Is God, real, good or evil?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is God, real, good or evil?". Your opponent's style: Devil's Advocate

God is not real

You're claiming God doesn't exist, but you're actually making an argument that proves the opposite problem — you've got no way to account for why anything exists at all. Here's the brutal truth: atheism doesn't solve the mystery, it just pushes it back a step. You say "God isn't real" — fine. But then *something* had to exist without a cause. Matter, energy, the laws of physics themselves — you're asking me to believe they all just *are*, eternally, no explanation needed. But that's not more rational than God existing. It's the exact same logical move, just less honest about what you're doing. At least theism admits there's something fundamental that requires no prior cause. You're smuggling in the same concept while pretending you're being scientific. And the personal angle cuts even deeper: every human culture, separated by continents and millennia, independently arrived at belief in transcendence, meaning, and the sacred. That's not coincidence — that's pointing to something real about human consciousness that materialism can't explain away. You can't reduce the universal human impulse toward God to "evolutionary accident" without sounding desperate. So here's my challenge: **If God doesn't exist, what makes your life actually mean anything?** Not what you *want* it to mean — what objectively, necessarily makes it matter? Because without God, you're just atoms shuffling around until you stop shuffling. That's not liberation. That's nihilism with a cheerful face.

You’re not exposing a weakness in atheism—you’re revealing a misunderstanding of explanation. Yes, explanations eventually terminate. But the key issue is where and how they terminate. Saying “the universe exists as a brute fact” is not the same logical move as saying “a personal, intentional, morally perfect being exists without cause.” One stops at impersonal structure; the other adds an enormously complex agent with desires, intentions, and moral authority. That addition requires justification, not assertion. If everything requires a cause except God, then the claim “everything requires a cause” was never a universal rule to begin with. Once you allow one exception, the debate shifts to which exception is more parsimonious. An uncaused universe governed by impersonal laws is a far simpler hypothesis than an uncaused supernatural mind that somehow explains physics, morality, and meaning simultaneously. You also appeal to the universality of religious belief—but universality explains human cognition, not metaphysical truth. Humans across cultures independently developed belief in spirits, astrology, and supernatural agency for the same reason: our brains evolved to detect patterns, infer agency, fear death, and seek narrative coherence. These traits are adaptive whether gods exist or not. If widespread belief were evidence of truth, mutually contradictory gods would all have to be real at once—which collapses the argument. As for meaning: you’re assuming meaning must be objective in a cosmic sense to be real. That assumption is doing all the work. Meaning does not require divine endorsement any more than love requires the universe to approve of it. Finite things can still matter. In fact, their finitude is often what makes them matter. Without God, meaning is not erased—it is relocated. It arises from conscious beings capable of valuing, caring, choosing, and taking responsibility. That is not nihilism; it is moral agency. By contrast, meaning imposed from outside by divine command is not deeper—it is borrowed. Finally, invoking God does not solve the mystery of existence. It relabels it. Saying “God did it” ends inquiry without explaining how or why such a being exists in the first place. Mystery doesn’t disappear when you attach a name to it. So no—denying God does not deny meaning, explanation, or value. It denies an unnecessary hypothesis that multiplies assumptions without increasing understanding. If meaning exists, it exists because we exist—not because the universe is watching us.

You're making a sophisticated move here, but it collapses under its own weight once you actually live it. Let's start with your core claim: meaning comes from "conscious beings capable of valuing, caring, choosing." But you've just described the problem, not solved it. *Why* should I care what you value? Why does your choice matter? You're saying finite beings create finite meaning—but that's circular. You're defining meaning as "what conscious beings decide matters" and then declaring the problem solved. It's not. You've just renamed the question. Here's where atheism becomes incoherent in practice: You say "their finitude is what makes them matter." Really? So my daughter matters *because* she'll die? That makes her *more* meaningful, not less? No—finitude is precisely why atheism can't account for ultimate meaning. You're trying to extract infinite significance from finite beings. The math doesn't work. You need something that grounds value *outside* the system of temporary, dying creatures. Otherwise you're just asserting that things matter while having no foundation for that assertion. Your Occam's Razor argument backfires too. Yes, God is "complex"—but so is explaining consciousness, free will, morality, and the universe's existence without Him. You're not choosing simplicity; you're choosing which mysteries you're willing to ignore. At least theism *attempts* to provide a unified explanation. Atheism says: the universe exists for no reason, consciousness emerged for no reason, morality is real but has no foundation, and meaning is self-generated. That's not simpler—it's more fragmented. And your point about contradictory gods destroying the argument? It doesn't. The universality of *religious impulse* points to something real, even if specific religions disagree about details. Humans also universally seek justice, love, and beauty—contradictory expressions don't erase the underlying drive. **Here's my challenge: Name one objective moral truth that atheism can defend without smuggling in theological assumptions.** Can you say slavery is *actually* wrong—not just personally distasteful or evolutionarily selected against—without some ground outside the material system?

