God or Delusion?

What It’s Like to Question Without Wanting to Win

Notes from Inside the Question is an ongoing inquiry written from within uncertainty rather than toward a conclusion. These reflections examine religious belief as it is lived, taught, and defended—not as arguments to win, but as careful observations of how certainty, authority, and moral claims take shape in real lives. The aim here is not persuasion, but clarity: to look closely, name what’s present, and allow the questions themselves to do their work.

For a long time, questioning felt like conflict. To ask hard questions was to take a position, draw a line, and prepare for resistance. Doubt arrived with arguments in hand, anticipating rebuttals before the first sentence was finished. In that posture, questioning wasn’t simply curiosity—it was a contest. There were claims to refute, authorities to challenge, and conclusions to defend. It felt necessary to sharpen the question until it could cut.

That urgency made sense. When belief systems are structured around certainty and obedience, questioning is rarely welcomed as a neutral act. It’s interpreted as defiance, instability, or moral failure. To question in that environment is to risk consequences—social, spiritual, relational. Wanting to “win” an argument often begins as a way to survive those risks. Victory promises safety: if you can prove your case, perhaps you can justify your doubt, protect your integrity, or keep your footing on uncertain ground.

But there is a cost to that posture. When questioning is driven by the need to win, attention narrows. The world becomes a set of claims to dismantle rather than a reality to understand. Listening turns strategic. Complexity becomes inconvenient. Even doubt can harden into its own kind of certainty. In trying to escape one closed system, it’s easy to build another—this time with different answers, but the same rigid structure.

At some point, the urgency fades. Not all at once, and not because the questions have been answered. It fades when the need to persuade loosens its grip—when proving something stops feeling essential to being okay. This isn’t resignation, and it isn’t indifference. It’s a quiet recognition that clarity doesn’t require victory, and that understanding doesn’t always arrive through confrontation. The questions remain, but they no longer demand immediate resolution.

When questioning no longer carries an agenda, it changes texture. It slows down. It becomes less performative and more attentive. Questions begin to open rather than close. Instead of aiming toward conclusions, they linger with experience—with what belief does to people, how authority is exercised, how fear operates beneath the surface. Inquiry becomes an act of noticing rather than a strategy for dismantling.

This posture can be misunderstood. From the outside, it may look like retreat or relativism, as if stepping away from argument means abandoning seriousness or conviction. But the opposite is often true. Letting go of the need to win can deepen moral attention. It allows space to hold competing truths without flattening them, to acknowledge harm without reducing everything to villains and heroes. Clarity can exist without certainty, and conviction can remain without coercion.

In this quieter space, different things become visible. Power dynamics that were once obscured by doctrine come into focus. The emotional weight of belief—fear, loyalty, shame, hope—becomes easier to name. Questions that once felt dangerous can be approached without armor. There is room to see how systems shape lives, how language constrains imagination, how certainty can be both comforting and corrosive. Inquiry becomes less about dismantling beliefs and more about understanding their consequences.

This posture also changes how writing happens. There is less need to anticipate objections or score points. The work becomes descriptive rather than directive—an effort to say what is happening as clearly as possible and let the reader recognize themselves where they will. That recognition, if it comes, isn’t forced. It’s invited. And if it doesn’t come, the writing remains honest all the same.

This series is written from that place. Notes from Inside the Question is not an attempt to persuade or convert, nor is it an exercise in neutrality. It is an ongoing inquiry into religious belief as it is lived, taught, and defended—attentive to authority, fear, and identity without assuming where the reader must land. The aim is not to resolve the questions, but to stay with them long enough to see what they reveal.

There is something steady about questioning without wanting to win. It allows the questions to remain present without becoming weapons. It makes room for complexity without demanding closure. In that space, inquiry becomes less about arriving somewhere and more about seeing clearly where one already is. And sometimes, that clarity is enough.

This post is part of the Notes from Inside the Question series—reflections written after certainty loosens, but before experience is reduced to belief or disbelief.

Reading This Site Now

Some of the writing here was born out of urgency.

At the time, argument felt necessary—not for sport, but for survival. Certain doctrines and practices had shaped real fear, real harm, and real silence. Naming those dynamics required clarity, and clarity sometimes arrived as critique.

Those posts remain.

They reflect honest moments in a longer inquiry—moments when the moral stakes felt too high to speak gently, and too consequential to leave unnamed.

What has changed is not the seriousness of the questions, but the posture from which they’re asked.

I’m less interested now in persuading than in noticing. Less interested in dismantling arguments than in understanding what belief does to human lives—how it forms identity, justifies power, and survives even when certainty loosens.

