http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diBYdQFEAW8&feature=plcp

This video illustrates a mentality which is within almost every single atheist out there. God has committed atrocities against mankind. He has allowed us to suffer, He has allowed us to die horrible deaths. He has allowed famine, plagues, earth quakes and floods to destroy entire cities and people groups. How can such a being be just, compassionate, loving? The problem with this mentality is that it is taking a secular ethical code and placing it into a Christian world-view. What do I mean by this? Well our ethical views are largely affected by the rest of our world-view. If you believe that there is no afterlife for example, you will probably view death as more horrendous then someone who does believe in an afterlife. But this impact goes even deeper, secular ethics generally leans towards the principle of whatever does harm to a person is wrong, and whatever helps a person, is right. In a Christian world-view this principle is generally true. However, there is a different focus as to what constitutes harm to a person, and what constitutes helping a person. In Christianity, unlike secularism, the focus of ethics is on the afterlife, not this life. This means that suffering that occurs in this life is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if it leads to us accepting Christ and spending eternity without pain or suffering or evil.

From a Christian perspective I do not view suffering or pain as evil, I only view them as evil in certain contexts. A family killed by a tornado, for example, I don't view as evil. I distinguish between evil and bad, such an event would be bad in the sense that it would be unfortunate, but there was no malicious intent in the tornado to kill people, natural forces have no intent. You might say God had the intention of allowing the tornado to kill those people, but God is in a unique position. He knows all, and is in control of all, and as such, God has the right to choose who lives and who dies. This might be a difficult concept to grasp. but consider this God knows everything about you, He knows you better than you do. So He knows who is naughty and who is nice, so to speak. Thus He knows better than all of us who deserves punishment and who does not. But even more so, death in the Christian world-view is not always punishment, in many cases it is simply time for those people to go to heaven.

This is just one piece in the puzzle. There are many other factors to consider which give us a clearer picture as to why God allows suffering and evil to occur. Much like knowing the context of a particular action shapes the morality or immorality of it. For example; say a man is cutting a mans arm off with a dull saw. Given this data, the act is clearly immoral, but add the new data that the man is a soldier trying to save another soldiers life by getting rid of his mangled arm that is causing him to bleed to death. With this data the act is no longer immoral but quite noble and good. It is the same way with God, if we are not fair in looking at all the factors at play in many of God's actions, it is unfair of us to say that God is wicked or evil.

Another topic brought up in this video was this; God sends people to hell for refusing to believe in Him. This like the previous issue is a result of a straw man of the Christian position. In the secular world-view, most people are righteous. Righteousness is attained by doing the right thing as much as possible. In Christianity this is not the case. Righteousness is perfection in Christianity. Any evil deed or selfish act makes a person effectually deserving of eternal punishment. On Christianity we have all committed many selfish actions, so we are all deserving of hell. Given this data, it makes no sense to say that God sends people to hell because they don't believe in Him, He sends them to hell, because they, we are wicked people. The only way that we can escape such judgement is to have faith in Christ, to accept His gift of eternal life. Those who don't choose such life are choosing punishment.