What's Your Problem With Evil?

Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

                    ~Epicurus



The problem of evil is a greater problem than this traditional argument first levelled by Epicurus. First off the word evil itself lends itself to controversy; to modern atheists, there is no such thing as evil in the first place. Atheists even get a little peeved at the use of the term evil, even going so far as to call it a loaded term. So why would you start to argue about it? Atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins talk about suffering, want and natural disasters as evil, but this isn’t what the Religious view of evil actually means. Christian concepts of evil focus exclusively on malevolence, viz. a deliberate and non-natural means of introducing more suffering into the world than is natural to the world we live in. So wherein lies the argument? How can one complain about a God causing, allowing or otherwise condoning evil, when it is obvious that people cause, allow and condone evil? Is the Epicurean argument nothing more than more wailing because sky won’t open and a loud booming voice won’t reveal itself?

I suppose it's understandable to be frustrated, but it achieves little to nothing. We find ourselves in a world of natural laws, and natural laws doom some to never ending suffering and a short life at that. Yet you can’t properly say that it’s evil that some are starving, it is unfortunately just the natural order. Marxists too were frustrated and sought to reallocate resources to benefit everyone, but the extent of their failure should be enough to prove that capitalism has an objective foundation. Perhaps the west needs more exposure to the wisdom of Buddhism to avoid making the same mistake as the Marxists of the last century. Buddhism teaches that suffering is neutral, it’s not evil. Malice however is definitely evil and the fault lies with mankind, not with God.