I saw the following quote on an Atheist's website. It's called "The Problem of Evil," and it's by Epicurus, a Greek Philosopher:
"Is God willing to stop 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
Do you see what Epicurus is trying to do here? He's trying to say that the existence of evil in the world is proof that God doesn't exist. Let's see if it holds up under careful analysis, though:
Epicurus asks, "whence cometh evil?" Well, if you don't believe in God, then you have to blame evil on MAN. Who else are you going to blame it on? Here's the thing, though: If man is responsible for evil when God doesn't exist, he's just as responsible for it when God DOES exist. Otherwise, you're saying that evil isn't man's fault for committing it, but God's fault for not stopping it. This means you're in a moral jam if someone were to, say, hold you up at gunpoint. According to Epicurus, you can't blame the criminal because God should be stopping him, right? But guess what? If God DID stop us from holding people up with guns (or stealing, or taking drugs, or cheating on our spouses) we'd complain about THAT! Want proof of that? Why, it's in one of the OTHER quotes posted on this same atheist's website, placed directly underneath Epicurus' quote, no less:
"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and rebellion." - Oscar Wilde.
See what I mean? With one quote this atheist is complaining about evil, but in the next, he's justifying it. Using our example of a robber again, man wants to complain about being robbed, but then turn around and justify robbing others (in the name of "progress" of course).
There's a contradiction here that's coming from trying to have something both ways, and this is what lies at the heart of atheism. For example, atheists claim that morality can exist without a God, but then they turn around and say that if God does exist, he sure made a messed up world. Which is it? Are we moral or messed up? You don't get it both ways. You don't get to say that we're moral if God doesn't exist, and that we're messed up if he does. And if you try to say we're a little of both, then you doubly contradict Charles Darwin, self-proclaimed inventor of the Evolution Wish (I call it a wish because it technically doesn't even qualify as a theory), who said that there is neither good nor evil in the universe, but only pitiless indifference. And if you agree with that, then how can there be morality without God? And if you try to say that there's no such thing as good or evil, on what grounds can you call Christianity bad and atheism good?
See what I mean? You're stuck. But what are we getting stuck on? Like I said, it's something that we're trying to have both ways, so let's see if we can diagnose what it is that man is trying to have both ways:
As Epicurus and Mr. Wilde showed us above, we want God to intervene when we're bring held up at gunpoint, but to turn his head when we're holding the gun. The problem with that, of course, is that it obviously can't work for everyone. Someone's eventually going to get shot. The only way this can work for everyone is for God to let us shoot each other up and then use his omnipotent powers to FIX all the damage. THIS is what atheists are really demanding when they say they want evidence of God. They point out all the problems in the world: cancer, birth defects, crime, poverty and STD's, etc, then claim that a loving God would just fix it all, and if he would, THEN they would believe in him. However, if God DID fix all the problems in the world we would simply go right back to committing all the same sins that lead to those things in the first place (smoking, environment pollution, robbery, murder, etc, etc, etc).
It's not hard to see that it's SIN atheists are trying to have both ways. They want their sin without any consequences. So why won't God just let man keep his precious, destructive sin and be his cosmic janitor/doctor? Because destruction was never part of God's plan for us (Isaiah 11:6-9). So, where did destructive urges come from, then? They came from US when we chose Satan's plan over what God had planned for us in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:5-6). God had even warned Adam and Eve that listening to Satan would lead specifically to DEATH (Genesis 2:17). Satan, whose power is death (Hebrews 2:14) and whose murder weapon is the LIE (John 8:44), makes those things which slowly and subtly destroy us look and feel attractive. Because of Adam and Eve's choice to believe Satan over God, this world is now an incarnation of man's choice of death over life, and it's why all of our favorite and basest impulses lead to disaster when followed to their end. Our disobedience, which Mr. Wilde thought so highly of, turned God's promise into a HARSH promise:
(Galatians 6:7)
God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Guess what that means? It means that all the bad things happening to us right now, individually, and as a world, aren't just bad, incidental dice rolls, but ripples that are hitting us for a reason. It means that these carnal urges of ours aren't just "selfish genes," but destructive illusions created by a very real Satan. It means we aren't just the world's most badly behaved mammals, but spirits with choices that have powerful consequences. And guess what all of THAT means? It means we don't get to keep our sin and have God come around to fix all of the damage. It means we have to sow something besides sin if we expect to reap something besides sin. Like the saying goes, "You can choose your sin, but not your consequences."
