The problem of evil, as neatly summed up on Wikipedia is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God Or as first presented by the Greek philosopher Epicurus: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then from whence comes evil?"

My difficulties with the problem of evil were not with the experiential problem. That's the difficulty in believing in a concept of a loving God when confronted by suffering or evil in the real world. Sure, it's bad, but I used to think that provided the theology could explain this then there really wasn't a problem. Fundamentalists explain this problem by pointing out that the Earth is cursed as per the Genesis story and that Satan is basically in charge now which is why, in the New Testament, Satan is referred to as the Prince of this World. I used to accept this. However, as I read The Bible more and more it occurred to me that the so-called morals contained within would make any decent person cringe. The picture being painted is not one where an omnibenevolent being would want to prevent all evils but rather this being is source of evil and freely uses it for his own ends. This led me to the logical part of the Epicurus argument: Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

The God of the Christian fundamentalists does very much seem to be malevolent. When this is pointed out you get replies like "his ways are not our ways", "who are you, oh man, to talk back to God" and so on. These answers are not very satisfactory and leave one wondering why followers freely worship this god and claim it to be a god of love.

It may be that there really is a god and it is like the one described in The Bible. In which case the logical thing to do would be to fear it, and only worship it because it demands that you do so on pain of death. That wouldn't make you a Christian. I'm not sure what it would make you. A survivalist, maybe, and not a happy one. As far as I know, no-one believes quite like that (although some fundamentalists come close). When I got to this point in my questioning, I was forced to consider the possibilty that such a god did not exist and that god is in fact, imaginary. Other points given my reasons list also led me this way. But the problem of evil is what started it. And that happened because I read The Bible.