If you read older posts here, you may hear a sharper edge. If you read newer ones, you may notice more space. Both belong to the same inquiry.

Nothing here is meant to tell you what to believe, or how to arrive anywhere. The only invitation is to read carefully, pause when something resonates—or unsettles—and notice what remains when the noise falls away.

That, for me, is still the God Question.

Campfire and Hellfire: The Comfort of Condemnation

Mark Clark opens Chapter 5 with what he calls “the problem of hell.” It’s a curious way to frame a moral horror that most of us, Christian and non-Christian alike, instinctively reject. Rather than confront this intuitive revulsion, Clark’s goal is to explain hell as reasonable, even necessary, within the Christian worldview. His case begins around a literal campfire — a moment of spiritual reflection that quickly flares into warnings of divine vengeance.

In this post, we’ll analyze the opening tone of Chapter 5 and its first section, “Campfire and Hellfire,” and examine how fear-based belief and authoritarian assumptions undergird Clark’s defense of eternal torment.

A Problem Framed with Certainty

Clark admits, “The doctrine of hell is emotionally and intellectually repulsive to most people,” but insists it’s “not only necessary” but “good news.” Rather than pausing to explore why so many humans recoil from the idea of hell — or whether that revulsion might be evidence against its validity — Clark doubles down. He presents hell as both Jesus’ teaching and a logical consequence of justice.

This is a classic move: start with an emotionally difficult premise, acknowledge its discomfort, then attempt to recast it as a misunderstood good. In rhetoric, this is called “reframing.” In theology, it’s sometimes called gaslighting.

Campfires and Conversion

In the “Campfire and Hellfire” anecdote, Clark recounts a youth retreat where teenagers sat around a fire and shared emotional confessions. Some admitted fear about death or expressed concern for their unsaved friends. Clark writes that the pastor leading the event pivoted to a warning: “If you don’t know Jesus, you’re going to hell.”

Clark then asserts that many of the youth gave their lives to Jesus that night, claiming this as a success story. But let’s pause and ask a deeper question:

What kind of worldview requires a child to fear eternal conscious torment in order to be considered saved?

When fear is the tool of persuasion, consent is undermined. And when that fear is eternal — a never-ending nightmare from which there is no waking — then the moral foundation of the faith is on trial.

The Real Problem of Hell: Not That It’s Unpopular, But That It’s Immoral

Clark sets up hell as a stumbling block for modern people because it’s offensive to our moral intuitions. But instead of asking whether our moral intuitions might be pointing toward a more humane truth, he insists the problem lies with us.

This is the great reversal: rather than the doctrine of hell being scrutinized for cruelty, you are scrutinized for questioning it.

And yet, that very question is central to The God Question:

If an idea is emotionally traumatic, ethically indefensible, and historically weaponized — is it more likely to be true, or human-made?

An Imaginary Solution to an Imaginary Problem

Clark doesn’t prove the existence of hell. He simply asserts it — because Jesus said it, the Bible teaches it, and justice demands it (we’ll explore those claims in later sections). But his foundational assumption is clear: hell must exist because humans are sinful and a holy God must punish sin.

But what if the problem isn’t sin — at least not as defined by ancient tribal codes or authoritarian churches?

What if the real problem is this: we invented a problem (original sin) and then invented a horrifying solution (hell) in order to control behavior, enforce conformity, and keep the faithful afraid?

That’s not divine justice. That’s spiritual abuse.

Final Reflection

The image of teenagers trembling around a campfire, pushed toward belief by the threat of eternal suffering, is not an argument for God — it’s an argument against religious coercion. If the God of Christianity were real, and hell were a place of eternal conscious torment, then nothing about this world — or this gospel — could be called “good news.”

In the next post, we’ll examine Clark’s section titled “Jesus, Teacher of Hell,” and assess the specific claims about what Jesus taught — and what kind of teacher he would be if those teachings were true.

The End

In this post, we conclude our response to Chapter 5 of Mark Clark’s The Problem of God, titled “The End.” Here Clark brings his discussion of evil and suffering to a sentimental close, appealing to Romans 8:28 (“all things work together for good”) and Romans 8:18 (“the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed”). It’s an emotional ending—but emotion isn’t evidence. Let’s take a closer look.

1. The Emotional Bypass

Clark’s final appeal isn’t an argument—it’s a coping mechanism. By quoting Paul, he shifts from evidence to reassurance: suffering feels meaningful because one day, somehow, it will be. But this is not a logical resolution of the problem of evil; it’s a postponement. The question “Why does a loving, all-powerful God allow needless suffering now?” is replaced with “Maybe someday we’ll understand.”

