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I come across this kind of argument almost incessantly these days. People like to wave the existence of evil around like some kind of trump card to disprove the existence of God, though in truth all they prove is their own ignorance of God. This is proven, I think, by what happened a while back when I posted on the piece on which I based this. I posted the comment below, and the poster responded by disabling all further comments.
"Whence cometh evil? Well, The irony of it is that a loving God, by definition, would create beings capable of choosing to love because love without choice is not love at all. Yet where there is the choice to love, there is the choice to hate. That's ultimately where evil comes from. The real question is, how can you define evil without God? You might as well try to define dark without light."

Feel free to download and use when people argue that the existence of evil disproves the existence of an all-good, all-powerful, all-loving God.

Here's some more thorough point-by-point notes on the issue.

Omnipotence: If an all-good, all-knowing God allows evil, it must be that He lacks the power to stop or prevent it. Right? Actually, no. God has the power to crush any evil any time He chooses. The first problem with this arises in Matthew 5, where Jesus says that hate is no different to God than murder, and lust no different than adultery. Can anyone reading this say that they would have survived to adulthood if God dropped a lightning bolt on them the moment they lusted or hated? I wouldn't have. How about lying or stealing? I wouldn't have made it to age 5. And that's just four of the Ten Commandments! 2 Peter 3:9 assures us, however, that God suspends His justice and power with the desire that everyone, even the most wicked, might turn and come to Him in repentance. The irony is that many of these same people would, at the drop of a hat, argue that God's rules of right and wrong are too strict and intolerant. Yet they argue with equal force that He is, in effect, too patient and tolerant of sinners.

Omnibenevolence: If God is able to stop all evil, perhaps He doesn't want to? Is He really as purely good as the Bible says? Ironically the answer to this lies not just in God's own love, but in His desire to create beings able to do the same. The crux of this is that to create beings able to truly love, it was necessary to give us the capacity to choose hate. After all, devotion without will and choice is no more truly loving than the slavish and mechanical cooperation of an ant colony. The same holds true of any virtue; without will and choice, and thus the room to rebel, it cannot be truly virtuous. Now the Bible does promise a future - what theologians often call Eternity Future - when all will be totally given over to good or evil. However, this will only happen when everyone has made their choice, and God will ultimately be giving us all what we have chosen. It's been said of this that there are two kinds of people: those who say to God with gladness, "Thy will be done," and those whom He tells with sadness, "Thy will be done."

Omniscience/Omnipresence: What if God's powerful enough and good enough to stop evil, but He just can't get there in time or doesn't have enough warning? Sadly for the scoffers this one doesn't stand up either. The truth is that God's timelessness - that is, His ability to supersede time and space themselves - are exactly what come to the rescue, as it were. You see, if we see a murder in progress we only have limited time and means to see that justice is done - either by stopping the murderer and saving the innocent life, or by seeing to it that the murderer pays for their crime. We must do these things in time and in space. God, however, has the option to restore life to the innocent victim and bring justice to the murderer beyond our limits. A God who has the joys of Heaven and the torment of Hell at His disposal has everything He needs to bring justice to the good and the evil alike. He just doesn't have to do it on our schedule. Because He's God.

Description
I come across this kind of argument almost incessantly these days. People like to wave the existence of evil around like some kind of trump card to disprove the existence of God, though in truth all they prove is their own ignorance of God. This is proven, I think, by what happened a while back when I posted on the piece on which I based this. I posted the comment below, and the poster responded by disabling all further comments.
"Whence cometh evil? Well, The irony of it is that a loving God, by definition, would create beings capable of choosing to love because love without choice is not love at all. Yet where there is the choice to love, there is the choice to hate. That's ultimately where evil comes from. The real question is, how can you define evil without God? You might as well try to define dark without light."

Feel free to download and use when people argue that the existence of evil disproves the existence of an all-good, all-powerful, all-loving God.

Here's some more thorough point-by-point notes on the issue.

Omnipotence: If an all-good, all-knowing God allows evil, it must be that He lacks the power to stop or prevent it. Right? Actually, no. God has the power to crush any evil any time He chooses. The first problem with this arises in Matthew 5, where Jesus says that hate is no different to God than murder, and lust no different than adultery. Can anyone reading this say that they would have survived to adulthood if God dropped a lightning bolt on them the moment they lusted or hated? I wouldn't have. How about lying or stealing? I wouldn't have made it to age 5. And that's just four of the Ten Commandments! 2 Peter 3:9 assures us, however, that God suspends His justice and power with the desire that everyone, even the most wicked, might turn and come to Him in repentance. The irony is that many of these same people would, at the drop of a hat, argue that God's rules of right and wrong are too strict and intolerant. Yet they argue with equal force that He is, in effect, too patient and tolerant of sinners.

Omnibenevolence: If God is able to stop all evil, perhaps He doesn't want to? Is He really as purely good as the Bible says? Ironically the answer to this lies not just in God's own love, but in His desire to create beings able to do the same. The crux of this is that to create beings able to truly love, it was necessary to give us the capacity to choose hate. After all, devotion without will and choice is no more truly loving than the slavish and mechanical cooperation of an ant colony. The same holds true of any virtue; without will and choice, and thus the room to rebel, it cannot be truly virtuous. Now the Bible does promise a future - what theologians often call Eternity Future - when all will be totally given over to good or evil. However, this will only happen when everyone has made their choice, and God will ultimately be giving us all what we have chosen. It's been said of this that there are two kinds of people: those who say to God with gladness, "Thy will be done," and those whom He tells with sadness, "Thy will be done."

Omniscience/Omnipresence: What if God's powerful enough and good enough to stop evil, but He just can't get there in time or doesn't have enough warning? Sadly for the scoffers this one doesn't stand up either. The truth is that God's timelessness - that is, His ability to supersede time and space themselves - are exactly what come to the rescue, as it were. You see, if we see a murder in progress we only have limited time and means to see that justice is done - either by stopping the murderer and saving the innocent life, or by seeing to it that the murderer pays for their crime. We must do these things in time and in space. God, however, has the option to restore life to the innocent victim and bring justice to the murderer beyond our limits. A God who has the joys of Heaven and the torment of Hell at His disposal has everything He needs to bring justice to the good and the evil alike. He just doesn't have to do it on our schedule. Because He's God.