Evil Argument For Atheism

The existence of evil is a part of life for every human being in the world. The existence of evil brings into question the image and even the existence of God. However, the existence of evil does not support the argument for atheism. This idea is supported by the need for evil to exist in order for good to exist. Including extreme cases when evil seems so excessive, even unnecessary, there is lacking evidence to disprove the existence of God. Daniel Howard-Snyder and Michael Bergmann’s “Evil Does Not Make Atheism Mire Reasonable than Theism” sustains the main argument that, “Nobody has a good argument that displays how evil makes atheism more likely than theism,” (Howard-Snyder, Bergmann). Evil is not satisfactory evidence for atheism because

One of the major arguments for atheism is known as the problem of evil. The problem of evil is built upon the image and attributes of God for some religions, particularly certain monotheistic religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity). The image of God is a perfect being with the qualities of being all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. Having a God consisting of all of these qualities presents a concerning discrepancy. If there is an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good God, then one may ask: Why is there unnecessary evil in the world? Clearly, there are some good things come out of bad things that happen. For example, there would not be such things as perseverance and courage without the presentation of a negative or adverse situations. However, there is the existence of what seem to be unnecessary evils. These consist of terrible events in the world that appear to offer zero benefit or have any merit for the betterment of society. In philosophy, one of the most commonly cited examples of unnecessary evils is an infant deer burning in a forest fire. What good does the meaningless suffering of an unknowing newborn animal offer the world? Unnecessary evils present a hole in the existence of God. Why would a God who is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good allow these events to happen? If there is unnecessary evil in the world and God does not know about it, then He is not all-knowing.

One of the key components of this argument is the concept of God having a “greater plan” and having everything happen for a righteous reason in order to uphold the attributes of all-knowing and all-good. For the image of God to hold these ideals, He must be on a level of consciousness than humans can’t even perceive or understand. According to physicist Max Tegmark in “Consciousness as a State of Matter” levels of consciousness exist as a spectrum (Tegmark). He says that some living beings are simply more conscious than others. For example, human beings considered are more conscious, at least more cognitively aware, than say a dog. One would then agree that a dog is more conscious than a fish and so on. From the other direction, certain organisms without mental capacity may be more conscious than others. ¬For example, one would agree that a plant may be more conscious than say a rock because a plant can receive and act on stimuli from its environment. Even though a plant does not have a brain or other attributes people would associate with consciousness it does possess live to greater degree than inanimate objects. Clearly, there is a particularly wide spectrum for consciousness, and the level of godlike consciousness is beyond present day human thought. It is comparable to a human owning a fish tank. The fish living in the tank