The Answer to Atheism: Part 2

The following article is part two of a six-part 

series written in response to Bertrand Russell's  

"Why I Am Not a Christian." 

For reference, I have included a link to his essay 

at the bottom of each article.

On a side note, I thought Mr. Russell's comment about the Devil creating the world while God wasn’t looking was pretty funny. But it’s not half wrong. God created the world, and the Devil usurped it from us by tricking humanity into disobeying God, thus plunging the world into darkness. We sinned. We caused the problem. But Satan facilitated it by means of temptation. He was the pebble that started the avalanche. So yes, Mr. Russell is right; all the evil we see around us in this broken universe is ultimately the Devil’s fault.

That's the funny thing about atheism—and really humanity in general. Even if people deny the existence of God, they usually don’t deny the existence of the Devil. And even if they do, they can't deny the fact that evil exists. Yet it seems to be human nature to blame God for everything.
So how is it that the one being who is generally considered to be the very personification of evil, somehow manages to avoid any blame whenever bad things happen?

That being said, the argument that good and evil mean nothing to God, is ludicrous from the biblical perspective. According to Genesis Chapters 1-3, God knew the difference between good and evil. In fact, His very existence is what would make such knowledge possible. If God is good, then anything that is in contrast to His nature, would therefore be evil. Since God knows everything about Himself, He would of course have to know everything He is not. Ergo: evil. And since God is good, the entire universe was also good; since God had created it in accordance with His nature. Therefore, there was no evil in our world at the time of creation. If there were, God would not have been able to say what He said in Genesis 1:31.

“Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!
And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day.”
~Genesis 1:31 New Living Translation (NLT) [Emphasis Added]

Evil is the absence of good, just as darkness is the absence of light.

God is the standard for what is good. Therefore evil is anything that is in conflict with God. i.e evil exists whenever a conscious being chose to pervert something that is good through sin: rebellion against God’s Nature and/or a spoken Commandment.

(Since God spoke the universe into being, and we know that God’s word is truth (John 17:17) it therefore stands to reason that any commandment He speaks becomes a law of nature. The breaking of which would result in catastrophic consequences such as death (Romans 6:23) and the Laws of Thermodynamics etc.)

         

             Continued in: The Answer to Atheism: Part 3


             Why I Am Not A Christian (Reference Material)