That’s not philosophy—it’s deferral. And deferral, however comforting, doesn’t erase the observable fact that billions of sentient beings suffer without purpose, redemption, or relief.

2. The All-Things Fallacy

Romans 8:28 is often quoted as a promise that every tragedy hides divine intention: “All things work together for good.” Clark follows that script. Yet the claim collapses under minimal scrutiny. All things? Childhood cancer? Genocide? Animal suffering across millions of years before humans existed?

If “good” can encompass these horrors, then “good” has lost meaning. The verse survives only by stretching “good” so far that it becomes an empty synonym for whatever happens. That isn’t moral depth—it’s moral surrender.

3. Suffering as Evidence Against, Not For, God

Clark treats suffering as evidence of God’s empathy (“a God who suffers with us”). But an empathetic bystander who can prevent agony and doesn’t is not compassionate—he’s complicit. The Christian claim that God both feels our pain and allows it for a mysterious greater good makes moral sense only if we downgrade compassion to something sentimental and inert.

If we judge by human ethical standards—the same standards we are told God implanted in us—then omnipotent empathy that permits torture is incoherent. Either God cannot stop suffering (and is not omnipotent) or will not (and is not good). Clark resolves neither horn of that dilemma; he merely quotes scripture to declare victory.

4. The Tolkien Illustration and the Narrative Trap

Clark ends with Samwise Gamgee’s reflection from The Two Towers: even darkness is “a passing thing.” It’s a lovely literary moment—but Tolkien wrote fiction, not metaphysics. To borrow that line as theological evidence is to mistake emotional catharsis for truth. Stories comfort us precisely because they end—because meaning is imposed by an author. The real world, indifferent and ongoing, offers no such narrative guarantee.

5. The Psychology of Closure

The closing tone of “The End” mirrors a human impulse, not divine revelation: our need for closure. We dislike unresolved pain, so we craft cosmic closure where none is evident. In that sense, Clark’s theology is anthropological data—it tells us how the human mind copes, not how the universe works. Hope is valuable as hope, but to mistake it for knowledge is to blur the line between comfort and truth.

6. The God Question Reframed

If suffering can exist without purpose, then meaning is ours to make—not handed down. The more honest response to evil is not “It all works for good,” but “We must decide what good means and act accordingly.”

Presence, empathy, and alleviation—these are human responsibilities, not divine mysteries.

That, perhaps, is the real end: not a verse about glory later, but a choice about compassion now.

📜 Closing Thought:

Christianity’s hope rests on postponed justification. The God Question’s hope rests on clear sight: that pain needs no permission to matter, and kindness needs no eternity to be sacred.

The Advantage of Disadvantage: When Faith Romanticizes Suffering

This post is part of an ongoing response series to The Problem of God by Mark Clark, an apologetics book that attempts to defend Christian belief against modern critiques. Here at The God Question, we’re not interested in strawman versions of faith or smug atheism. Our goal is simple: examine claims honestly, think critically, and ask what’s real — not just what’s reassuring. Each post follows this core philosophy: Begin with curiosity, not belief. Follow evidence, not emotion. Let reality speak for itself.

Reframing Suffering as Strength?

In the section titled The Advantage of Disadvantage, Mark Clark attempts to reframe suffering and disadvantage not as obstacles, but as secret strengths. The idea is simple — and familiar to anyone steeped in Christian teaching:

“God uses the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”

“Suffering humbles us. Disadvantage deepens our dependence on God.”

“Struggle builds spiritual character.”

Clark cites biblical passages, particularly from the Apostle Paul, who famously wrote that God’s power is “made perfect in weakness.” He suggests that those without worldly status, material comfort, or physical strength are often in a better position to receive God’s grace. In fact, being disadvantaged — socially, economically, physically — may be a blessing in disguise.

Let’s be clear: there’s nothing wrong with learning from hardship. But when suffering becomes spiritualized, we need to ask some hard questions. Because what Clark presents here isn’t just personal encouragement — it’s a theological worldview with real consequences.

Romanticizing Suffering, Obscuring Responsibility

Clark’s approach to suffering in this section leans heavily on the trope of the “noble sufferer”: the idea that pain refines us, weakness ennobles us, and those who struggle are somehow closer to the divine.

This might feel comforting in personal moments of hardship — but as a framework for understanding systemic suffering, it’s deeply problematic.

Why?

Because it shifts attention away from the cause of suffering and instead romanticizes the effect.

