#STRask - How Would You Convince Someone That Evil Exists?

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

Questions about how to convince someone that evil exists, whether Charlie Kirk’s murder was part of God’s plan, whether that would mean the murderer didn’t have free will, and whether or not God is responsible for that plan.   How would you respond to an atheist friend who doesn’t believe evil exists and thinks “evil” actions are done by people who are just trying to get by with the circumstances they’ve been given? If God is sovereign and has a plan, then he knew Charlie Kirk would be murdered. But if it was God’s plan, does that mean the murderer didn’t have free will, and is God not responsible for his plan?

This is Stan Terreson's hashtag SDRask podcast. Welcome to you. I'm Amy Hall and I'm here with Greg Kokel. We are here. We are here. Greg, we're going to start with a question from Ashley. How would you best respond to a dear friend, atheist, or agnostic, who doesn't believe evil exists and that evil actions are done by people just trying to get by with the circumstance they've been given, such as childhood abuse, past trauma, et cetera. Well, I'm pausing here because I think – well, there's two things going on here.

It is a denial of objective morality and evil that is evidence for objective morality, because the problem of evil requires that morality be a feature of the universe that is outside of us. It's not mind-dependent, that therefore acts themselves are wrong. It isn't that acts that take place are things that we feel bad about ourselves or. or think that in our own private morality are wrong. We wouldn't do that or something like that. So I'm just making the distinction between relativistic morality and objective morality. If there's evil in the world, then morality is objective. If there is no objective morality, then there's no evil in the world.

And rape isn't wrong. People might not like it. But that's a different matter. So there's a denial of objective morality and the denial of... the problem of evil. And the second thing is, it sounds like an explanation of what drives people to do things that others say are actually evil. And I guess I can, I'm trying to think of what order I want to deal with this. I guess start at this simplest spot. I have said this many times because I think it's a great, accurate sound generalization. There is something everybody

knows, no matter where they lived or when they lived, and that is that there's something wrong with the world. Okay? That's just another way of saying there's evil in the world, and everybody knows it. They know it because they have a capacity to perceive moral things because they are made in the image of God, and they also not just have the capacity to perceive these things, but they participate in them, too. The moral rules that they, or the moral obligations that they observe that are broken in the world, resulting in the problem of evil, are obligations that uniquely apply to human beings.

Now, I've done, I don't know, maybe 12, 15 debates in my life, and almost every single one of them has been on the same topic. Relativism. Moral relativism. Why did I choose to debate that? Because it's so easy to win. It's so easy to win because everybody already is convinced that objective morality exists. And so when I give, as I did in the book on relativism, feet firmly planted in mid-air, the seven fatal flaws of relativism, they all kind of amount to the same thing, and that is our ability to see elements of morality in the world and talk about them as if we are speaking coherently. And if morality is not objective, then those observations or those statements turn out to be meaningless. They're false,

and maybe borderline meaningless, because none of these words have anything. they relate to. So when we say that there's evil in the world, that's a very common thing for people to respond to because they're aware of it. It's like saying grass is green. How do you know grass is green? Well, look, there's the grass, and it's green. Characteristically, grass is green, okay? So we have a capability to perceive with our senses, our physical senses, that grass is green, or take any other statement about the nature of the world. I don't believe in chairs. Prove to me there's a chair.

The chairs exist. Well, you're sitting on one. There you go. In other words, by extension, by simply pointing at it, we evidence the existence of the thing. And if a person sitting on the chair and doesn't believe in chairs, then there's nothing wrong with me believing in chairs. There's something wrong with that person not believing in chairs, especially since he's sitting on one.

Now, sitting on one is a little kind of an illustration, but it's actually apropos here because part of what I'm saying is objective morality is so ingrained in all of us and not through cultural conditioning, but ingrained because we of our natures, that we are embracing the notions all the time, almost like as obviously as sitting in a chair. The person who denies objective, that objective morality is real, or the problem of evil is real. When they're not defending their philosophical turf, they're going to be pointing to examples of evil all the time, complaining about politicians who misuse the public trust or policies that are violation of individual rights, they might seem. By the way, all rights claims are moral claims. So if you have a moral claim to rights, and that's real, when those rights are denied, then that's a claim that ought to be fulfilled that isn't. That's evil.

