Why Your Anger at Evil Isn’t Atheism’s Ally

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“If God existed, He wouldn’t allow this.”
It’s a cry we’ve all heard. Perhaps it’s even a cry we’ve made. When the headlines tell of children dying, women brutalized, or civilians massacred, it feels impossible not to ask:
Where was God?

Some claim this question is a nail in God’s coffin. After all, if an all-powerful, loving God existed, wouldn’t He stop it? For many skeptics, evil is not just emotionally upsetting—it’s intellectually fatal to faith.

But what if the opposite is true? What if your protest against evil actually proves the very God you’re rejecting?

Let’s slow down and look deeper.

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We Don’t Just Mourn Evil—We Condemn It

When tragedy strikes, we don’t shrug. We don’t say, “That’s unfortunate.” We say, “That’s wrong.”
Wrong. Unjust. Evil. These are moral judgments—not just emotional reactions. And every time we use them, we invoke a standard. Not just my standard or your standard, but something higher. Something we expect everyone to recognize.

When terrorists bomb a hospital, we don’t say, “Well, different cultures have different views.” We say, “That was evil.” Full stop.

But here’s the problem: if the universe is purely material—no God, no transcendent truth—then what are we basing that judgment on?

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Darwin Gave You Teeth, Not Morals

Materialism tells us that we’re the product of unguided evolution. That our moral instincts are just biological programming. Useful for survival, maybe—but ultimately meaningless.

But is that really believable?

Would you be morally outraged if a lion killed another lion’s cub? Probably not. But when a human trafficker exploits a child, we’re not just outraged—we demand justice. We call it evil because it is evil. Not because our DNA tells us to feel that way, but because something in our soul does.

That “something” doesn’t come from molecules. It comes from morality—and morality comes from mind, not matter.

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Atheism Can Describe Pain—But It Can’t Explain It

An atheist can weep at suffering. They can feel it deeply, just like anyone else. But when they try to explain it within their worldview, they run into a problem.

They can say that evil is what makes them reject God—but that presumes they already know what evil is.

But if there’s no God, then evil is just a label. It’s just how we feel about things we dislike. The problem is: we don’t act that way. We don’t treat genocide like a bad fashion choice. We treat it like a violation of something sacred.

In that moment, our worldview is showing. Not the one we say we believe, but the one we live by.

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C.S. Lewis Wasn’t Fooled by His Own Rage

C.S. Lewis, perhaps the most famous convert from atheism to Christianity in the 20th century, made this exact point. He had once claimed the problem of evil disproved God. But then he realized:

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?”
“A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.”

In other words, his complaint about injustice only made sense if justice itself was real—and if justice was real, it pointed to a standard beyond human opinion.

That standard, he came to believe, was God.

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The Cross Is the Only Place Where Protest Meets Redemption

Christianity does something radical. It doesn’t deny evil. It doesn’t excuse suffering. It names it, confronts it, and then points to a man hanging on a cross.

In Jesus, we don’t just get a reason for suffering—we get a God who suffers with us.

And that changes everything. Because now, the protest has a direction. It has meaning. It has hope.

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Don’t Silence the Protest—Follow It

Your outrage at injustice isn’t a weakness in your faith—it might be the beginning of it. That fire in your chest, that ache in your soul, that sense that this world is not as it should be—it’s not just emotion. It’s a signal.

And if you follow that signal far enough, you might just find a God who agrees with you—and did something about it.