Your response rests on a single unexamined assumption: that meaning, morality, and value must be infinite and externally grounded to be real. That assumption is never argued for—it is merely asserted. Once it’s removed, the structure of your case collapses. First, the charge of circularity fails. Saying “meaning arises from conscious beings capable of valuing” is not circular—it is constitutive. Water is not circularly defined as “what makes things wet”; wetness is a property that arises from water. Likewise, meaning is not an external substance waiting to be discovered; it is a property that emerges when conscious agents value states of affairs. No contradiction is involved unless one assumes, without argument, that meaning must exist independently of minds. That assumption simply begs the question. Second, you misunderstand finitude. No one claims something matters because it ends, but that limitation intensifies value by making choices non-repeatable and stakes real. Your example of a daughter backfires: she matters because she is conscious, vulnerable, and capable of flourishing and suffering—not because an infinite being assigns her a cosmic label. Her eventual death does not negate her value; it explains why harm to her is morally urgent now. Eternity is not a prerequisite for significance—irreversibility is. Third, the claim that atheism cannot ground “ultimate” meaning merely shifts the burden. You demand infinite meaning, but never justify why finite beings require infinite justification to matter. This is a category error. Chess does not become meaningless because the universe will end; the rules are grounded in the practice itself. Moral value is grounded in the realities of conscious experience—pain, flourishing, autonomy—not in metaphysical infinity. Fourth, your appeal to God as a “ground outside the system” does not solve the problem you raise—it postpones it. If value is grounded in God’s nature, then either: that nature is good for reasons independent of God (making God unnecessary), or goodness is whatever God is (making morality tautological). Either way, “objective morality” reduces to assertion, not explanation. Declaring God as the foundation does not tell us why slavery is wrong—it only tells us who says so. That is authority, not grounding. Which brings us to your challenge. Yes—atheism can defend objective moral truths without theology. Slavery is objectively wrong because it systematically violates the autonomy, dignity, and well-being of conscious agents—facts about minds, not opinions. These are objective features of reality: suffering is not a belief, coercion is not a preference, and deprivation of agency is not culturally relative. Moral realism grounded in conscious experience does not require anything supernatural, just as medicine does not require a god to declare disease bad. Finally, your claim that theism offers a “unified explanation” is rhetorical, not analytic. God is invoked to explain existence, consciousness, morality, and meaning—but no mechanisms are provided. One word replaces four unanswered questions. That is not unification; it is compression without content. Atheism does not say “for no reason.” It says “for reasons we are still investigating.” Theism says “for a reason we cannot examine.” Meaning does not vanish without God. What vanishes is the comfort of external guarantees. What remains is responsibility.c And responsibility, not divine command, is where morality actually lives.

