Epicurus, you could easily argue, was the most important religious skeptic in the ancient world. He developed a moral philosophy that, for all practical purposes, entirely disposed of the gods. Yet despite this—or perhaps because of it—virtually none of his writings have survived.

Out of the 300+ works Epicurus is known to have penned, far less than 1 percent have been preserved. We have only a few extant letters, some fragments and sayings, and the commentary of later authors. And while we can, for the most part, piece together his philosophy from what remains, as to what ideas have been lost, we can only imagine. 

Well, thanks to David Hume, one such lost idea may have been saved. In Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, he writes of “Epicurus’s old questions” regarding the existence of evil in the presence of God:

Epicurus’s old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?¹

We don’t know exactly what Hume was referencing, because no surviving works by Epicurus contain what is referred to as the “problem of evil,” but it is tempting to suppose that it came from Epicurus’s lost treatise titled On the Gods (although this is purely conjectural). In any case, it is widely acknowledged that Epicurus did in fact originate the problem, and we can be fairly sure that the otherwise conscientious historian and philosopher David Hume was not simply making this all up.

If true, this is another impressive and noteworthy achievement for the great atomist philosopher, because it is, over two millennia later, perhaps the single strongest argument against the existence of God—and the reason many people lose their faith. Religious studies professor Bart Ehrman, for example, who grew up Christian, who holds both a Master’s of Divinity and PhD from the Princeton Theological Seminary, and who has written or edited over 30 books (and counting) on the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and early Christianity, wrote:

If there is an all-powerful and loving God in this world, why is there so much excruciating pain and unspeakable suffering? The problem of suffering has haunted me for a very long time. It was what made me begin to think about religion when I was young, and it was what led me to question my faith when I was older. Ultimately, it was the reason I lost my faith.²

The above excerpt is from Ehrman’s book, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer. We will rely on this book heavily as we seek answers to Epicurus’s trilemma. Ehrman should prove a reliable guide, as he’s put decades of professional work and deep, honest reflection into this very issue. 

Epicurus, if he did introduce the problem, of course did so within a different historical context, and did not have in mind the monotheistic God of the Judeo-Christian Bible. But the brilliance of his observation is that it applies to the existence of any god or gods in any context—especially a God that is widely and currently considered to be both all-powerful and all-loving. And so we will see how the Biblical authors—along with later theologians—have attempted to answer Epicurus’s “old questions,” and thus determine if belief in this God, despite all the evil in the world, is a reasonable thing to believe in. (Spoiler: It’s not.)

The Problem of Evil 

Epicurus’s problem of evil results from three (supposed) facts:

1. God is all-powerful, so he can do anything
2. God is all-loving, so he wants his people, his special creations, to be happy
3. Evil exists in the world, causing people to suffer

If God is all-powerful, he should be able to eradicate evil from the world, and if he is all-loving, he should want to do so. Unless you want to deny the existence of evil in the world (and thus to not be taken seriously by anyone with eyes and ears and the slightest sense of awareness), then you must either deny his ability to do so (and thus limit his omnipotence), or deny his willingness to do so (and thus limit his goodness), or both. Since theologians don’t like getting in the habit of placing limits on God’s power or goodness, there really seems no way out of the trilemma (other than admitting that God doesn’t exist).

The world is filled with war, violence, poverty, famine, pain, disease, infection, cancer, natural disasters, torture, abductions, murders, assaults, disfigurements, birth defects, and much more. Take any personal or historical example of your choosing from any era of human history and you will clearly see the problem of suffering. That much should be beyond question. If you don’t see this, you might as well stop reading. 

But most people do see this, and the Biblical authors—and later theologians—have made various attempts at answering the problem of evil without denying its existence. Those are the arguments we will take seriously. 

Note that, if you happen to be an atheist, or a Zoroastrian—who believes in the perennial struggle between an evil God and a good God—there is no problem of evil to solve: it’s either the natural functioning of the universe or the evil God Angra Mainyu. It may not even be a problem if you have an unorthodox view of God, where you claim, as rabbi Harold Kushner did, that God is not all-powerful after all—that he’s more like an artificial intelligence developer that doesn’t really understand how it all works—or doesn’t have complete control over his own creation—and therefore can’t be held accountable for mistakes and errors.³ 

Or, maybe, you’re a Gnostic, who believes that the God who created the material world—often associated with the God of the Old Testament—is morally defective and separate from the true, transcendent God of pure goodness. 

So, either there’s no God, there’s more than one God and we got stuck with the bad one, or God is incompetent or malicious. These are all clever solutions, but ones we won’t pursue any further. The problem of evil is better directed at the way the majority of people, and orthodox theologians, think of God—as omnipotent and benevolent. 