So it's just, it's so odd to me when someone wants to say, well, there is no evil in the world. Really? It's so, it's like, that's like saying, I can't even, gravity doesn't exist. I don't know. It's one of those features that are so obvious to balanced people, and actually even unbalanced people, you don't have to be super brilliant to know that evil is real. And that's why I say, you know, this is common perspective. You could be very, you know, dull-witted and be able to know that grass is green. So these kinds of statements are always mystifying to me and makes me wonder whether people really believe what they say.

So I think the best example of the best way to deal with this particular issue, when you're talking to somebody who wants to deny the problem of evil, is you just provide clear case examples. and if they cannot acknowledge that certain brutal behaviors to very vulnerable people, just to choose a really good clear case example, are not wicked, evil. They shouldn't do that. That ain't the way it's supposed to be. Then something is wrong with the perceiver who doesn't see that, who doesn't see what everybody else is able to see. And so I would use clear case examples, and if that didn't work, especially in a conversation because now somebody is consciously aware to defend their relativistic

turf, listen for them off the record, as it were, when you're not talking about this and see, when they start making moral claims about things, and people can't not do this because it's built into our natures, then it's appropriate to ask the question, gee, I'm confused about what you just said. What do you mean? Well, you said that that politician was wrong. He's manipulating things. People are, big pharma, you know, is squeezing people for money and giving them drugs that they don't need. I got the impression when you said that, that what they were doing was wrong. Is that what you meant? Because I know you don't believe in that. So what did you mean? Oh, you just don't like it? Well, that would be consistent with relativism. Okay, are you assuming I

should care what you like or don't like? People think they should keep their vows, right? Even atheists who don't believe in morality, if you make a vow of some sort, a weighty one, especially like marriage, you're obliged to try to keep that. But why? If there is no morality, that's objective, which means there's no moral right or wrong. So there's an inherent problem here, and the foundational problem of denying evil is the problem of denying reality, because it's such an obvious feature of reality, and if you can't use clear case examples with them to admit that, yeah, that's evil, and some people won't in a discussion, they won't say that torturing babies for fun is wrong. I've had those discussions before. Then you can catch them

when their guard is down. You should be judging. You're judging other people, Christian. Yeah, I guess I am. What's wrong with that? Well, you shouldn't judge, you know. Why not? Well, now what are they going to say?

It's wrong? They can't say that based on their belief. So that's the first half. The second half is an attempt to try, it seems to me, and you could weigh in on this, I'm curious Amy. an attempt to try to, in a certain sense, sanitize what people would normally call evil behavior. Well, that's just what they've been, I don't know, socially conditioned to do, or that's, they're doing the best they can under the circumstance.

Now, I'm not sure what the word best means, by the way, in this conversation. They're doing the best they can. You mean, they couldn't do better, but they could do worse. But better and worse are moral concepts in this discussion. He just says they're trying to get by with the circumstance they've been given. They're trying to get by with the circumstance. Really? Okay.

So a man is mad because of something that happened. He got cut off on the freeway. So he goes into road rage. Or he comes home and he's angry, so he slaps his wife. Well, he's just trying to get by. He's doing the best he can. Really? You mean, it's never appropriate for us to expect a certain kind of behavior from people,

but they can do whatever comes naturally. That seems what it sounds like to me. By the way, the difference between just doing what comes naturally, trying to get by, if you will, and principled self-restraint is called civilization. animals do what comes naturally. So I'm not sure how seriously to take the challenge that's been offered because the counter examples are so many and so vivid and so obviously contrary to this point.