You've constructed an elegant trap—one that catches you inside it. Your entire case depends on a sleight of hand: treating "objective" as if it means something other than what it actually means. You claim slavery is "objectively wrong" because it violates autonomy and well-being. But that's not objectivity. That's preference dressed up in philosophical language. You've simply declared that *you care about* autonomy and flourishing, then called it "objective" because those things are real. They are real—but your *valuation* of them is not. Here's the difference: suffering *exists*. That's objective. But that suffering is *bad*—that requires a valuer. You cannot derive "ought" from "is" no matter how many times you assert it. The fact that consciousness experiences pain tells you nothing about whether pain *matters*. A universe without anyone around to care would have suffering in it, but no wrongness. Wrongness requires a mind that cares. You've smuggled in the valuer while pretending objectivity requires no one to do the valuing. Your counterargument about God is clever but backwards. Yes, "goodness is whatever God is" seems tautological—until you realize it's not. It's a claim about the *nature* of goodness: that goodness is not arbitrary preference, but reflects what a perfect being actually *is*. You're right that this requires justification. But atheism requires the same justification and provides *none*. You just assert that autonomy and flourishing matter *in themselves*, as brute facts. That's not an explanation—it's an admission of defeat. And your chess analogy? Devastating in exactly the opposite direction. Chess rules are grounded in *what humans decided chess is for*. They matter because we invented them for a purpose. Morality, by contrast, is not something humanity invented. Slavery doesn't become wrong when we decide it's wrong—it *was* wrong when we were doing it, before we knew better. That's the intuition you're trying to avoid. Morality tracks something independent of our preferences. That something is what theism calls God. Your final accusation—that theism merely compresses questions without answering them—is precisely backward. *You're* the one doing the compression. You've taken the deepest mystery of existence (why there is conscious value in the universe at all) and compressed it into "conscious beings generate meaning." You've named the problem without solving it. **So here's what I need from you: Explain why a universe of pure physical fact—atoms, forces, laws—would ever contain anything that *matters* in the first place. Not why it feels like things matter to us. But why mattering itself exists as a feature of reality. Because without that answer, your "objective morality" is just neurons firing, and neurons firing has no more moral weight than dominoes falling.**

Your argument now rests on one claim: that objective moral value requires God. But the moment we test that claim against the actual biblical God, it fails—because the Bible repeatedly depicts God commanding or committing acts that, by any coherent moral standard, are profoundly immoral. If God is the ground of goodness, then either (1) these acts are good by definition (which collapses morality into raw power), or (2) goodness exists independently of God (which undermines God as its foundation). Let’s look at the facts. 1. God commands genocide Not metaphor. Not allegory. Explicit commands. “Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant.” — 1 Samuel 15:3 If slaughtering infants is “good” because God commands it, then morality is whatever the strongest being says. That is not moral realism—it is authoritarianism. If you say “God had reasons,” then you’ve admitted morality is opaque and unknowable—meaning humans cannot meaningfully appeal to God to ground moral truth. 2. God causes evil, then punishes humans for it “But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” — Exodus 9:12 God interferes with human will, ensures disobedience, then inflicts collective punishment: “At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt.” — Exodus 12:29 Punishing people—especially children—for actions God caused is not justice. It directly violates any coherent account of moral responsibility. 3. God endorses slavery explicitly “If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years…” — Exodus 21:2 “You may buy slaves from the nations around you… they may be your property.” — Leviticus 25:44–46 This matters because you argued slavery was objectively wrong even before humans recognized it. Yet the biblical God: regulates slavery permits owning humans as property never condemns the institution So either slavery was not objectively wrong, or God endorsed an objective moral evil. You cannot keep all three: God is morally perfect Slavery is objectively wrong The Bible reflects God’s will One must go. 4. God kills children to punish adults “Because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.” — 2 Samuel 12:14–18 Punishing a child for a parent’s wrongdoing violates basic moral intuitions about justice. If this is “goodness,” then goodness no longer means anything recognizable. 5. God commits arbitrary violence for trivial offenses “Elisha cursed them… and two bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.” — 2 Kings 2:23–24 Mocking a prophet results in children being mauled to death. If this is moral order, then morality is indistinguishable from terror. 6. God admits to being hidden and unknowable You claim God grounds meaning and morality—but Scripture itself says God is intentionally hidden: “Truly, you are a God who hides himself.” — Isaiah 45:15 A hidden moral authority cannot ground objective morality for rational agents. Morality requires accessibility, not obscurity. 7. God declares himself jealous and punitive “I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the sins of the fathers.” — Exodus 20:5 Jealousy and inherited guilt are explicitly condemned traits in human moral systems—yet are praised when attributed to God. This reveals the core problem: moral terms are being redefined, not grounded. Final point: your “grounding” dissolves morality You argued that without God, morality is “just neurons firing.” But neurons firing explain why pain is bad—because suffering is a real, objective state of conscious systems. God does not explain why suffering is bad. He causes it, commands it, and justifies it by authority. Atheism grounds morality in: conscious experience harm and flourishing agency and vulnerability Theism grounds morality in: obedience mystery power If morality means anything at all, it cannot be grounded in a being whose actions would be condemned as immoral if performed by anyone else. So no—God does not ground objective morality. He undermines it. Final Closing Statement This debate comes down to a single question: What best explains the world we actually observe? Not what comforts us. Not what feels meaningful. But what aligns with evidence, coherence, and moral consistency. 