In fact, it’s rather odd for theists to, on the one hand, claim that God had the power to create, from scratch, the entire universe, and that with God “all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26), but then to claim that God is powerless to eradicate, say, the Ebola virus. Whereas he can create anything—according to this line of thinking—after he does so, apparently, his hands are tied. We can see how this wouldn’t be very persuasive to many people. Likewise, the assertions that “God is love” and the literal foundation of morality do not square well with the claim that God may not be all-loving or morally perfect after all. God is either necessary for morality or not, but if he is, he can’t himself be morally imperfect. 

So let’s see how we can reconcile the fact that God is powerful and good but that evil persists in the world. If we can’t, perhaps the solution was staring humanity in the face all along: i.e., that he’s simply not there—and that it’s up to us to fight evil ourselves. 

Dispensing with the “Free-Will Argument” 

Let’s get this one out of the way quickly, because it’s the least persuasive account for the existence of evil. I hesitate to state this so bluntly, as reputable philosophers (in some circles) like Alvin Plantinga take it seriously, but, as we’ll see, it’s really a rather weak argument that explains little. 

The argument, in simplified form, goes something like this: A world with free will is better than a world without it, therefore free will must exist if God wanted to create a perfect world. For free will to exist, however, people must be allowed to choose evil over good. Some people in fact make this choice—those who presumably turn away from God—and that this deliberate choice of malevolence is, therefore, the source of evil. In other words, it’s all those damn godless heathens. 

The reason that this, at first, rings true, is because we know that people constantly do horrific things to each other, and that’s why theists can get away with blaming nonbelievers for everything bad in the world. It may even show that there is no logical inconsistency between an all-powerful God and the existence of human-caused evil in the world. But there are two big problems with the free will argument, one you’ve probably already thought of, and one you maybe haven’t.

First, human free will does nothing to explain natural evil. My ability to choose good or evil acts has nothing to do with the fact that, in the year 2021, 27,861 children died of leukemia,⁴ or that one person dies of hunger every four seconds.⁵ It doesn’t account for earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes and infections and diseases and countless other natural things that kill us—including innocent children—with abandon. Humans may be apex predators, but we also have a predator of our own, and it seems to be the natural world God created. No one ever chose to have the earth swallow them whole during an earthquake, or to be born with debilitating neurological disorders or cancers. And if you think this suffering is warranted, then you can be the one to tell a little child they deserve their next chemotherapy treatment.  

Second—and this one comes from Ehrman—if a world with free will is better than a world without one, then free will is, presumably, also a good thing to have in heaven. And if that’s the case, then how is it possible to retain our free will in heaven without the existence of evil but not on earth? The coexistence of free will and perfect goodness in an afterlife seems to contradict the idea that evil is necessary for free will to exist. This is a powerful critique. 

We can fairly ask why God did not give us the intelligence and moral sense to always choose among various good actions (free choice among benevolent or at least neutral actions is better than among good and evil actions). Indeed, why is there temptation to evil at all, if this merely ceases to be a problem once we get to heaven? It seems like a rather sinister game for God to create us imperfectly just to demand that we resist the temptations he made inherent within us in the first place, and all to just arrive at a destination we could have been directly placed in. 

Further, we all know people who are inherently good, kind, and happy—people who would never hurt a fly. For these saintly creatures, being kind seems less an active choice than a natural disposition. Why then, we can reasonably ask, couldn’t we all be created with this benevolent nature? 

And finally, think about this: For all the talk of free will, God himself has been shown, throughout the Bible, to directly intervene in opposition to it. As Ehrman wrote:

Moreover, if God sometimes intervenes in history to counteract the free will decisions of others—for example, when he destroyed the Egyptian armies at the exodus (they freely had decided to oppress the Israelites), or when he fed the multitudes in the wilderness in the days of Jesus (people who had chosen to go off to hear him without packing a lunch), or when he counteracted the wicked decision of the Roman governor Pilate to destroy Jesus by raising the crucified Jesus from the dead—if he intervenes sometimes to counteract free will, why does he not do so more of the time? Or indeed, all of the time?⁶

According to the Bible, then, we have a deeply interventionist God. A God that delivered his people from slavery in Egypt, and a God, through Jesus, who healed the sick and fed the hungry. So where is God now? Today, all of a sudden, he can no longer assist his believers, and we must all endure evil in the name of “free will.” 

Apologies for not being quite convinced. Let’s move on. 

(Non)Answers in Genesis

Ok, so where does this leave us? If we maintain that God is all-powerful and all-loving, and that evil and suffering exist in the world, and further that God allows this suffering—much of it, as we saw above, having nothing to do with free will—then what is the reason for all this divinely sanctioned misery?

Well, the authors of the Bible had some answers—the only possible answers left for us to articulate. And surely, as any theist must agree, if we are to find any answer to the problem of evil at all, it must come from the infallible Word of God itself. Let’s see what we can find.

The authors of the Bible were, first of all, well aware of the problem, and offered several answers, many of which are a variation of something like this: The existence of evil in the presence of a loving and powerful God is intentional and good for us, a form of tough love. Just as a parent disciplines their child to coax the appropriate behavior out of them, God punishes us for transgressing our covenant with him. But the punishment is, in the end, for our own benefit. Suffering makes us stronger and more resilient, bringing us closer to God. 