The single mother working three jobs to survive isn’t facing injustice — she’s just in a season of character growth.
The chronically ill person without healthcare isn’t a victim of systemic failure — their pain is a spiritual advantage.
The marginalized teenager bullied for their identity isn’t being failed by society — they’re being “prepared” by God.

This is not just bad theology. It’s a dangerous justification for inaction. When suffering becomes a divine tool, empathy becomes pity — and justice becomes irrelevant.

The Psychological Cost of “Spiritual Strength”

There’s a darker underside to the “advantage of disadvantage” narrative. For many people, especially those raised in fundamentalist or evangelical traditions, this message conditions them to accept abuse, poverty, or discrimination as holy.

“God is using this for your good.”
“Don’t complain — God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers.”
“This is making you stronger.”

But often, it’s not.

Often, it’s breaking them.

Trauma therapists, mental health professionals, and survivors themselves will tell you: pain doesn’t automatically produce growth. It often produces shame, dissociation, and lifelong psychological harm — especially when the victim has been taught to see their suffering as spiritual training.

Clark’s version of the gospel not only fails to relieve the pain — it risks sanctifying it. That’s not empowerment. It’s gaslighting with a halo.

Flipping the Script: What Is the Advantage of Privilege?

If disadvantage is a secret spiritual weapon, we might reasonably ask: why does the church chase political power, wealth, and influence so relentlessly? Why do the most prominent Christian voices in America — megachurch pastors, celebrity preachers, political operatives — live lives of staggering privilege?

Clark doesn’t address this contradiction.

Instead, he focuses on the individual believer who is disadvantaged — while conveniently ignoring the institutional church that often benefits from and perpetuates that disadvantage.

When the Christian message teaches the poor to embrace their suffering but never teaches the rich to divest their comfort, something’s gone wrong. That’s not faith. That’s a control mechanism dressed up in spiritual language.

There Is an Advantage — But It’s Not What Clark Thinks

There is one thread of truth in Clark’s argument, but he misses the point: suffering can wake us up.

Not to God.

But to the myth of control. To the illusion that life is fair. To the stories we’ve inherited that no longer serve us. And in that awakening, some people do find clarity. Not through divine intervention, but through courage, reflection, therapy, and human connection.

But that’s a far cry from saying God uses suffering to make us stronger. That’s just repackaged prosperity gospel with grittier aesthetics.

Final Thoughts

The idea that suffering gives us an “advantage” sounds noble — until you realize how often it’s used to excuse the pain, not address it.

If there is any moral imperative in suffering, it’s not to reinterpret it as holy. It’s to reduce it. To listen to it. To let it move us toward compassion, justice, and systemic change.

Let’s stop calling pain a gift from God. And let’s start calling it what it is: a reality of life that we can — and must — confront together.

Is Evil Really Pointless? Rethinking the Divine Blueprint Defense

In this section of The Problem of God, Mark Clark takes up the age-old question: What’s the point of evil and suffering? Instead of denying its existence or trying to soften its impact, Clark argues that suffering is not pointless — it’s purposeful. In his view, God uses suffering to accomplish greater goods: to shape character, to build empathy, to fulfill divine plans.

To make his case, Clark cites examples from Scripture and stories of Christians who’ve found meaning in the midst of tragedy. His argument is familiar to anyone who’s spent time in evangelical circles:

“God doesn’t cause suffering, but he allows it for a reason.”

“Your pain isn’t pointless; it’s part of God’s plan.”

“He’s doing something through this.”

It’s a comforting idea — but is it true?

Let’s examine it through the lens of The God Question’s core philosophy: Begin with curiosity, not belief. Follow evidence, not emotion. And above all, ask what’s real — not just what feels reassuring.

The Good That Comes from Evil?

Clark’s key claim in this section is that good things often come out of suffering — and that this justifies, or at least explains, why a good God allows it. He shares stories of people who endured hardship and later said, “I wouldn’t trade what I learned for anything.”

But notice the sleight of hand: these are selective anecdotes where people made peace with their pain — often after surviving it. What about the people who didn’t survive? What about the millions whose suffering had no redemptive arc? The children who die of starvation? The victims of sexual abuse whose lives spiral into despair? The countless people who never “grow” from their pain because the pain never lets up?

Clark’s theology gives meaning only after the fact — and only in stories that end well.

This isn’t a philosophical resolution. It’s a narrative convenience.

The Blueprint Defense: Flawed and Dangerous

Clark’s argument echoes what theologians call the “greater good” defense or, in more extreme versions, the “blueprint theology.” That is: everything that happens — even evil — is part of God’s grand plan.