But we don't think we should have to accept that in this soft age of blaming the mirror for the reflection. Every man is right is in own eyes, just like the Bible says (Proverbs 21:2). That's why some people can only accept God as being weak, wicked, or altogether non-existent when things don't go their way. It's why some people throw a hissy fit, walk into a building, shoot everybody up, and make someone else out there wonder why we live in such a messed up world. On and on, like a paddleball, we keep smacking against that verse we earned for ourselves:
(Galatians 6:7)
God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
And then we just blame it all on God. We blame God for cancer without considering that there are so many man-made carcinogens in the air and water that it's a miracle we don't ALL have cancer. We blame God for birth defects without considering that there is so much Sodium Fluoride and fertility-killing GMO's (genetically modified organisms) in our food today that it's a miracle we aren't ALL being born with birth defects. (We ARE getting closer to that, though. The cancer rate has increased by 1000% in the last 40 years, and in just the last FIVE YEARS the autism rate has increased from 1 in 150 to 1 in 100. Did you know that?) We blame God instead of weak parenting for daughters that get pregnant at thirteen and misguided sons that go on killing sprees. We tell God, who upholds and maintains all order and life (Colossians 1:17, Hebrews 1:3), to get out of our lives, our schools, our workplaces, our homes, our WORLD, and then blame him for natural disasters when he obliges us and takes his maintenance out from inbetween us and destruction. (It's also interesting that we blame him for a disaster without thanking him for all the PREVIOUS days when nothing happened.) On and on, when disaster strikes we just shake our fist at the sky, having suddenly become experts on what a loving God should do when things go bad, even though we've spent our whole life denying him when things were going good. When things go wrong, we say things like, "One simple act of God could have prevented this." But would we have still called it an "act of God" if things had gone like we wanted? Or would we have just seen it as more proof that things can go smoothly without God? This comic panel says it all:
Get the picture? The dismal state of the world isn't proof that God doesn't exist; it's proof that we don't listen to him.
Atheism is simply a frustrated denial of the war between the spirit and the flesh. Truthfully, everyone believes in God to some degree, whether they admit that or not. Some people just don't like what his existence means about US. So they spend their entire lives trying to convince themselves that he doesn't exist, under the guise of trying to convince everyone else. Like a lot of pastors have said before, Atheists can't find God for the same reason a thief can't find the sheriff.
Let's finish up by deflating some Atheist quotes:
(1) "If you don't sin, Jesus died for nothing."
***And if we do sin WE die for nothing. Just go ask the family of any drunk driver's victim.***
(2) "I contend that we are both Atheists. I just believe in one less god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you'll understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen Roberts
***I contend that we both believe in a God. I just don't worship myself. When you understand why I dismiss all those other gods, you'll understand why I dismiss you.***
(3) "Christianity is filled with a bunch of hypocrites."
***And there's always room for one more.***
(4) "We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing, all-powerful God who creates faulty humans and then blames them for his own mistakes." - Gene Roddenberry
***No, we must question the faulty logic of humans who blame an all-knowing, all-powerful God for their OWN mistakes.***
(5) "It is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin
***"The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I, for one, must be content to remain an agnostic." - also Charles Darwin (He contradicted himself like this quite often; more times than can be listed here.)***
(6) "Every time you stop at a red light you show a lack of faith." - Penn Jillette
***And every time you press your brakes you show an ACT of faith.***
(7) "Quit praying in our schools and we'll quit thinking in your churches."
***We'll quit praying in your schools when we quit having to PAY for your schools.***
(8) "Science reached a point where it turned into religion."
***Yep, and the religion was called "Evolution Theory."***
Those last two quotes beg for an article exposing how Evolution Theory has been debunked for years now, but still gets put into our children's textbooks at our tax-funded expense. That article will be next.
