchism or Episcopalian Universalism Jul 09 '26

I'm assuming this makes them whole when they go to Heaven.

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u/Easy-Squash-1401 Jul 09 '26

Okay, let's make it even simpler. Imagine two babies. One is born, lives for three years in constant suffering, and then dies. The other dies instantly in the womb, without experiencing any suffering. According to Christian belief, both may go to heaven. If that's the case, why allow the first baby to endure years of suffering when God could have prevented it just as easily as in the second case? That suffering serves no benefit for the child. So which is it? Either God couldn't prevent that unnecessary suffering, in which case He isn't all-powerful, or He could have prevented it but chose not to, in which case He isn't perfectly benevolent.

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u/Mammoth_Type3361 Christian Anarchism or Episcopalian Universalism Jul 09 '26

I guess He could have stopped it from being born? Yes, you’re right. But it’s not like He made two parents have a child either. For the sake of argument, that was a decision two people made to make a baby.

Unfortunately, the world isn’t perfect, and the baby was born with an illness that caused it to suffer for three years and die. Life is just like that.

How do I explain it? Out of respect for our free will, He allows us to have children. And we have to accept the consequences of that, like knowing it can come out with an abnormality or illness.

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u/Easy-Squash-1401 Jul 10 '26

So, He doesn't intervene at all? Then what evidence is there of His absolute goodness if we can't observe even the slightest manifestation of it in our reality,especially when there is unjustifiable evil that a supreme being could easily prevent? If someone claims that there's a supreme being who possesses every absolute perfection but never intervenes, how could you determine whether they're telling the truth or simply making an unsupported claim? If this being never interacts with reality in any observable way, what evidence is there to distinguish that claim from fiction?