The New Atheists are loudest about the problem of evil — and their own worldview is the one place evil cannot exist.
A generation of best-selling atheists built their case on moral outrage. Religion is evil, they argued. God, if He existed, would be a moral monster. The suffering of children is proof there is no good God above us. The rhetoric is powerful, and it lands, because it appeals to something every reader already feels: that cruelty is genuinely wrong, not just unpleasant. But there is a problem hiding inside the argument, and it is fatal. To call anything truly evil, you have to borrow a standard the atheist worldview cannot supply. The New Atheist condemns the universe using a ruler he insists does not exist.
The Argument in One Move
Strip the moral argument to its bones and it is short. If there is no God, there is no objective moral law — no standard that stands over all people, in all places, whether they agree with it or not. There is only preference, evolution, and social convention. But we all know, with a certainty deeper than argument, that some things are objectively wrong. Torturing a child for fun is not merely distasteful, like disliking a food. It is wrong — and it would still be wrong even if every person on earth were trained to applaud it. If objective moral facts like that are real, then the standard they answer to is real, and that standard is what we mean by God.
Notice the shape of it. This is not the claim that atheists cannot be moral people. Of course they can; many are kinder than many believers. The claim is narrower and sharper: the atheist cannot account for the morality he already lives by. He can obey the law. He simply cannot tell you where the law came from, or why it binds anyone who disagrees.
What Naturalism Can Actually Deliver
Follow the atheist premises honestly to their end. If matter and energy are all there is, and human beings are the accidental product of blind processes optimizing for survival and reproduction, then our moral feelings are just that — feelings. Useful ones, perhaps, evolved because tribes that cooperated out-competed tribes that did not. But an impulse that helped your ancestors survive is not a moral obligation. It carries no authority. A preference wired in by natural selection can be interesting, but it cannot issue a command.
Some of the most candid atheist thinkers have admitted exactly this. On a consistent materialism, there is, at bottom, no evil and no good — only matter in motion and creatures dancing to the music of their genes. That is an honest conclusion from the premises. But it is also unlivable. No one actually believes that the Holocaust was merely unfashionable, or that justice for the abused is only a survival strategy dressed up as virtue. The atheist’s own conscience testifies against his philosophy every time he calls something truly unjust.
Scripture explains why the testimony is so stubborn. The moral law is not a cultural invention; it is written into the very make of a human being:
In that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.
Romans 2:15 (NASB1995)
This is why the argument bites. Everyone already knows the law. The atheist keeps reaching for it precisely because it is stitched into him. He cannot get his outrage off the ground without standing on the very thing he denies.
Turning the Problem of Evil Around
Here is the move that reframes the whole debate. The New Atheist’s strongest weapon has always been the problem of evil: how can a good God allow such suffering? It is a serious question and deserves a serious answer. But notice what the objection quietly assumes. To be genuinely outraged that the world contains real evil, you must believe real evil exists. And to believe real evil exists, you must believe there is a real standard of good it violates. The problem of evil is not an argument against God — it is smuggled evidence for Him, because it only works if morality is objective, and morality is only objective if God is real.
The Christian can hold the outrage and the ground for it at the same time. When we say the abuse of a child is evil, we are not reporting our tribe’s preference. We are naming a violation of the character of a holy God who defines good and hates evil:
You who love the Lord, hate evil! He preserves the souls of His godly ones; He delivers them from the hand of the wicked.
Psalm 97:10 (NASB1995)
The atheist and the believer both hate the evil. Only the believer can say why the hatred is more than a mood.
The Common Objections, Answered
Fairness requires meeting the best replies the New Atheists give, not the weakest. Three are worth naming.
- “Morality comes from evolution.” This explains why we might feel certain impulses, but it cannot make those impulses binding. Evolution also produced tribalism and aggression; on what non-moral ground do we crown compassion and condemn cruelty? To choose between our evolved impulses, you need a standard above evolution — which is exactly what naturalism denies you.
- “We can be good without God.” Yes — no one disputes that atheists behave morally. But the question was never whether you can follow the law without believing in the Lawgiver. It is whether the law has any authority if there is no Lawgiver. You can use a currency without minting it; the question is who backs the note.
- “A flourishing society is the standard.” But why is flourishing good and extinction bad? Say “because we prefer it,” and you have admitted morality is mere preference. Say “because it is objectively better,” and you have quietly reintroduced the objective standard you were trying to avoid.
Each answer collapses at the same point. The moment the atheist tries to make morality binding rather than merely felt, he has to reach up past nature for an authority nature cannot contain.
Where the Argument Is Meant to Lead
The moral argument is not a debate trophy. It is a road sign. That undeniable sense that some things are truly right and others truly wrong is not a glitch in a purposeless universe — it is the fingerprint of the God in whose image you are made, and whose law you already know. The very conscience that lets you condemn evil is the same conscience that, turned honestly on yourself, convicts you. For the standard that indicts the world indicts me too.
And that is precisely where the gospel meets the argument. The God whose existence your moral outrage assumes is not only the Judge who defines good; He is the Savior who took the judgment Himself:
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8 (NASB1995)
The New Atheist is right to be angry about evil. He is simply standing on a floor he claims is not there. Follow the moral law back to its source and you do not merely find an abstract Lawgiver — you find the God who wrote the law on your heart, exposed your guilt against it, and then bore that guilt on a cross so you could be forgiven. The argument ends not in a syllogism, but at the foot of the very One it proves.
Teaching the Word. Watching the Times.
— SmithForChrist