But this raises disturbing questions:

If a child is molested and grows up to be an advocate for victims, does that mean the abuse was necessary?
If a parent’s grief leads them to start a charity, was their child’s death part of the divine script?
Is God writing horror stories so he can turn them into redemption stories?

Most people, if asked directly, would recoil from such implications. And yet Clark’s logic requires us to accept them. If every evil has a hidden purpose — and if God is sovereign — then evil becomes instrumental, a tool in God’s hands. Which is another way of saying: God uses evil. He doesn’t merely allow it — he incorporates it.

That’s not a morally neutral position. It’s a theology that makes God complicit.

Real Meaning Doesn’t Require Divine Suffering

What’s often missed in Clark’s argument is that humans are capable of finding meaning — even in suffering — without invoking God. In fact, many people who have left religion report that their new frameworks — humanism, psychology, mindfulness, trauma theory, secular philosophy — offer more honest tools for processing pain than “God has a plan.”

Why?

Because these frameworks don’t try to justify the pain. They try to alleviate it.

They don’t look at suffering and say, “This is good in disguise.” They look at it and say, “This is terrible. Let’s do something about it.”

In that sense, secular ethics honors suffering far more than divine blueprints. It doesn’t spiritualize it. It confronts it.

When “Purpose” Delays Progress

Here’s the most dangerous part of Clark’s theology: it encourages people to stay in harmful situations because they believe the pain has a divine purpose.

Abused spouses stay in marriages, believing God is “teaching them something.”
Parents reject medical treatment for children, believing suffering is sacred.
Communities ignore injustice, thinking it’s all part of a higher plan.

This is the real cost of the “evil isn’t pointless” theology: it makes believers complicit in their own oppression — or in the suffering of others. All in the name of spiritual growth.

Sometimes, what religion calls “faith” is just fatalism in disguise.

Final Thoughts: What If Evil Is Pointless?

The fear behind Clark’s argument is that if evil is pointless, then life is meaningless. But that’s a false dichotomy.

We don’t need cosmic purpose to respond to pain with compassion. We don’t need divine blueprints to build a better world. And we don’t need to turn tragedy into theology to make our lives matter.

If anything, the raw, unvarnished truth — that evil often is random and cruel — should motivate us more urgently to stop it. To fix what we can. To comfort those who suffer. To change the systems that enable harm.

That kind of meaning doesn’t require God. It requires courage.

Evil and Evolution: A Closer Look at “Prom Mom” and the Moral Law Argument

Chapter 5 – The Problem of Evil and Suffering | A Response to Mark Clark’s The Problem of God.

In the “Prom Mom” section of Chapter 5, Mark Clark leans heavily on a single, shocking anecdote—meant to jolt the reader into moral outrage—as a cornerstone of his argument that evil proves God’s existence. He presents the now-infamous story of a teenage girl who gave birth in a bathroom during her prom and discarded the newborn in a trash can, where the child died. The media dubbed her “Prom Mom.”

Clark’s point is clear: if you feel visceral disgust or horror upon reading this story, that means you recognize that real evil exists. And if real evil exists, so must real good. If there’s real good, there must be a transcendent standard—a moral law. And if there’s a moral law, Clark argues, there must be a moral lawgiver: God.

It’s a powerful emotional appeal. But is it persuasive?

The Gut Punch ≠ The Argument

Clark is banking on the reader’s emotional response to bypass critical examination. That’s understandable—stories like this one trigger immediate moral revulsion. But let’s pause.

Feeling horror at the death of a helpless infant is not proof of a cosmic moral law. It’s a deeply human response, shaped by millions of years of evolutionary development, social conditioning, and empathy. It’s precisely the kind of event natural selection would sensitize us to, given our species’ survival depends on protecting its young.

Clark briefly mentions Steven Pinker, who explains this through the lens of evolutionary psychology: “We love our children, feel their pain, and recoil at their suffering.” But rather than engaging with Pinker’s insight, Clark brushes it aside, as if merely pointing to our feelings were sufficient evidence of the divine.

This is a crucial omission. It’s not enough to feel that something is evil; the question is why we feel that way. If there is a natural explanation, then the need for a supernatural one collapses.

Why the Evolutionary Explanation Makes Sense

From an evolutionary standpoint, the protective instinct we feel toward infants is both biologically adaptive and neurologically reinforced. Across cultures, neglect or abuse of a child is among the most universally condemned actions. Not because of divine decree—but because our species wouldn’t survive without caring for our young.

That’s the uncomfortable truth: our moral impulses have natural origins. Our revulsion doesn’t require an invisible lawgiver in the sky. It requires empathy, bonding mechanisms, and group cooperation strategies—all of which evolution has selected for over thousands of generations.

