h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There is no "problem of evil". Evil doesn't exist outside of people's definition of it. Saying that God is supposed to be all-good, and yet... look! Here's some evil on my sheets! is just silly. It would only work if God was like us, which clearly he isn't (can't be bothered making God non-gender specific today - sorry leftists). Evil just has no relevance to God, because he's not affected by things that happen. He just can't be, because the only way he can be truly omnipotent is if he is unaffected by the passage of time. Let's face it, God made time, along with everything else, if the stories are to be believed. That's how he can be the prime mover (Aquinas) and that's how he can be all those things we're not, like immortal, immutable, objective. "What created God?" is a very silly and childish question.

So people might say "Ah, but the Bible describes God in a way that makes him a personal God who takes an interest in what us people do". To which I reply "but the Bible is only as perfect a source as those for whom it was intended". Humans are very limited, and generally a bit thick, so the Bible is written in a language that most people can grasp. Consider this: if people truly weren't astronomically, *fundamentally* stupid why would they have messed around with the word of God so badly over the years? Translations? The King James Version? Outrageous!

So anyway, God can't be a personal god who takes an interest in human affairs because to do that he would have to be subject to the passage of time, which of course he can't be because he's immutable.

The problem of evil is silly. It's only a problem for us, and only those of us who can't get our heads around the concept of something that "exists" out of time.

Simpler still, if God is perfect, as he must be by definition, and yet we encounter a problem with evil, then the source of that problem is our conception of existence, not God. Nobody said God made us perfect; we screw things up all the time.

Or, if you like, the answer to the question "Why must there be evil?" is the same for atheists and believers alike:
"Because it's there".

Don't even get me started on Free Will, I'm saving that up for later. Suffice it to say, the non-existence of free will pretty much wraps it up for "the problem".