From atheistic perspective, why does evil exist?

Question

if there really is a god why doesnt he do anything about all the evil going around all over the world? detailed answers please.

Answer 1

There is no such thing as evil. There is only perspective. Something you might call evil, I might call perfectly reasonable, depending on the circumstances.

Answer 2

Why God doesn't do anything about evil in the world? Because God gives you free will to do what you want, to choose, you are not a slave. How can God be loving if He doesn't give you free will? You would be like a robot, only doing good. If you are an atheist, you don't believe in a god, then you can' t believe in evil, either.If you don't believe in God, you cannot blame it on God, you will just have to come up with some other explanation. But, if your rationalize why would a normal human do this and that, and come up with evil, then it is evil. If there is a bad (evil), there must be a good, a God. If you are asking these questions, good, then I would muster up the courage to keep asking questions.

Answer 3

Evil is simply a perspective, a way of looking at the things which occur. If something occurs that causes pain or fear it is called evil. By the same token if something brings joy or happiness it is called good. But it all depends on which side of the coin you reside. Take for example the Bush war on terror. Those who are reaping the benefits of the war say that it is good. While those who suffer loss because of it call it evil. Where do you stand.

Answer 4

To be evil is to act in opposition of the nature of man. Only the actions of man can be evil; just b/c the sun may cause cancer, doesn't make it evil. There are 2 kinds of evil, ignorant primitive idiots (throwing girls into volcanoes; or the modern version, sending suicide bomber teenagers to terrorize) and those that are just flat out at war with reality (and man) such as dictatorships.

Why does evil exist? Because being lazy in thinking leads to it, b/c bad philosophies are popular in our humanities departments, b/c most people won't focus nor take ideas seriously.

Answer 5

The problem with the answers you have received so far is that they are all saying that truth is depending on the situation. Thus situational ethics reigns in their minds. That is VERY dangerous because if you accept that premise, you would hate Hitler, not because he killed millions of Jews and others, but because he didn't finish the job, as HIS situation dictated. Simply put, there are immutable truths. Many laws of physics support that staement, and, of course, there are the religous among us who would say God's word is the truth and is immutable. God gave humans free will to make decisions. Therefore, He is much like a watchmaker who makes a watch and then sits back and watches it tick. Free will allows decision making, and, unfortunately, those decisions are not always good ones.

I hope this helps.

Answer 6

God had to allow the possibility of evil to ensure we have our greatest gift: choice. Evil exists because we are free to choose, there is nothing 'relative' about it. Just because one person says, "you are a terrorist.", and the other says, "No, I am a freedom-fighter." doesn't mean that killing an inocent child is not evil (remember Beslan?). What we are really saying is that we disagree about whether the death was justifyable or not. But if it were our child that was brutally murdered, any grieving parent would call the act of murder evil.

Answer 7

From a truely Atheistic perspective, evil does NOT exist. Things simply are.

Answer 8

Does god do things because he's benevolent? If yes, then what he wills is because he's right. but...

If he's benevolent, how could he allow 6 million of his chosen people to be incinerated by Hitler, or why did he allow Truman to vaporize 200,000 Japanese men, women and children or Stalin to kill 30m Christians? If he was also omnipotent AND benevolent, then these events could not have happened.

If you counter that man's "free will" caused those events to happen, so don't blame God, then can it be said God is not omnipotent AND benevolent, because he allowed man's free will to reign?

And further, the mere existence of evil in the world makes the existence of a benign god impossible: if god were omnipotent, he could eliminate evil and if he were benign, he would want to do so...another way of saying this:

If god is able to prevent evil but is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not benevolent.

If god is willing to prevent evil but is not able to prevent evil, then he is not omnipotent.

Evil is either in occordance with god's intention or contrary to it. Thus, either god cannot prevent evil or he does not want to prevent evil.

Answer 9

Of course there is a God. This is not a detailed answer, but i will give you an answer after this question. Why is it everyone thinks that God sits back and allows this evil? He is probably very disappointed but he is the reason we are all here, why do we blame him for our actions? He created us and we took it from there.

Answer 10

Good and evil is an illusion, think about it, people say that that thing is evil, because this thing goes against their nature. And people say that thing for example is good, because this thing is helpful for them. Good and evil is something relative, some societies like the Muslim society consider having sex without marriage as a crime, other societies consider it normal.

Also, free will is an illusion. Most people believe in free will, because they don't know the future, and because they don't know how our DNA and the environment we live in affects our life.
Believe it or not, humans are not something special. we are very complicated machine that functions from the input of the environment and the society that we live in.