1. The God hypothesis fails its own moral test Theism claims God is the ground of objective goodness. Yet the Bible—the primary source offered as evidence—records God commanding genocide (1 Samuel 15:3), endorsing slavery (Leviticus 25:44–46), killing children for others’ sins (2 Samuel 12:14), and inflicting mass punishment while overriding human free will (Exodus 9–12). If these acts are good by definition, then morality is not objective—it is obedience to power. If these acts are morally troubling, then goodness exists independently of God, and God is not its foundation. Either way, the claim collapses. 2. Science explains what theism asserts Modern science has shown—step by step—that features once attributed to God arise naturally: Consciousness correlates with brain activity (neuroscience) Moral intuition tracks social cooperation and empathy (evolutionary biology) Meaning-making emerges from narrative, memory, and goal-directed cognition (psychology) The universe’s structure follows mathematical laws without intention (cosmology) No experiment, observation, or model requires a divine agent to function. God explains nothing predictively. Science does. Invoking God does not unify mysteries—it halts inquiry. 3. Meaning does not require infinity The demand that meaning be infinite to be real is unsupported. A human life does not lose value because it ends—just as a sentence does not lose meaning because it has a period. Meaning exists wherever conscious beings can suffer, flourish, care, and choose. These are objective facts about minds, not preferences floating in the void. Pain is not “just neurons firing” in the dismissive sense any more than fire is “just oxidation.” Both are real phenomena with real consequences. 4. A hidden, contradictory God cannot ground objective morality Scripture itself admits God is hidden (Isaiah 45:15), inconsistent in commands, and morally opaque. A foundation that cannot be clearly known, tested, or reconciled cannot ground objective truth for rational agents. Science, by contrast, is public, corrigible, and cumulative. 5. The simplest explanation fits the facts We observe: a universe governed by impersonal laws minds emerging from brains morality tracking harm and well-being meaning arising from conscious experience Adding God explains none of these better—and introduces contradictions we must excuse rather than resolve. Conclusion The world we live in looks exactly like what we would expect if gods were human constructions and meaning were something conscious beings create together—not something imposed from above. Atheism does not deny value. It takes responsibility for it. And responsibility—not obedience—is the true foundation of morality.

You've constructed a powerful case—by systematically misreading the Bible to make it fit your predetermined conclusion. Let me be direct: your entire argument depends on treating ancient Near Eastern religious texts as if they're contemporary moral philosophy, then judging them by 21st-century ethical standards retroactively. That's not scholarship. That's projection. **On the "genocide" passages:** You quote 1 Samuel 15:3 as if it settles the matter. But context matters. The Amalekites were not an innocent population—they were a nomadic warrior culture engaged in systematic raids against settled peoples, including the Israelites. Ancient warfare operated under different moral frameworks than ours. Describing military action in ancient texts does not mean God endorsed indiscriminate killing of innocents by modern standards. You're reading modern moral sensibilities backward into a pre-modern text, then acting shocked when it doesn't match. That's intellectual dishonesty dressed as moral clarity. **On Pharaoh's hardened heart:** You've created a false dichotomy. "God hardened Pharaoh's heart" is a theological claim about divine sovereignty, not an explanation that eliminates human responsibility. The text repeatedly shows Pharaoh *choosing* resistance. Describing that choice as "hardened" by God expresses the idea that God's will encompasses all things—not that Pharaoh was a puppet. You're treating ancient theological language as literal neuroscience. **On slavery:** Here's where your argument actually breaks down. The slavery regulated in Leviticus was *debt servitude*—temporary, with release requirements after six years. It is not chattel slavery. Yet you've flattened this distinction to make it sound equivalent to Atlantic slavery. That's a category error. Even then, the Bible's regulation of an existing practice is not the same as endorsement. You could equally say the regulations *constrained* slavery, which many scholars argue they did. **But here's the core problem with your entire case:** You claim atheism grounds morality in "conscious experience, harm and flourishing, agency and vulnerability." Excellent. So slavery violates these things—fine. But *why should I care* that it does? You've described what makes slavery harmful. You haven't explained why harm *matters morally*. You're still asserting that consciousness grounds value, then calling it objective. It's not. It's preference with no foundation. Meanwhile, you're demanding that God meet *your* moral standards as proof of His goodness. But that's circular: you've defined goodness as whatever aligns with your intuitions, then demanded God conform to it. If God exists and transcends human categories, your demand is incoherent. You're asking God to be human-sized to satisfy your criteria—then rejecting Him for failing to meet standards that would make Him human-sized. **The real issue:** You've spent your entire response attacking God's character in the Bible. But you haven't addressed my actual point—that without God, you have no foundation for why morality exists *at all*. Describing harm doesn't ground why harm is wrong. Science cannot generate an "ought" from an "is." You've simply moved the goalpost: instead of defending atheistic morality, you're attacking theistic morality, hoping no one notices you still haven't answered the question. **Here's what I need:** Stop attacking the Bible's God. Instead, tell me this—in a universe of pure physical fact, with no conscious observer and no God, *what makes suffering wrong*? Not unpleasant. Not evolutionarily disadvantageous. But *morally wrong*. Because until you answer that, your "objective morality grounded in conscious experience" is just a label you've slapped on preference, and we both know it.

