THERE IS NO GOD

Faith is okay as long as there is nothing in it that may lead you to condoning what should not be condoned. Or even what you suspect or should think should not be condoned. Faith should mean that if you are a believer or unbeliever then no harm is done to you or anybody.
 
How can an all-good God stand by while people suffer? Believers oddly are fond of saying he allows evil to happen instead of saying that he has to put up with it for a greater good. You would expect an evil God might order you to say he does evil or puts up with it for a greater good. All tyrants do that.

The risks associated with getting it wrong if you say God tolerates evil for a justified reason are huge. The risks of being right that God lets evil happen for a good reason are nothing for if you have a bad opinion of God he can bring good out of it anyway.

God allegedly says he lets people suffer because he respects free will but would we see a person as good who walked on by as hooligans beat up a child and who uses that excuse? Using the excuse would make that person even more bad than he already is.

Anyway believers invent other excuses for God's neglect - they often see the inadequacies of depending on the free will excuse alone. An excuse in such a grave matter amounts to an insult.

You should experience exactly what sufferers experience before you can declare the right to assert that their suffering is compatible with a loving creator.

You need a straightforward reason why God could allow suffering to happen - it needs to be straightforward because you need to avoid the risk of making excuses for God's responsibility for evil when his role might be unjustifiable. You cannot be the kind of person who risks endorsing evil in the name of good. Taking the risk says something about you. It is different if you are forced to take the risk but you are not.

There are two types of arguments against an all-good God being able to let evil happen.

The logical arguments argue that evil and God contradict each other.

The evidentialist arguments say that even if God does exist, we cannot be expected to say he does for evil makes his existence unlikely.

For an evidentialist, God might exist in theory but it is hardly likely he does for certain kinds of evil tell against a loving creator. The evidentialist says that though God might allow evil for the sake of a worthwhile good, there are cases that cannot be worth it. What if you cannot prove they are not worth it? Many evidentialists say if you are entitled to suppose they are not worth it, it is enough. It doesn't mean you are sure, only that you cannot be blamed for supposing they are not worth it. A really good person will suppose assuming there is no way to be sure.

The evidentialist may also accept logical arguments against God or he may not.

Religion urges you to refuse to feel that seemingly useless suffering is not worth it. You should feel it is worthless. If you are good at helping people you will be better if you feel that.

Religion works out how God can be good despite the existence of evil. But if these answers make sense of that, that does not mean they are right. It does not mean they are the answers. They are still only assumptions. Unless you have knowledge of all existence and can plainly see the evidence for how the evil that happened served a worthwhile good you have no right to say that God is right to allow evil. It is an evidence question not a theory question. It is too serious of a matter to simply theorise about. The theories let you say there might be a good God but they do not entitle you to believe there is or create or follow religions that say there is.
 
It is one of religions tricks to disguise the answers as evidence. They are not evidence.
 
And the answers are not answers either but lies that are evil themselves.
 
After all that, we don't need to bother trying to look at excuses for divine evil and heartlessness. You will be disturbed at how believers can know that God letting evil happen cannot be condoned and seem to not care - they seem to remain believers and supporters of the God doctrine.
 
EVIL CONDONED
 
The believers admit that they do not and cannot base their faith in God on the evil they see in the world (page 32, Asking Them Questions). That is as faulty as believing in the goodness of a sadist because a few people praise him and excuse him to you while paying less heed to the awful things he does. To condone the mercilessness of a God whose ways cannot be justified is no different to condoning that of a tyrant on earth. Correction: it is worse because people have different ideas and opinions which is why if you ask any number of people what the right thing to do in a particular situation is they will give a wide range of different answers. Despite this, the tyrant gets nothing but condemnation. The pope gets praise while he murders women by banning contraception for they are too afraid and too conditioned to disobey him – he may say that conscience is the ultimate guide but adds that no conscience consistent with Catholic dogma would disagree with him for the ban is in tradition. God gets an even more dedicated torrent of praise which is a worry for no excuse for him works. Many will rightly see this praise as offensive even if religion is right that God does right because this cannot be proved meaning it is still unjustifiably offensive. Priests and clergymen don’t worry much about that. You cannot condemn the tyrant when life on earth is fraught with difficult decisions and good deeds that look evil when one does not know all the facts while God gets applauded for setting up worse evils without declaring your hatred for humankind.
 
The problem of evil should be solvable. If it is solvable it would only mean there might be a God. Solving it does not force us to believe in God assuming God considers intellectual compulsion to be out of the question. Better to deny the existence of God and be even fairly unhappy than to sanction death, lies and fanaticism with the doctrine or to even risk doing so unjustly.  

A loving God will give you the gift of evidence that suffering could be necessary.  Nobody should have to guess or assume that something dreadful is needed.  It is too serious for that.

BAD THINGS HAPPENING TO GOOD PEOPLE

One popular reason why people may not believe in God is because bad things happen to good people.  The wicked often seem rewarded and even get forgiveness on their deathbeds and get through the gate of Heaven forever.  Some dismiss all that to argue that the problem is good things happening to bad people.  But to complain that bad things happen to the good is to complain that good things happen to the bad.  Saints end up with terrible ends and the good works they planned to do end up undone.  There is no pattern.  Calling it a mystery is only saying, "It looks random but maybe it is still not random".  That is a rationalisation or an excuse.  You do not say that the puddle on the floor beside your dog was not his answering nature's call but was just condensation.  You cannot give evidence to support the excuse so it is just a guess and a rationalisation and shows you are willing to risk pretending that people are looked after just so you can believe in a competent god.
 
CONCLUSION
  
There is no God. The belief is actually harmful and it condones evil that cannot be condoned. It will lead deep believers down the path of cruelty to others and to themselves for they will realise that there is something sinister in belief in God and it is a belief that gets a grip like a drug addiction. That will make them desensitised to harming others as long as they tell themselves that it is for a greater good. We cannot take the risk that this will happen and if we protect one person by letting the truth be known we can be glad.
 
APPENDIX
 
Religion is man's attempt to live in the light of what he holds to be ultimately true and good. . . . Religion is not loyalty to the ultimately true and good, but only what we hold to be such. It has always been this, however much more it may have claimed to be.

Reason and Belief, page 555, Brand Blanchard
 
The treatment of evil by theology seems to me an intellectual disgrace. The question at issue is a straightforward one: how are the actual amount and distribution of evil to be reconciled with the government of the world by a God which is in our sense good? So straightforward a question deserves a straightforward answer, and it seems to me that only one such answer makes sense, namely that the two sides can not be reconciled. . . . Some theologians, aware of this conflict, have at certain points resorted to open revolt against reason and its morality. We have studied this revolt in the theological line that runs from Luther through Kierkegaard to Brunner and Barth, and seen that it is self-destructive. For my own part, I am ready to stand correction for the ignobility of my naturalistic ethics, but not from theologians of this stripe. If their ideal of goodness is the will of a Deity who could inflict or permit the evil we know in the world, they have no consistent standard at all. How can anyone of clean conscience call good in the Deity what he would regard as intensely evil in man? To tie ethics to the will of such a being is not to exalt one's ethics but to reduce it to incoherence.

Reason and Belief, pages 546-47, Brand Blanchard
 
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THE WEB

www.colorado.edu/philosophy/wes/Tooley2.html
THE ARGUMENT FROM EVIL AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD by Michael Tooley.

http://www.nd.edu/~rpotter/courses/finitism.htm 
FINITISM AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL, R Dennis Potter

www.ffrf.org/fttoday/august97/barker.html 
THE FREE WILL ARGUMENT FOR THE NON-EXISTENCE OF GOD by Dan Barker