If an all good and all powerful God exists, then he would not allow evil to exist. Evil does exist, and so an all good and all powerful God must not exist.
This assertion is an unsound deductive argument. It’s unsound because it assumes the truth of a premise that cannot be known. It takes for granted that an all good and all powerful God could not or would not allow evil to exist even for a limited time. Since evil does exist, the God Christians and other believe in cannot exist. If it is true that an all good and all powerful God could not or would not allow evil to exist even for a limited period of time then of course the argument works.
How does the atheist know that an all good and all powerful God could have no possible reason for allowing evil to exist for a time? The atheist cannot know this. In fact, a good, loving, and all powerful God might conceivably have a number of reasons for allowing evil to exist for a time and apparently he does.
It may be hard for us to understand why God allows evil, but the existence of evil does not prove the non-existence of God.
From “The Godless Delusion” by Patrick Madrid and Kenneth Hensley.
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