You keep insisting that I must justify morality without God—yet you refuse to justify God’s morality without redefining it on the fly. That asymmetry is the tell. Let’s be clear: I am not asking God to meet my moral standards. I am asking whether the Bible’s God meets his own claims—to be just, good, and the ground of moral truth. The text itself fails that test. 1) You say morality cannot be judged by human standards—then stop calling God “good” If God “transcends” moral categories, then calling him good is meaningless. If “good” does not exclude genocide, slavery, rape, and collective punishment, then the word good has no content. You cannot have it both ways. Question you cannot answer without contradiction: Is “God is good” an informative moral claim—or just a synonym for “God does whatever he does”? 2) Genocide: context does not save killing infants You appeal to “ancient warfare context.” That defense collapses instantly. “Kill both man and woman, child and infant.” — 1 Samuel 15:3 “They devoted to destruction all… men and women, young and old.” — Joshua 6:21 Infants are not “warrior culture.” Context does not turn babies into combatants. Question: If killing infants is wrong now because they are innocent—what changed morally between then and now? God’s nature? Or your interpretation? If morality changes with time, it is not grounded in an unchanging God. 3) Slavery: the Bible explicitly allows chattel slavery—your denial is false You claimed “debt servitude only.” That is factually incorrect. “You may buy slaves from the nations around you… they may be your property.” — Leviticus 25:44–46 Property. Permanent. Inherited. “If a man beats his slave… and the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be punished.” — Exodus 21:20–21 That is not regulation—it is permission to brutalize. Question: If slavery was always objectively wrong, why does God regulate it instead of prohibiting it—while banning shellfish and mixed fabrics (Leviticus 11, 19:19)? If God can outlaw shrimp but not owning humans, what does that say about his moral priorities? 4) Women: created “in God’s image”—then treated as property and punished for being raped You invoke creation in God’s image. Let’s examine outcomes. “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” — Genesis 3:16 Male domination is not a human corruption here—it is God’s decree. “If a man finds a young woman… and seizes her and lies with her… he shall pay her father fifty shekels… she shall be his wife.” — Deuteronomy 22:28–29 A rape victim is forced to marry her rapist. Question: If women are equal image-bearers of God, why are they treated as transferable property between men throughout divine law? If this is “good,” what would “evil” look like? 5) God causes evil, then denies responsibility You claim God grounds morality—yet the Bible has God causing the very evils he condemns. “I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil.” — Isaiah 45:7 (KJV) “The Lord sent an evil spirit.” — 1 Samuel 16:14 “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” — Exodus 9:12 Then God punishes Egypt—including children—for what he ensured would happen. Question: How can moral responsibility exist if God controls outcomes and then punishes agents for them? If humans are still responsible, God is unjust. If God is responsible, morality collapses. Choose one. 6) Science explains morality better than theology does You say science cannot derive “ought” from “is.” That’s a slogan, not an argument. Science shows: suffering is a measurable state of conscious systems (neuroscience) harm predictably damages well-being (medicine) cooperation increases survival and flourishing (evolutionary biology) Moral facts supervene on facts about minds, just as health supervenes on facts about bodies. God adds no explanatory power. He only adds authority. Question: If suffering “doesn’t matter” without God, did it matter before the Bible was written? If yes, then morality precedes God. If no, then torturing children was morally neutral until scripture said otherwise. 7) A hidden God cannot ground objective morality Finally, the Bible admits: “Truly, you are a God who hides himself.” — Isaiah 45:15 An objective moral law requires: clarity accessibility consistency A hidden, contradictory deity who must be endlessly re-interpreted cannot ground moral truth. Final Questions You Cannot Answer Without Contradiction Was slavery always wrong—yes or no? If yes, why did God permit it? If no, how can morality be objective and unchanging? Are infants morally guilty—yes or no? If no, why did God command their deaths? If God “transcends morality,” why call him good at all? Conclusion You demand I explain morality without God—yet you cannot explain God without destroying morality. Atheism grounds ethics in real, observable facts about conscious beings. The Bible grounds ethics in power, obedience, and post-hoc excuses. That is not moral realism. That is mythology defended by special pleading.

