Richard Dawkins on The problem of evil
Dawkins sees the problem of evil as devastating to theism, pointing to the pitiless indifference of natural selection.
Dawkins has described the universe as having 'precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.' This captures his view of the problem of evil: the natural world is exactly what we would expect on atheism and nothing like what we would expect if a benevolent God were in charge.
As an evolutionary biologist, Dawkins is acutely aware of the suffering built into nature. Predation, parasitism, disease, and starvation are not unfortunate side effects — they are the engine of natural selection. A world designed by a benevolent God would not run on a mechanism that requires billions of creatures to suffer and die so that a few might survive and reproduce.
Dawkins regards theodicies — attempts to reconcile God's goodness with the world's suffering — as intellectually desperate. The free will defence does not explain natural disasters. The soul-making defence does not explain the suffering of animals. The 'mysterious ways' defence is, in his view, a confession of defeat.
“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”