Is Believing in God Irrational? Ch5 - Problem of Evil

This post is inspired by Amy Orr-Ewing's book "Is Believing in God Irrational?" Chapter 5. Most of it is her ideas, some are mine. Please see all the chapters in the post "Is Believing in God Irrational?" for the full picture if you'd like. 

Ch5) If God existed, bad things would not happen to good people, or to anyone for that matter.

a) Existence of good and evil
i) Amy begins by saying that this defining of good and evil, the statement that bad things happen to people, presupposes a definition of good and evil, which come from God, and not elsewhere.
On the one hand, this argument is sound in the sense that we can say "You guys don't believe in good or evil, so why are you complaining about this problem?" On the other hand, on a true philosophical level, this is a semi-internal attack against the validity of belief in God. According to Christianity, there is good and evil, and (it is assumed) God should take the evil out of peoples lives.
 ii) Orr-Ewing then makes another slightly misguided attach. I must say, by the way, that it is quite possible I am misinterpreting her intentions in many of these cases. I am fairly certain I am not, but it's possible. Anyway, to continue: She quotes Richard Dawkins in a paragraph where he says that the universe under Atheism is blind and pitiless. She attacks this by saying that atheists deny moral law but nevertheless use moral law when they speak. This is a false attack because Dawkins use of moral language says nothing about his belief in it. Dawkins must use moral language in order to explain that in a naturalistic universe, moral law does not exist.
iii) However, Amy does continue to say that moral language is naturally laid in people's minds, which is evidence for its truth - think of a conscience. This is valid - it may not be compulsory, but it is valid.

b) How other religions define and deal with good and evil.
i) Buddhism believes evil is illusory, that suffering is only a cause of desire. If you can control your desires (and desire nothing, I presume), you can transcend suffering. This does not exclude pain, physical pain, but pain is just physical. You don't have to be bothered by it if you have overcome suffering.
ii) Islam believes in the absolute, all-detail controlling will of Allah. This is much like extreme Calvinism, which tends to blot out free will. (But the balance between Gods sovereignty and our free will is for another time.) Because of this, Allah wills everything, including good and evil. So...they're really not that important.
iii) This is of my own design: Atheism. If atheism is to denounce things like the holocaust, it has to create some method of creating moral law. It will attempt something beyond God, of course, but it will make something. However, whatever it chooses will nonetheless be an unbased judgement. Say for instance, the survival and benefit (in the general meaning of the word) of the human race - this is good. But who is to say that we humans should pursue our own survival? Maybe it's a natural function of evolution, but who says we need to obey the laws of nature? I don't think we treat them very respectfully when we fly in airplanes, why with evolution?

c) Defense by free will, with definition for good and evil
All right, here we go.
 First of all, the book explains that God wanted to make people with a capacity to love, people in his image, so he had to give them free will. If we didn't have it, we'd be no better than the rocks in the ground, and that isn't very interesting.
Second, Amy starts defining good and evil as light vs. dark, where evil is the absence of good. God doesn't make evil, it's just him not being there.

i) Here there is a small counter-argument (my own) that could be made: isn't God omnipresent (he's everywhere), then how can there be an absence of him somewhere? 1) When Adam and Eve sinned, God cursed the ground and cursed man. Plants are no longer so proliferous, animals don't grow as huge, man has to work to get food, woman will be in pain during birth, etc. This is all done as a sign to us that yes, indeed, we choose to do wrong things and that messes up the world. If God didn't let the world go to waste a little, that would suggest to us that we still had it right. 2) By the nature of having free will, we have the choice to do and be non-God things, which creates evil.

ii) Here is another section of my other thought. Let us further define good and evil. It is already said that evil is the absence of good, but what is good? From a worldly perspective, it is pleasure, wealth, contentment, strong families, a stable economy, etc. But that is what we feel is good. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I would like to pose the idea that good is what points to God. He is the only source of life or anything that is good. Therefore pain and disaster can sometimes be good, so long as it helps people get closer to God. Let me give an illustration. I often pose God as a father and we as his sons. If a son is not following his dad, will his dad not punish him out of love, in order for him to learn and be the happiest in the long run? If a patient has a tumor, doesn't the doctor need to cut away the skin and painfully cut out the tumor in order to save the life of the patient? If a man is wicked all his life and runs into no pain, how can he know that he is doing wrong? In the same way, God allows what we see as evil in order to bring us to himself and give himself glory (which is not selfish, because he actually deserves it).

d)Now Amy treats Christians as they suffer:
i) Am I suffering because I sinned? Not neccessarily, Amy answers. Orr-Ewing lists some reasons, I will list more for suffering. 1) The world is just messed up as a sign that there is sin in the world. 2) You are being tested and refined by God. He is making you into a better Christian, take it just as you would painful athletic workouts. 3) You are being persecuted by the world because you believe. Rejoice in this, for your reward in heaven will be great. 4) Sinful people simply do mean things to people. 5) You have strayed really far from God and he is waking you back up. The book of Hosea explains this well. 6) It can be natural consequences of your own sin, like drinking and driving and having an accident. 7) When God cursed the world after the garden of Eden, he said that mans work would be tough. Doing Gods work might just be exhausting to our fallen, depreciating bodies.
ii) Why doesn't God intervene? Well, we just listed a ton of reasons why suffering is good and normal. Amy only adds the hope of heaven and the future conquest of Jesus.