So even the last one, it's a dismissal of everyone's behavior because they have a legitimate reason to act the way they're acting. And the legitimate reason is they're just trying to get by. I understand your, I understand the difficulty with this because it does seem obvious. And I really like your idea of letting it go in the conversation because I agree that they will probably not agree with you in the conversation. But letting it go and then every time they bring up any sort of moral claim without using the words necessarily, but making any sort of moral judgment, then you can call them out. And I think, especially since this is a dear friend, you will have interactions with this person. I'm sure things will come up. And that's when you

can bring it up out of the blue and see what happens there. But it's worth noting also that all he does here is give reasons why people do it. That has nothing to do with excusing the moral quality of the action. So that's another thing you can do. You can make a distinction. Okay, all you've said to me is that is why they do these actions. You haven't actually shown me that they're not evil because I can perceive that it's evil. And again, try and force that dissonance within their minds by pointing out specific things. And there's things in the newspaper all the time that you can point to. But if he, if he's just saying this is why they did it, that has nothing. to do with whether or not it's evil or good or whether or not evil exists. It has nothing to do

with the moral quality. That's just a reason why it happened. It's not an excuse. So if you can make that... I want you to repeat that again because that's an important line. I wrote it down. I was going to use it. You just did. A reason. It's a reason. It's not an excuse. Not an excuse. I use that with my kids. Well, this, that, the other thing, well, it's a reason, but it's not an excuse. Just because you have a reason for doing it doesn't excuse the behavior. Yeah. And it just, it doesn't explain anything about the moral quality of the action. So you could just say, well, you're not actually addressing the problem here. You're just saying why it happened. But you haven't addressed whether or not it's evil. So can we address that?

Well, in my mind, that would probably probably be the first half. There is no evil. It is an evil. Then what is it? It's just behavior adapting to the circumstances. But this, this removes, as you pointed out, every moral obligation or every moral restraint from any action because every action could be sanitized in this way. Oh, well, just trying to get by. It just strikes me there are so many things that are obviously evil, wrong, bad, that have nothing to do with basic survival, just trying to get by. You know, all kinds of evil actions and motives and machinations, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

It's not just poor people who can't eat so they steal something so they can just get by. And generally, well, I don't want to insult the person, but generally it's the sociopaths who cannot tell the difference between right and wrong. Actually, I didn't even know if that's true. Maybe they can tell the difference, but they just, it doesn't bother them. I think the psychopath is the one that has no conscience. I get those terms mixed up sometimes, so I think the psychopath is the worst one, you know. But I'm not sure that even they would say that evil doesn't exist. They just wouldn't have an aversion to it.

I'm not even sure. I shouldn't even say anything about that. Yeah. Let's just let that go and go on to the next question. It's some kind of path, the wrong path. And you don't want to insult your friend either. Chances are he's, he might even be using different words. to describe evil.

And maybe you can catch him at those words. Anyway. Actually, I think the psychopaths slash sociopath point is a fair one. I make it in the relativism book. Not that we're calling people that, but that is the view consistent with that. And most people aren't that, a sociopath or a psychopath. And because if somebody genuinely, deeply, profoundly believes those things, that's evidence that something is wrong.

Right. But we're kind of trading on the idea that they don't deeply believe it. They're genuinely human beings that are built properly, but they're not seeing what's actually there. We know that if you cannot perceive something, whether or not it's evil, there is something wrong with you. Right. But I think this will come out in the conversation. So I'm not sure you have to go there with your dear friend. We'll see. All right, Greg, let's go to a question from Carissa. My husband is an agnostic and struggles with the problem of evil, notably with Charlie Kirk's assassination. He asked if God is sovereign and has a plan.

He knew Charlie would be murdered if it was God's plan. Does the murderer really have free will? Is God not responsible for his plan? Well, see, this is one of the most arguably intractable issues of theology. I, and we've talked about this a lot, and I, was on an interview yesterday with two non-Christians who raised the question of me, what is the hardest challenges that you've ever faced? Now, they were talking about apologetics.

Somebody throws a challenge at you, makes you doubt your convictions. Well, the hardest issues for me are not those kinds of issues, and virtually, I don't really know of any things that are thrown at me that genuinely undermine the truth of Christianity. but the theological problems are the harder ones, and this is the one I mentioned, the issue of how God sovereignly gets his purposes accomplished when people have free choices that they make. Now, we can affirm based on New Testament teaching and Old Testament examples that God is fully sovereign in control. Nothing happens that is outside of his will in the broadest sense.