Clark’s narrative assumes that because something feels like evil, it must be evil in some cosmic, objective sense. But moral psychology shows that our gut reactions—while powerful—are products of brain chemistry and social evolution. They’re not revelations of divine law.

Can Secular Morality Condemn Prom Mom?

Yes, unequivocally.

You don’t need the Ten Commandments to conclude that what happened in that bathroom was horrific. Secular ethics—based on empathy, reason, consequences, and shared values—has long condemned such actions. The harm is real. The suffering is real. The consequences are real.

And unlike divine command theory, secular ethics doesn’t have to ask whether God’s silence that night meant something. Or why prayers weren’t answered. Or whether the baby was predestined to die. It doesn’t make suffering into a mysterious test. It just calls it what it is: tragic.

The Real Problem Clark Ignores

Here’s what Clark avoids: If God exists and is all-loving, why didn’t he intervene?

If this moment is supposed to show us how evil points to God’s existence, it raises a harder question: where was God in that bathroom stall?

Theism has always had a problem explaining inaction in the face of suffering. A God who allows the Prom Mom story to unfold is a God who chooses not to stop evil. That’s a far greater problem than whether atheists can explain morality.

Final Thoughts

Clark’s story succeeds in stirring the reader’s emotions. But that’s not the same as offering a sound argument. His leap from “this feels wrong” to “there must be a God” bypasses the real question: Are there natural explanations for our moral instincts that don’t require supernatural causes?

The answer is yes—and they’re grounded in evidence, not emotion.

When Suffering Becomes Proof?

In this installment, we examine one of the more audacious arguments in Mark Clark’s apologetic toolkit: that suffering itself is not evidence against God, but in some deep and mysterious way, actually serves as evidence for God.

Let’s walk through this argument and weigh its emotional resonance against its philosophical weight.

1. The Emotional Reversal

Clark opens this section with an emotionally charged appeal: some of the most devout Christians he’s ever known have endured terrible suffering, yet clung more tightly to God.

He treats this as evidence that faith is most real when tested, and that suffering somehow proves the presence of God rather than challenging it.

But this flips the issue on its head.

A person’s response to suffering cannot be used to justify the existence of the divine.
Endurance, resilience, or emotional consolation does not equate to evidence.
People of all religions—and none—have found strength in suffering. That doesn’t validate their specific worldview.

In short, subjective experience can be powerful, but it’s not proof. It’s proof of a human coping mechanism, not of divine truth.

2. “Because It Draws Us to God” Is Not an Answer

Clark suggests that suffering may be part of God’s plan to draw us closer to Him, to humble us, to awaken spiritual dependence.

But this raises an unsettling implication: that God uses pain as bait.

Imagine a father who breaks his child’s leg to teach them dependence.
Imagine a doctor who withholds treatment to provoke gratitude.

We would rightly call these people abusive or manipulative.

Yet when it’s God, the apologist invites us to call it holy.

This theological move may appeal to believers who’ve already accepted God’s goodness as axiomatic, but to anyone standing outside that assumption, it reads as a disturbing justification for what ought to be unjustifiable.

3. The Problem of Selective Suffering

If suffering draws people to God, why does it break so many others?

Why does a child’s leukemia destroy faith for one parent, but strengthen it for another?
Why does a sexual assault survivor leave the church while her attacker becomes a pastor?

If suffering is a spiritual strategy, it’s a wildly inconsistent and unreliable one.

Worse, it makes God the author of both conversion and deconversion. Both the believer’s devotion and the skeptic’s despair become part of “the plan.”

And if everything is part of the plan, then nothing is falsifiable. God wins no matter the outcome.

That’s not theology—that’s circular reasoning wrapped in pious language.

4. Pain as a Call Doesn’t Answer the Cry

Yes, people have cried out to God in suffering. Yes, some have claimed to feel His presence.

But let’s not forget: many cried out and heard nothing.

Nothing when the child’s casket closed.
Nothing when the cancer came back.
Nothing when the tornado leveled the house.
Nothing but silence, grief, and the aching loneliness of unanswered prayer.

To call this silence divine—to call it a message—is to impose meaning after the fact.

It’s not discovery. It’s reinterpretation.

It’s not proof. It’s survival instinct, grasping for hope in a cosmos that so often feels indifferent.

5. The Better Explanation? Humanity, Not Divinity

People find strength in suffering because they must. Not because a god orchestrated their pain for a higher purpose, but because the human brain is wired for adaptation.

