French ex-atheist Guillaume Bignon has an article in Premiere Christianity explaining why he thinks the evil perpetrated against his country last week points to the existence of God:
The only option for French atheists (among whose ranks I used to count myself), is to maintain that there isn’t really any such thing as evil. When one denies the existence of God as a transcendent creator of the universe who ordains how humans ought to live their lives, one is left only with conflicting opinions about what individuals like and dislike. If there is no God then there is no objective truth about the good and the bad....
[I]n reality, to be a consistent atheist one must affirm that the Islamic terrorists in Paris didn’t do anything ‘wrong’, as such. They only acted out of line with our personal preferences, (and in line with theirs). If there’s no ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, that’s all we are left with.
Maybe that way of reasoning about good and evil strikes you as crazy. ‘Of course the terrorists were wrong and their acts were evil’ the atheist says. I agree, which is why I think the reality of the evil we just witnessed makes atheism so implausible....
But of course, maintaining the existence of God in the face of such evil isn’t without its difficulties. If he exists and is perfectly good, why didn’t God prevent this evil? ...
Hearts are heavy, and thinking objectively is difficult when it hurts. But ultimately, as the French face this seemingly purposeless evil, one side must deny that it’s evil, and the other must deny that it’s purposeless.
As a former-atheist-turned-Christian-theologian there’s no hiding which option I favour.
Bignon fleshes out these arguments a bit more in the full article. Read the rest here. And if you’re interested in hearing how a French atheist became a Christian, Greg talks about it here (starting at 9:28), or you can read about it here. It’s a great story!