Thus, for people who do not always think through all of the consequences of things, they wonder why God, who we are told is omnipotent and benevolent, did not prevent the shooting in Colorado (or some other evil of note). Theologians have called this question the Problem of Evil or the Problem of Pain, but I like to call it the Problem of Imperfection.
I prefer this term because if all of the man-made deaths were stopped by the interposing hand of God, then people would point to all of the natural deaths (accidents, disease, starvation) as a problem in need of an explanation; and if still nobody died before their time (or, to be more precise, what we in our conceit look upon as before their time), many would still point to death from old age as something wrong with the world. Even without death at all, there would be enough discontent about the remaining imperfection in the world, and people would complain about not being as good-looking or as talented as others.
Those who set forth this question as a challenge to the existence of God are probably not aware that they are making several unwarranted assumptions about God and about spiritual things, and that these assumptions are themselves corollaries of atheism. As I will explain, any attempt to prove their is no God, by means of the Problem of Imperfection, is an exercise in circular reasoning.
The first assumption underlying the argument is that there is no afterlife, that there will be no point in our existence where good acts will be perfectly rewarded and injustices will be perfectly punished. Death is looked on as an unmitigated disaster that constitutes a flaw in God's plan. That this viewpoint contrasts with the Scriptural viewpoint hardly needs saying, but to deny that there will be a righting of all wrongs is not substantively different from denying the benevolence of God who will meet us there. If God will not right all wrongs, then He certainly does not love us; but since God's indifference is a point that the atheist is trying to set forth, he cannot logically use it as a premise.
The second error is to focus on a portion of the consequences of the evils that take place, and to speak as if the few direct consequences are the only things that depend on the undesirable events we see; that the total sum of good vs. evil is tilted towards evil with such events, and no consequence of such an event can ever tip the balance in the other direction. A child dies, and the atheist focuses only on the child's pain and fear involved in his passing, and the grief of the child's family and friends, and disregards the truth that the world will move on in a different way without the child than with him alive and growing and acting in the world. To this I can only ask, "Do you immunize your children?" Clearly, since immunization is a painful experience that literally terrifies children, only a sadistic parent (or an indifferent one) would subject his children such measures.
Sure the scale of pain is far smaller, but the principle is the same: Sometimes bad things lead to good things, or, at the least, prevent things which are worse. The nuclear attack on Nagasaki and Hiroshima were calamities to the people who were there, but from it we learned of the destructive power of these weapons, making everyone who has them very reluctant to employ them. The alternative, of course, was a full-scale invasion of the Japanese homeland, which would have resulted in far more death and destruction. Furthermore, our first nuclear conflict would have come later, involving more than just two multi-kiloton devices, and would have ended far and away more lives than died as a result of the two uses of nuclear weapons in war.
The third assumption made by the atheist in advancing the Problem of Imperfection is the assumption that spiritual matters are secondary to physical matters, and this is where the atheist is most distantly removed from the Scriptural viewpoint. This is really a form of the first and second errors combined, but it becomes an error in its own right when the atheist sets forth the demand that if God is so benevolent and omniscient and detests sin so much, why does He not simply prevent every sin from taking place?
The answer to this is that the physical acts we know of as sins--theft, rape, lying, and murder--are not primary facts of nature that could be removed without consequence, but are merely the products of greed, lust, pride, and hate. The question was really answered in Genesis 4, when Cain was angry about the rejection of his sacrifice. God speaks to him, and knowing that Cain is contemplating the murder of his brother, tells him about his need to be a master over sin, instead of allowing sin to rule him instead. At no point does God say, "Cain, no matter what you do, don't kill your brother!"
But how would we learn that hate is wrong if it did not lead to murder? Hate has motivated the murder of many millions of people since the dawn of time, and that is still not enough to teach many people that hate is wrong. If our spiritual failings did not lead to physical evils, we would never learn to identify and control them. If you have seen someone whose evil has been thwarted, do you see him repent and reform his thinking, even one time out of ten thousand, or does the frustrated man simply redouble his efforts to gratify his wrongful impulses?
And God knows that the physical evils will eventually lead to the correction of at least some people, and in fact being omniscient He knows which person at which time shall repent. To deny this is to assume, as a premise of the argument, that God is not omniscient, which is the logical error of begging the question.
None of these arguments are new. What is perhaps the most glaring assumption made by the man who advances the Problem of Imperfection is the idea that his argument, or even the form in which he presents it, is new.