nothing catches God by surprise, and regardless of the decisions that people make, God's ultimate purposes are going to be accomplished, because God is God, and we are not, and we can't thwart him. And how that gets cashed out is going to be different with different people, and you and I probably cash it out a little differently. I actually don't try to cash it out too much because I think is enigmatic, and the scripture teaches the full sovereignty of God, even initiating particular things, accomplishing certain ends, but also holding people responsible for the evil motivations that they have to do the evil things that they do. And so I can hold both of those intention, but I'm going to admit there's a tension there. Now, I,

I'm a little mystified about the Charlie Kirk thing because Charlie, as well as anybody who's a Christian, understands that the Christian's life is expendable. I mean, look at James. Stephen died a martyr's death. James died a martyr death. Paul died a martyr's death. Peter died a martyr's death. All of these people who contributed to Scripture understood that their lives were expendable. And the fact that they would be killed, did. didn't even for a split second caused them to doubt the reality of God or God's sovereignty or the guilt of those who were the ones who handed, who were responsible for their death. Even Jesus, when he's talking with Pilate, Jesus said, you wouldn't have any control over me at all if it had not been given to you from above. Now, he might be, he might be referring to God's sovereignty there, but he makes the next statement is, therefore, the one who handed me over to you has the greater guilt. And that's the

high priest. So it's interesting that Jesus is acknowledging the free actions, at least in that case, the one handed over to Pilate, the high priest and the counsel, as being culpable, even though his own death was part of a larger plan of God's. You know, how did that, how does that work out. So God secures the plan, and it makes it easier because he's omniscient. He knows all the options and all the possibilities and whatever. But this goes into how that cashes out in nuts and bolts details, and this is why I don't want to go because it's too dangerous. Too many variables, and it's hard to pin that down. But to simply say, look, we were shocked by Charlie Kirk's death. But I don't think it ever occurred to any of it. Frank Turrick, who was there,

who helped try to stop the bleeding on the way to the hospital. It never occurred to him that somehow God was nullified by the fact that Charlie Kirk got shot. It was tragic, but we can actually see a lot of good things that have come out of this. I'm not going to try to balance here's the good and here's the bat of his death, and, you know, one balance is better than the other. I'm not in a position to do that, but I do know that lots of good has come out of Charlie Kirk's death. There has been a surge of spiritual interest, and a surge in interest of the things he was doing that I think had, though it was a policy related, so much of it had to do with things that are natural extension of a sound Christian worldview. And I think his goal was, lifetime goal, was to have

20,000 chapters of TPUSA. As it turned out, recently, there's been up to 100,000 applications for new chapters. I'm just simply saying you can look back now and see lots of good that has come out of that assassination. People might say, well, that's not enough to justify his death. Well, I'm not in a position to judge that, but I'm just saying we can see that good came out of it. And my confidence in God's sovereignty is that the good that comes out of it is going to be – is going to be more than if he hadn't been assassinated. But that's because I think – I'm convinced that God is in control, one, and secondly, he's good, and he will use the bad things to accomplish good things for his purposes. So when I take these questions at the end here, if it was God's plan, does the murderers? really have free will and is God not responsible for his plan? So let me start with the second one

here. And yes, God is responsible for his plan. In fact, we talk about this all the time. God is responsible for the plan of salvation. He's responsible for history coming up all the way to Jesus and Jesus dying on the cross. And guess what? That involves a lot of sin. So God is responsible for the good that he's doing through his plan, he's not responsible for evil. And this is the distinction here. So if God's plan from all eternity was for Jesus to die on the cross, that is a good thing. And we praise him for that plan all the time. Now, the people who were killing Jesus were not doing it for any good reason. They were doing it for evil. And this is where the Bible always makes a distinction between the intentions of the person doing the evil and the intentions of God

using their evil choices to do something good. So we see this on the cross. We see this with Joseph where what you meant for evil, God meant for good. So is God responsible for the plan of Joseph being sold in slavery and saving his whole family by serving Pharaoh? Yes. And we praise him for that. Are the brothers responsible for hating Joseph and selling him into slavery and doing something evil? Yes, the Bible says they're responsible for that. So when you ask, does the murderer really have free will? If your question is, is the murderer morally responsible for the evil that he did? The answer is yes. The Bible is very clear about that. But let's say, as you mentioned, all the good things that God has done, what if those are the intentions God has for this? So God is responsible