Neuroscience shows how we reframe trauma to cope.
Psychology reveals how meaning-making boosts survival.
Community, therapy, love, and reflection help us rebuild lives—not always perfectly, but often enough.

None of this requires a deity pulling the strings. It only requires human beings responding to reality, not being divinely tested by it.

Conclusion: When Proof Isn’t Proof

Mark Clark’s argument that suffering proves God is an example of apologetic inversion—turning a weakness into a strength through emotional spin.

But at its core, the claim crumbles:

It depends on subjective outcomes, not objective reasoning.
It rebrands emotional survival as divine design.
It ignores the randomness and cruelty that so often accompany pain.

For those who believe, perhaps the idea that God uses suffering provides comfort. But for those still asking why a good God would allow it at all, this argument provides no real answer—only a theological reframing of the problem, not a resolution to it.

The better path is to honor suffering for what it is: a human reality, not a divine message.

And the better question may not be why we suffer, but how we respond—and whether we’re brave enough to live in a world without guaranteed answers, but with real, present love.

Morality from Molecules?

In this section of The Problem of God, Mark Clark raises a common apologetic question aimed at naturalistic worldviews: If morality is simply the product of evolution, how can we trust it?

He’s not alone in asking. Christian apologists from C.S. Lewis to William Lane Craig have long argued that if moral values are not grounded in a transcendent source (i.e., God), then they are arbitrary at best and illusory at worst.

But let’s slow down and examine what Clark is really claiming—and where his argument fails to account for what science, psychology, and philosophy have already uncovered.

1. The Straw Man: Evolution Equals Relativism

Clark begins by suggesting that if morality evolved naturally—i.e., as a byproduct of survival-based behaviors—then we have no reason to consider those moral instincts true or binding. They’re merely “useful” for survival, not grounded in ultimate right or wrong.

But this misrepresents how moral reasoning is understood in an evolutionary context.

Yes, evolution may have shaped our emotional and cognitive responses—empathy, fairness, disgust, loyalty, etc.—because those traits helped humans live together cooperatively. But from these building blocks, humans developed moral systems, reflective traditions, and philosophies that transcend mere utility.

In other words: Evolution gave us the capacity for morality. Culture, reasoning, and reflection shaped the content of our ethics.

To claim that evolved traits can’t produce “real” morality is to misunderstand what morality even is. It’s not about divine commands. It’s about flourishing, suffering, justice, and harm—all things humans are wired to care about deeply.

2. The False Dilemma: Objective Morality Requires God

Clark, like many apologists, presents a false choice:

Either morality comes from God, or it’s meaningless and subjective.

But this ignores a third—and widely accepted—option: objective morality as a natural phenomenon.

Morality can be objective without being supernatural.
Suffering is objectively real.
Human flourishing is objectively measurable.
Actions that cause widespread harm—genocide, rape, torture—can be judged objectively wrong because they reliably cause suffering and degrade human dignity.

We don’t need a cosmic lawgiver to know this. We need only empathy, reason, and a commitment to minimizing suffering.

3. Evolution Doesn’t Undermine Morality—It Explains It

Instead of seeing evolution as a threat to morality, many philosophers see it as a powerful explanatory framework:

Why do we feel empathy when others are in pain? Because social cooperation enhanced survival.
Why do we punish cheaters or value fairness? Because groups that punished freeloaders thrived.
Why do we instinctively recoil from murder, even when no one is watching? Because deeply ingrained social norms keep groups stable.

None of this makes morality unreal. It makes it natural—and all the more remarkable for being grounded in our shared humanity, not imposed from outside.

4. The God Hypothesis Doesn’t Help

Clark wants to assert that without God, we can’t call things truly right or wrong. But invoking God doesn’t solve the problem—it merely pushes it back a step.

If something is good because God commands it, then morality is arbitrary—God could command genocide, and we’d have to call it good.
If God commands it because it is good, then goodness exists independently of God.

This is known as the Euthyphro dilemma, and it still dismantles the claim that morality must be grounded in a deity.

Ironically, when the Bible itself condones slavery, commands genocide, and treats women and children as property, it’s hard to argue that this God is the source of a perfect moral law.

5. We Are the Moral Beings We’ve Been Waiting For

Clark dismisses evolutionary ethics as insufficient. But the truth is: the evolution of morality is one of humanity’s most awe-inspiring achievements.

We’ve built systems of justice.
We’ve outlawed slavery.
We’ve expanded human rights.
We’ve even reformed religious moral codes themselves.

This progress didn’t come from religion—it often came in spite of it.

We no longer burn heretics, stone adulterers, or shun menstruating women—not because God changed, but because we did.

