I really enjoy apologetics and debate. I often see atheists, chief among them Richard Dawkins (although in fairness, sometimes Dawkins is really more agnostic than atheist), make an argument against God based upon evil things in the world. If you peruse over to Youtube, you’ll see this argument come up repeatedly. This isn’t what I would call biblical answers, but they are theological and philosophical in nature; here’s my brief take on these morality questions:
Q: Can an atheist/agnostic be moral?
A: Absolutely, but only according to my definition of morality which is based upon Christian morality as defined by a belief in God having defined good and evil. The problem is that if there is no God there is no definitive way in which to define good or evil, right or wrong, moral or immoral. Under an atheist system, at best morality would be an odd fluke introduced during evolution and worst it wouldn’t exist. I honestly don’t understand how one could be an atheist and believe in moral absolutes, as Nietzsche wrote most poetically of a universe devoid of a deity:
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
You may want to read that twice to fully catch the impact, but notice Nietzsche points out the loss of direction, because he fully realizes that without a deity there is no longer any moral absolute from which to guide or direct or lives. The only moral idea that would fit properly within an atheist framework would be hedonism.
Q: How can a good God allow for evil and suffering?
A: As we saw in the response from the previous question, without God there is no absolutes of right and wrong, good and evil. Good is what God deems good and evil is what God deems evil. Frankly speaking there is absolutely no requirement for God to intervene and prevent evil or suffering. One could be a good CEO and allow all kinds of bad things to occur within a company for reasons entirely according to your own plan. His actions may not make any sense to any of his employees, and yet, in the end the overall good of the company will be served. It is fallacious to believe that because evil exists God can not exist.
Q: Why would God create the ludicrous situation in which he must sacrifice himself?
A: First, I’d like to point out that God doesn’t even have to be sane in order to still be God, one denotes cosmic position and the other denotes mental state, likewise, a seemingly insane plan wouldn’t preclude the existence of God. Second, if God exists, and created the universe he would by necessity possess intelligence an order of magnitude greater than that of ourselves. This implies that our own use of logic probably wouldn’t be able to fully comprehend the reasoning of God. Finally, the argument itself is akin to saying “God can’t exist because I don’t like the way he does things” which is utterly fallacious!
As you can see, quite a few of the issues on morality, ethics, and the idea of Christ being divine really fall flat as arguments against God. I really don’t understand how smart people like Dawkins would ever even bring them up as arguments.