for the good that comes through this, but he's not responsible for the evil intentions of the person who did the evil. God uses our evil choices all the time for a good purpose. Now, one way, one illustration I think is really helpful as we're trying to understand how could someone be, how could the people who put Jesus to death be morally responsible if, the Bible says that God predetermined that they would do this. And I think a good illustration of this, well, first I should say, it's not in the sense that God is moving their arms and legs against their will and moving their mouths. And we have an illustration of this in the writing of scripture because what we see there is that God is moving them to write

exactly what he wants them to write. And yet they are still making choices within their own personalities. We see their personalities and what they care about in the words. So God's not overriding their personality. It's not like he's taking away their personhood in determining that they are going to write these things. That's not how they experienced it, and that's not how we see that. It's something different with God. God is not like us. If I wanted to force you to write certain things, I would have to move your hand myself and go against you. I wouldn't be working through who you are. I wouldn't be doing that. I'm not God. So there's really no analogy that we can use. So all we can do is look at what the Bible says about these things. And what it says is that God

breathed out scripture through human beings, through their choices, so that they were making choices, yet those choices were choices that were intended by God. We see the same thing with the brothers. So we see that they're responsible for evil. But God is doing. good through that, and he's responsible for the good. We see this in Isaiah 10 when he uses the Assyrians to judge Israel. He uses them to do something good, which is to bring about justice. And then he says, but then I'll punish you because you are not intending that. You're intending evil. So it's the same action, and God is responsible for the good that is coming through this. They're responsible for their evil intentions in doing this. They're not doing it for

God's reasons. So the same action can have somebody being responsible for evil and God's meaning it for good and being responsible for good. And this is just the way it talks about it. Now, how does God ensure these things happen? I don't know because I'm not God and I don't have access to people in that way and I didn't create people. But God is the creator and God does have access to us and God does know everything. And he is responsible. for how the world will unfold. And I think in the end, we will see everything that he was doing. I think about, I was at Corey Tim Boom's house earlier this year. And she has, there's like an embroidery that they have there that she used to take when she would speak somewhere. And they start off showing the back of it. And you see all of these crazy things. You can't tell what it is. But of course, when you turn it around, you see the intended image. So right now, we're seeing the back part of it. We haven't seen all the good that's coming out of everything. But in the end, we will see that. And God will be responsible for that. And we

will glorify him for that. And the people who were doing the evil are still responsible for their evil. Just a final thought on this issue. I don't understand entirely. I understand the impulse, but I don't understand, in a sense, the thoughtful conclusion. Well, somebody can look at the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who is a Christian serving God, and then be doubtful that God exists or at least be agnostic about it, you know. I don't know. I don't understand how that serves them at all. Because the question here, apart from the Christian explanation which we've been giving, is what is the alternative? All right, let's just say, okay, God doesn't exist. Now, what do we make of Charlie Kirk's assassination? Or any of the so-called good that he did

in addition to the evil of the assassination? Well, the good and evil just disappear. They no longer exist because there's no standards by which to measure them if God doesn't exist. And so sometimes the question is appropriate. All right, here's a problem, but what's the alternative. What is the best explanation for the way things are? Even if there are loose ends, things we don't understand, the alternative is much, much worse. And this is why I mystify a bit when people, this kind of thing happens, and then people think, well, maybe God doesn't exist. Really? I don't even see how this has any bearing on that question whatsoever, especially in the light of the Christian story, where Jesus says, in this world, you have tribulation.

And all those apostles did have tribulation. And if evil can only exist, if God is the standard for goodness, then everything that God does is going to be good because he is the standard. He is the pinnacle of goodness, and he's not ever going to act outside of his nature. So everything that he does is good. So if you say there's good and evil, then you have no way to condemn God's actions because he's the only standard that we can have for good and evil. Right.

And that brings up a whole host of other things, but I'm going to leave it there since we're already 10 and it's over. Good job, Amy. Well, thank you, Carissa, and thank you, Ashley. If you have a question, you can send it on X with the hashtag STRASC or go to our website at STR.org and just look for our hashtag STRASC page, and you'll find a link there to send us your question. Thank you so much for listening. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kogel for Stand to Reason.