Conclusion: Morality Doesn’t Require the Divine

Mark Clark’s insistence that morality must come from God is a theological assertion, not a philosophical necessity.

In reality:

We can explain moral emotions through evolution.
We can build ethical systems through reason and reflection.
We can ground our values in shared goals: reducing harm, protecting rights, and promoting well-being.

None of that requires belief in God. And none of it is diminished by understanding where it came from.

To the contrary, it affirms something beautiful: that we are moral not because we were commanded to be, but because we care.

Proving Too Much, Explaining Too Little

In this installment, we examine the section of Chapter 5 titled “We Need to Prove More.” Here, Mark Clark tries to flip the burden of proof. Rather than defending why evil exists in a world ruled by a loving, all-powerful God, he argues that atheism and secular worldviews face an even greater challenge: explaining why evil is evil at all.

Let’s follow his logic—and then follow it to where it breaks down.

1. The Moral Absolutism Card

Clark argues that when an atheist points to a school shooting, cancer, genocide, or abuse and says, “This is evil,” they’re making a moral claim that presupposes an objective standard—something atheism supposedly cannot provide.

He writes:

“When someone appeals to evil to argue against God, they’re assuming the very thing they deny.”

This is a familiar apologetic move popularized by C.S. Lewis and many since. The logic goes like this:

If you say something is really evil, not just personally disliked, you’re appealing to a moral law.
A moral law implies a moral lawgiver.
Therefore, your outrage at evil ironically proves God exists.

It’s a clever move. But it’s also a rhetorical sleight of hand.

2. Morality Without God Is Not Moral Relativism

Clark assumes that without God, morality must be subjective, fluctuating with cultural whims or personal preferences. But this is a false dichotomy. There’s a wide spectrum between absolute theistic morality and complete moral relativism.

Secular ethicists have developed powerful frameworks for grounding morality in human well-being, flourishing, reciprocity, and empathy—all without invoking the supernatural.

For example:

Sam Harris defends moral realism grounded in human suffering and well-being.
Peter Singer builds utilitarian ethics on the capacity to suffer.
Michael Shermer and Steven Pinker argue from evolutionary psychology and rational empathy.

These frameworks don’t rely on divine command—they rely on human experience, biological wiring, and the shared consequences of actions in a social world.

In other words, one can object to child abuse not because a deity told them to, but because children suffer, and we have the capacity to care and act accordingly.

3. God’s Existence Doesn’t Make Evil Less Evil—It Makes It More Troubling

Even if we granted that atheists lack a basis for calling anything truly evil (they don’t), that wouldn’t solve Clark’s problem.

Because the Christian worldview doesn’t merely acknowledge evil—it claims that God created a world where evil was possible, knew it would happen, allowed it, and in many cases, uses it for His purposes.

This raises bigger questions than it answers:

Why create a world where moral atrocities are part of the plan?
Why intervene selectively?
Why punish temporary rebellion with eternal torment?

Clark never addresses these contradictions directly. He prefers to highlight the flaws in naturalistic morality while glossing over the moral absurdities within theism itself.

But if God is the source of morality, then everything God does must be moral—even genocide, slavery, or the killing of firstborns. That’s not a solution to evil. That’s a divine endorsement of it.

4. You Can’t Borrow What You Don’t Need

Clark accuses secular thinkers of “borrowing” moral values from theism. But what if they’re not borrowing—what if they’re just using the same evolved moral instincts we all share?

A child doesn’t need a Bible verse to know that hitting someone is wrong. A dog doesn’t need a deity to know when it’s being mistreated. Compassion, fairness, and pain aversion are not the property of any one religion.

In fact, many moral advancements—from the abolition of slavery to women’s rights to LGBTQ+ acceptance—have come despite religious resistance, not because of it.

If anything, secular ethics have often led the way.

Conclusion: Proof That Distracts from the Problem

Clark wants to shift the spotlight. He wants us to stop asking how an all-loving God coexists with suffering and start asking how atheists can justify moral outrage.

It’s a classic apologetic tactic:

Distract, redefine, accuse.

But when we peel back the layers, we see the strategy:

Move from the existence of evil to the definition of evil.
Shift from God’s inaction to atheism’s inconsistency.
Use philosophical judo to avoid confronting divine silence.

But the core question remains:

If God exists, why is the world the way it is?

Not why we feel it’s wrong. Not how we define evil. But why, if there’s a loving and powerful God at the controls, evil persists—on massive scales and in personal tragedies.

Until that is answered, no amount of philosophical finger-pointing can restore faith in the moral credibility of the Christian God.