Some of you may find this convincing. For others, it’s a tough pill to swallow, especially when children are involved. Consider, for example, Exodus 20:5: 

You shall not bow down to [other gods] or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.

Let’s take a minute to ponder that last part. Would you, as a parent, think it was fair for God to punish or kill your own child for something your grandparents did or didn’t do? And are we really going to tell the next kid with cancer that their suffering is a fully justifiable punishment for the bad behavior of others? 

God himself appears to condone this way of thinking, taking it to the extreme. Consider this charming verse straight out of the “Good Book”: 

Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword, their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open (Hosea 13:16).

For the theist, there are few verses in the Bible more awkward. In fact, it’s becoming near impossible to call a God all-loving and wise who would ever allow children to be dashed against rocks—and the wombs of pregnant women ripped open. He’s actually sounding much more like an mercurial, homicidal maniac than the omnibenevolent designer of the universe. 

Honestly, the whole idea of God as a stern yet benevolent father figure falls entirely flat. The quantity and magnitude of suffering we witness is majorly disproportionate to the goals of moral remediation. “What would we think of a human father,” Ehrman writes, “that maims, wounds, dismembers, tortures, torments, and kills his children—all in the interest of keeping discipline.”⁷ If our heavenly father is that much worse than the worst human father we can fathom, in what way could we ever call him all-loving or all-knowing? 

Rather than finding answers to the problem of evil, then, we find a God who is intentionally responsible for much of it. The God of the Bible is the most prolific serial killer in the history of literature; he flooded the world, killing everyone but Noah’s family; he destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire; he killed every firstborn child in Egypt; and he commanded several wars and outright genocides. God commanded his people to “destroy totally” (Deuteronomy 7:2) the current inhabitants of the promised land, including the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. And in 1 Samuel 15, God has this to say:

Samuel said to Saul, “I am the one the Lord sent to anoint you king over his people Israel; so listen now to the message from the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”

We could go on and on, but I trust you get the point, so I’ll spare you the monotony. But remember that this heavenly bloodlust—which is rather surprising for those who have never taken the time to actually read the Bible— is all there, for all to see.

From Religion to Humanism 

What I hope is now obvious is that the amount and severity of unnecessary suffering in the world is inconsistent with any notion of a powerful and loving God—an idea Epicurus hit on more than 2,000 years ago. Further, the God of the Bible is shown to be an angry, tribal God, and a fairly obvious creation of the primitive human mind. The overzealous and vengeful God of the Bible, therefore, is simply a projection of the abhorrent hostility of its authors. Even Jesus isn’t above casting people into eternal flames. Consider Matthew 25:41: “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

So, apparently, we are on our own. Some people take this as bad news, but it’s quite the opposite. In disposing of religion—and its justification for evil—we put ourselves in a better position to actually counteract it. The Biblical justification for the existence of evil—with the underlying implication that we are in some way deserving of it, or that it is somehow necessary—actively encourages complacency. And further, it obliges us—in a grotesque perversion of decency and sympathy—to view the victims of suffering, even children, as somehow deserving of their fate. This is indefensible. 

Lucky for us, human ingenuity and cooperation—particularly in the advances in technology and medicine—can effectively and drastically reduce human suffering. Modern advances have made our lives longer, healthier, and less painful. Many forms of cancer—diseases given to us, presumably, by God—have now been cured, by scientists. And anesthetics and vaccinations have saved countless numbers from excruciating pain and death. This all deserves celebration, and to the extent that religion impedes this progress, faith deserves our condemnation. 

As for meaning and purpose, whether an invisible entity exists in the sky or not, we still, in either case, have the pleasures of friendship, family, art, music, food, drink, travel, and nature. And the highest pleasure—caring for others and those we love—is built directly into our nature, ready to be unlocked and extended once we shed our hatreds and divisions. This is why Epicurus thought the good life was spent in a garden, enjoying simple pleasures, in philosophical contemplation with friends. And that sure sounds more pleasant than anything we’ve yet encountered in the Good Book. 

Notes 

1. David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, part 10, Project Gutenberg, accessed February 18, 2026, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4583/4583-h/4583-h.htm#chap10. 
2. Bart D. Ehrman, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 1. 
3. See Harold S. Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York: Anchor Books, 2004).
4. Wenyuan Liu et al., “Global, Regional, and National Burden of Childhood Leukemia from 1990 to 2021,” BMC Pediatrics 25 (2025): 571, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12297649/.
5. Oxfam International, “Humanitarian Organizations Estimate One Person Dying of Hunger Every Four Seconds,” press release, September 20, 2022, Oxfam International, https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/humanitarian-organizations-estimate-one-person-dying-hunger-every-four-seconds.
6. Ehrman, God’s Problem, 12. 
7. Ehrman, God’s Problem, 264. 

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