If God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly good, why does the world contain so much evil?
One common argument against God’s existence goes something like this:
It seems unlikely that an all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly good being would allow a world with this much evil.
Since there doesn’t appear to be enough justification for it, it’s reasonable to conclude such a being doesn’t exist.
At first, this reasoning might seem compelling. But there’s a serious flaw: this argument relies on finite beings that are limited in knowledge and wisdom, making a judgment about what an all-knowing God should or shouldn’t allow. And that creates two major problems:
First, our ability to assess the likelihood of sufficient justification for this much evil is limited. What seems unlikely to us may not be unlikely from the perspective of infinite knowledge. To put it another way, we can’t reliably calculate the “likelihood” of God’s reasons for allowing evil because we lack the full picture.
Second, even if it seems enormously unlikely to us that there could be sufficient justification for this much suffering, the argument still has to admit that it’s possible such justification exists. And if it’s possible, rejecting God’s existence becomes unreasonable. If justification is possible, then why doubt that an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good God created the world as it is?
Ultimately, the existence of evil doesn’t rule out God. In fact, logic demands humility: finite beings are not in a position to conclusively declare what is or isn’t justified from the perspective of perfect wisdom. What we see as evil may serve a purpose beyond our understanding.
So, while evil is a challenging problem, it’s not a sufficient defeater for belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good God.