Analysing: "The argument from evil is usually seen as an argument against God and the most destructive one but it can be seen as an argument that respects the God idea so much that it refuses to say he in any sense uses or is okay with evil."

Is evil really the most powerful argument against God even if it is wrong? Religionists mean that it is a terrible argument despite being the best one against God.  The best argument can be terrible but still be the best of a bad lot.  They are downplaying the argument and that is cruel. They are doing that for ideological purposes.

 

According to Keys, “The non-Christian who challenges the goodness of God, only does so because he thinks he has a clear knowledge of good and evil apart from God which to judge God. Scripture makes plain we are all tainted by sin, even to the affect of our thinking (Jer 17:9; Mark 7:21-23). Augustine taught, the phenomenon called sin (among other things) is a distortion or privation of good. That is, it cannot exist on its own as an independent substance.”

 

The answer is that suffering for example speaks for itself.  The critic of God belief only opens their eyes.  They are not claiming an inner knowledge.  I am the one who decides that evil is too inexcusable for God and the evil in a sense is what decides for me.  Anyway if I decide he is right, I am also deciding.  Either way it is up to me to judge.  And especially if I have the experience of the suffering so it teaches me directly.  Hypothetically if there could be a God I would have to hate him notwithstanding that there cannot be a God worth talking about if it allows such suffering.  I would have to hate belief in him which would be directing hate at the belief construct of God rather than at a God who I think might be real or is real.   The belief threatens me for it is my suffering it is belittling or potentially belittling.

 

Being non-judgmental simply means proving before accusing.  What the Christian Keys says proves that in fact the problem of evil is not a problem but a fatal problem.  A theory that needs to do evil to justify itself is doing the opposite of showing God is possible.  It

 

The claim that our minds are spiritually warped seeks to make us doubt we can work out right and wrong without God.  But if that is true then belief in a God who helps you may be the craftiest and biggest warp.  It is evil to tell somebody who sees that nothing should let a baby suffer terribly that their faculties are impaired and it is because they have immoral traits.  It amounts to using the baby to undermine human perception.

 

If I judge the suffering of the baby to be bad just because I look or because God tells me, in both cases it is still my own judgement.  It all comes back to me.  God cannot tell me what to think without me judging that he is right.  All judging presupposes the right to judge one is good or bad.  So you are already saying God might be bad. Judging God is more arrogant than judging anything else. Suffering is not claimed to be the all-good and all-knowing maker of all but God is. Morality based on God is incoherent for it says pride is bad and yet it is all pride itself.

 

The notion that evil is not an independent thing and good is is as bizarre as saying 2 and 2 being 5 is dependent on 2 and 2 being 4 for it distorts it and the latter has independent existence!

 

So the argument from evil cannot be wrong.  It is an argument yes but also a matter of personal experience.  For everybody, it is an experience and then we make an argument about it.  It is unfair to try to make people uncertain about the argument ignoring the violence this does to human experience.

 

Suppose evil is an argument against God, indeed the best one.  If it is not wrong then it should be.  This means we should be emotionally reluctant to accept any possible solution. It means we only accept one because logic says so. That is why the argument, "It is a mystery" is not an argument but a cop out.

 

Is evil really the most powerful argument against God even if it is wrong? 

 

If so then why? The only decent answer is that evil is so hurtful and disgusting it is an insult to God (if hypothetically he exists) for how it attacks and degrades its children and a bigger insult to the victims and those at risk. If God alone matters or comes first and if to hurt his children is to hurt him then how evil demeans God should be the biggest concern.

 

That is no good for it is assuming what we need to show, that God makes sense.

 

The discussions of the problem of evil notoriously and universally ignore what evil says to God. Passive aggressively however they blame us for moral evil not God and see us as attacking God. But moral evil depends on natural evil and would barely exist if it did not. People need to be vulnerable before anybody can even consider hurting them.  If God exists then God has set that up.

 

The religious think you cannot really use evil to refute God even if it is the best argument simply because you cannot evil really believe in evil unless there is a loving God who hates evil in the first place.  This is arguing in circles.  It is evil to use a trick in such a serious subject.  It is saying that their pet theory God matters and the vast and incomprehensible suffering in the universe does not matter a bit in comparison.