The existence of radical evil is often assumed to be the trump card of atheism. The argument goes like this: Any God who is all-good would not allow radical evil and any God who is all-powerful would eliminate it. Thus either God as proclaimed by religion does not exist or is not worthy of worship.

It may be that the horrors of the 20th century and the violent beginning of the 21st account for at least some of the current interest in atheism. How can any God worth the name countenance these acts and do nothing to stop them?

That is Job’s question. The Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian ‘Old Testament’) rejects the premise that evil exists as punishment for sin. Evil cannot just be punishment for sin, Job believes, because the good can suffer and the guilty frequently thrive. The ending of Job (42ff), as well as the preface, has been added by a different author—chapters 3-41 are purely the protest of innocence. Job puts God on trial as surely as does post-Holocaust author Elie Wiesel his book The Trial of God where Jewish patriarchs put God on trial for permitting the horrors of the Holocaust.

Atheism is necessary to faith. Faith that cannot doubt, and doubt completely, has not plumbed the depths of faith—that is what the Book of Job teaches me and it is what a dialogue with atheism teaches me. I would dishonor the deaths of millions of innocents if I did not dare to look radical evil in the eye and ask, “Why?”