I've been thinking about the coexistence of God and evil lately. Often it's asked how it can be possible for an all loving/powerful/etc. God to exist and permit evil at the same time. This has two versions, the logical and the emotional problems of evil. The first of these deals with the shear logical problem of the coexistence of God and evil, the other is rooted in your personal emotional experience with this problem. It takes the form of things like, "Why did God allow my grandma to die slowly of cancer", etc. Basically the format is of "How could God and this particular evil that happened in my life coexist?" This last version can really only be solved through extended therapy and counseling. Although some things could still be said about the emotional problem of evil.
It occurred to me recently that when dealing with the existence of God, you are in fact dealing with the existence of a sentient being, a person. When evaluating for yourself God's existence or non-existence, or debating it, or whatever, you have to acknowledge that (regardless of your views on His existence) you are still dealing with a sentient being or person (or the possibility of that sentient being or person.) As such, this adds a complicating factor into the fray. Namely, that of ad hominem attacks. Ad hominem is a logical fallacy in which one attacks the character of a person instead of the arguments or premises at hand. It's as if you were to argue that quantum gravity was a very good theory, but then to rebut that I simply say that you're as dense as a black hole.
Now, people who appeal to the emotional (or even the logical) problem of evil are essentially making character judgments about God, and declaring His non-existence based on that. They state the God cannot exist because He is negligent ("How could and all powerful, all-loving God allow this to happen?"), mean/malicious ("How could an all-loving God do this/allow this to happen?"), or just uncaring. So, as such, must not exist. Again, since we're dealing with a sentient person here, these claims are merely attacking God's character and thus are ad hominem attacks, not real arguments.
Let's take an example. Say you're my best friend (you are my best friend, aren't you? ;) ) And, despite being my best friend, do something really, truly horrible to me: you steal all my Babylon 5 DVD's (truly an egregious evil for certain!) Now, I think to myself, how could this caring, loving best friend of mine do this to me? He must not exist! And I proceed to assume that you don't. Needless to say, this is not sound. Just because you did something really horrible to me does not give me grounds for thinking you do not exist. Now, I could make the claim that you couldn't actually be my best friend, since that it a conclusion about your character based on evidence of your character, but I could not conclude that you did not exist at all. The same is true with God.
In sum, you cannot conclude that God does not exist based on evil experienced in your own life because it falls prey to the ad hominem fallacy. You might be able to make conclusions as to God's character, but there are good reasons to still think God is a good, loving God despite this as well. Unfortunately, addressing that would go beyond the scope of this post, and so will point your way to a very good essay by William Lane Craig that deals with this: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5350 . (You'll have to sign up [it's free, don't worry] to access it, but I'll post it on my Facebook account after posting this.)
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