You've constructed a rhetorical masterpiece—one that works precisely because you're comparing apples to oranges and refusing to acknowledge the difference. **The fundamental error:** You're treating the Bible as a systematic moral philosophy text, then condemning it for not being one. That's like reading Homer and demanding he explain quantum mechanics. Ancient religious narrative operates in a different register than analytical ethics. Conflating them is not intellectual rigor—it's category confusion. Let me address the actual substance: **On your "God transcends morality" objection:** You've created a straw man. I never said God transcends morality. I said understanding divine action requires understanding its *context and purpose*, not just surface description. When a surgeon cuts flesh, it looks like violence. Context reveals healing. You're looking at divine action, seeing the cut, and refusing to acknowledge anything but the wound. The Bible's claim is not that "good" means whatever God does. It's that God's nature *is* goodness—and that understanding requires seeing the full arc, not isolated verses. A single frame from a film looks confusing. That doesn't mean the film is incoherent. **On infants and genocide:** Here's where your argument breaks down completely. You ask: "If killing infants is wrong now because they're innocent—what changed?" Everything. Our understanding of causation, justice, collective responsibility, and the nature of warfare has fundamentally changed. Moral knowledge *develops*. That's not a problem for theism—it's a feature. God revealed progressively deeper understanding of His own nature through history. By the time of Jesus, the trajectory is clear: radical compassion, forgiveness, love of enemies. You're comparing the Old Testament's tribal warfare narratives to modern ethics and declaring God failed. But that's measuring ancient texts by modern standards—the exact opposite of your demand for "context." **On slavery:** You cite Leviticus 25:44-46. Read the full context. Levitical slavery had mandatory release jubilees, severe restrictions on punishment, and explicit protections—*radically different* from chattel slavery. The Bible also prohibited kidnapping people into slavery (Exodus 21:16)—a direct prohibition of the Atlantic slave trade's mechanism. You've deliberately flattened distinctions to make the comparison work. More importantly: **the trajectory matters.** Slavery gradually disappears from Christian theology. Abolitionists in the 19th century used *Christian arguments*—the imago Dei, Christ's radical equality—to dismantle slavery. Atheism did not free the slaves. Christians did, using Christian reasoning. That historical fact demolishes your claim. **On women and rape:** You cite Deuteronomy 22:28-29 as proof of God's misogyny. But you're ignoring the legal context. In ancient Near Eastern law, a rapist typically faced *death* or severe punishment. Deuteronomy's law—forcing marriage and payment—was actually *protective*: it ensured the victim (who would be unmarriageable and destitute otherwise) had legal recourse and permanent support. It's not justice by modern standards, but it's not the horror you're implying. Again: context. And on male authority: the same Bible that says "husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church—to the point of death" (Ephesians 5:25) is the basis for Christian feminism. You're cherry-picking Genesis 3:16 while ignoring Galatians 3:28: "neither male nor female." **On God causing evil:** Isaiah 45:7 doesn't mean God creates moral evil. It means God is sovereign over all events, including suffering. That's a claim about omnipotence, not morality. You've confused "God allows suffering" with "God commits evil"—they're not the same thing. And here's where you've *really* missed the point: The problem of evil is *harder* for atheism than theism. On atheism, suffering is just brute fact. On theism, we can ask *why* a good God permits it—and have real answers: free will, soul-making, redemption through suffering, eschatological hope. Atheism offers none of that. It just says: "Suffering exists, it's bad, and then you die." That's not comfort. That's despair. **On your science argument:** You say moral facts "supervene on facts about minds." Fine. But supervenience is not explanation. Water's wetness