“How Could a Good and Powerful God Allow Suffering in the World?”

One thing I think that Christians get wrong is this idea that if someone believes in the existence of good and evil that God is the only conclusion. I am not sure that is such a strong argument. Atheist believe in morality as being derived from what allows the species to propagate. We don't kill because we as humans have empathy, we have love, we desire our species to continue, and murder goes against these traits. I think we have to be careful in where we take this argument.

>>Atheist believe in morality as being derived from what allows the species to propagate. We don’t kill because we as humans have empathy, we have love, we desire our species to continue, and murder goes against these traits.<<

Of course, this would also allow for something akin to genocide, if you see an opposing tribe as being dangerous for your tribe to continue and propagate. If opposing murder is for a practical purpose, selected murder could also meet that end.

Atheists might be able to claim a “derived” version of morality, but if it’s not absolute, it can always be ignored for a “greater” good (in the eye of the beholder). To me, atheists’ version of morality as you describe it above sounds an awful lot like “every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” Sure, you can say it will be agreed on and applied in group fashion rather than individually, but there will never be 100% agreement. There are non-western countries existing today that have no problem attempting genocide on each other. I think this problem would be worse if the influence of God’s law were not still in existence in some form.

If the standard isn’t reflective of something greater than humanity, it can (and most likely will) eventually be set aside when it’s inconvenient.

We don’t kill because we as humans have empathy, we have love, we desire our species to continue, and murder goes against these traits. I think we have to be careful in where we take this argument.

Evolutionary psychology and enlightened self-interest. I think these ultimately fail to explain why we are the way we are, but they do provide handy ways to poke holes in the ‘belief in good and evil requires belief in God’ argument.

But guys like Stephen Meyer and I think Alvin Plantinga have made a pretty good case that the survival mechanisms of naturalistic/”unaided” evolution can’t adequately explain those features of human nature. Well, like a lot of the evolutionary answers, they sort of can, but you have to assume context.

In the case of empathy and social bonds, evolutionary psychology can sort of work if you jump into the story half way through. The real problem is getting living things to the point that their survival is any way impacted by empathy or that they even have any capacity for it.

I don’t recall if that’s the same argument I’ve read in Meyer or Plantinga or wherever it was (Behe? It seems more like an Alvin Plantinga thing). But it quickly suggests itself. How does the capacity for empathy evolve in the first place? But any answer to that question just pushes the problem further back until you eventually arrive at “how does a living thing that can reproduce evolve in the first place?”

Which is really not a problem that has been solved naturalistically.

The problem of how there is even a universe has not been solved naturalistically, though more than a few think they’ve solved that problem (but disagree with one another on whether they have or not!).

Meyer’s Return of the God Hypothesis was particularly fascinating on that point. I had not realized the “alternatives to religion” school was so divided against itself on origin of the universe and origin of life. But they really are not of one mind on how either of these things could have happened. (A whole lot of them now say “multiverse,” but they don’t agree on how multiverse could have come to be, or even really what it is.)

So, coming back around, “belief in good and evil requires belief in God (if you’re going to be logically consistent)” holds up, but it’s a bit complex.

My point was not so much that it was equal or superior of a view, because it isn't. The point was, that depending on your worldview and presuppositions, the statement, "why should the world be that way, if God does not exist? If the world is simply the result of random explosions and conglomerations of matter, why should anyone expect it to be good" is not solely answered by a Christian worldview. An atheist would look at the world and say it is only random, but that there are guided processes. Again, not defending that view, but in my arguments with atheists they are content in their view of why good and morality exists and are not just unguided processes.