Your personal take on “The Problem of Evil?”

[Esquilax]

Evil isn’t necessarily an argument against God in general but against Christian theism in particular.

Funnily enough, I even think you're overstressing the case here too, because there are some varieties of christian theism that are perfectly at home with the idea of the genocidal, old testament god being morally good because he is god. Some do define good as god, and so they have no trouble reconciling every action god takes within the moral framework that christianity espouses. Now, that raises a whole host of other problems that are worse, from a secular perspective, than the problem of evil, but I doubt the kind of person who'll truly believe that god is good independent of thought and deed would be willing to properly consider them.

1) Taking the last point first (on the record of those who profess to follow Christ), I don't hold God responsible for the actions of Christians. The Christian world view is that people do bad things.

You don't have to: if one can prevent an act of harm to another, without any cost to yourself or either of the other parties concerned, is it a moral good to prevent that harm? Say, you witness a stabbing, and your options are either to provide immediate aid to the victim and call an ambulance, or keep walking: which is the more moral action? And is one of those actions actually immoral?

Chances are, you answered that providing aid is moral, and that ignoring the situation is an immoral act: why wouldn't you, after all? God is capable of helping everyone who has ever been stabbed, and he never has. Therefore, based solely on his own actions, god acts immorally. And that's just in terms of the things he could have helped with and didn't. I don't even need to go into the old testament. Besides, of the bad acts that christians perform, many of them were performed in god's name, and in some cases purportedly under his direct instruction; who are you to tell those people that they were wrong, and how do you know they were?

2) The objection to God on the basis of a moral objection presupposes some moral standards. Personally I find it easier to understand how moral standards exist from a theistic rather than an atheistic perspective.

It's not our fault you haven't bothered to look into the evolution of morality. That stuff is out there, and the concept itself is extremely simple to grasp; our survival niche is cooperation and group building. Moral standards derive from this as a mechanism for keeping the group afloat. Simple, though not perfect, and aided in no small measure by our nature as biological entities with predictable responses to external stimuli.

As to what's "easier" to understand... yes, "big man done it by magic" is probably very easy to understand, especially if you don't know how he did it, and don't care to know. But magic is just an excuse, it can be used to justify anything, making it effectively useless, and some of us have higher expectations for our justifications of things than just the claim itself, absent any kind of explanation or method.

3) I don't believe God would damn people to hell without the having sufficient knowledge. But I believe the vast majority of people do know God's will; it's the voice of the conscience, or 'the law written on their hearts' as St. Paul talks of the gentiles having.

I think you're smart enough to see how that is begging the question.

4) The problem of evil is often framed in such a way that it assumes God's primary responsibility is to make sure we're always happy. But I think the Judeo-Christian world-view would see that as the equivalent to a parent just wanting their child to be happy regardless of how they are living. Rather, I would say that God wants us to love and be loveable. So I would challenge the very foundation of the 'Epicurean dilemma'.

Is it, or is it not moral to prevent a murder, if you are in no danger? If it is, then god is already falling short of even the most basic of moral considerations. Why should we expect less of the perfect universe creator than we would a normal person?