A key strategy in effective apologetics is building a cumulative case—using multiple lines of evidence that reinforce one another while remaining capable of standing on their own. Together, they form a strong overall case. But each individual point should also be clear and compelling enough to challenge an opposing argument when considered on its own.
Ready Responses are designed with this approach in mind. Each response is a concise, memorable Truth Bullet—a key fact, question, or line of reasoning you can introduce into a conversation. You don’t need to deliver an entire argument at once. Sometimes one well-placed truth is enough to challenge an assumption, expose a weakness, or give someone a reason to reconsider what they believe.
Skeptics often raise difficult questions about creation, the universe, God, and the Bible. Ready Responses gives you concise answers, memorable Truth Bullets, key Scriptures or Quotes to help you understand the issue and explain what you believe in your own words.
Purpose: You don’t need to memorize an argument. Learn the key ideas well enough to explain them in your own words.
Outrage Against Evil Is Where Atheists and God Agree
Response
When people witness murder, child abuse, cruelty, or injustice, they instinctively recognize that something is terribly wrong. Christians and atheists alike condemn these actions.
But calling something truly evil assumes there is a standard of goodness against which it can be measured.
Consider these important distinctions:
- Personal preference: What one person considers wrong, another might consider acceptable.
- Cultural morality: What society approves or condemns can change over time.
- Objective morality: Some things are right or wrong regardless of personal opinions, cultural traditions, or majority approval.
Christianity teaches that God Himself is the ultimate standard of goodness. His unchanging character provides the foundation for objective moral truth.
This raises an important question for the naturalist: If everything is ultimately the product of unguided natural processes, what makes an action objectively evil rather than merely undesirable?
Our moral outrage against evil is not evidence that God is absent. From the Christian perspective, it reflects the moral awareness God has given us.
Truth Bullet
You cannot recognize something as evil without first having a standard of goodness. God provides the ultimate foundation for that standard.
Helpful Scripture
“Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness.”
Romans 2:15
Helpful Quote
“If God does not exist then objective moral values and duties do not exist.”
William Lane Craig
Challenge Question: If right and wrong are simply matters of personal opinion or cultural preference, on what basis can we say that something like murder or child abuse is always wrong?
The Reality of Evil Can Actually Point Toward God
Response
The existence of evil is often used as an argument against Christianity. Yet the Bible provides an explanation for both our recognition of evil and our longing for justice.
Consider three important truths:
- We recognize evil because we possess moral awareness. Scripture teaches that human beings were created in God’s image, with a conscience capable of recognizing right and wrong.
- Evil originates in the human heart. Jesus taught that murder, hatred, greed, deceit, and other forms of wickedness arise from within mankind (Mark 7:21–23).
- Mankind needs more than better circumstances. Education, laws, and social reforms can restrain evil, but they cannot eliminate the sinful desires of the human heart.
The Bible’s explanation is remarkably consistent with what we observe throughout history. Evil is not confined to the poor, uneducated, or disadvantaged. It can be found among the wealthy, educated, powerful, and privileged.
Christianity teaches that mankind’s deepest problem is spiritual and moral, and that genuine transformation requires a changed heart.
Truth Bullet
Our awareness of evil points toward a moral standard, while our struggle with evil reveals our need for the God who established that standard.
Helpful Scripture
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
Jeremiah 17:9
Helpful Quote
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Challenge Question: If evil is primarily caused by poverty, ignorance, or poor social conditions, why do we also find extraordinary cruelty and wickedness among wealthy, educated, and successful people?
Evil Is a Problem for Every Worldview
Response
Rejecting God’s existence does not eliminate evil or suffering. Every worldview must explain why evil exists, what makes it wrong, and whether justice will ultimately prevail.
Christianity offers answers that go beyond merely acknowledging the problem.
Consider what the Christian worldview provides:
- A standard of goodness: God’s character establishes what is ultimately right and wrong.
- An explanation for evil: Scripture identifies mankind’s rebellion and sinful nature as the source of moral evil.
- Meaning in suffering: God can accomplish good purposes even through painful circumstances.
- Ultimate justice: God promises to judge evil and hold every person accountable.
- Redemption and restoration: Through Jesus Christ, God offers forgiveness, transformation, resurrection, and the promise of a world without evil.
Under atheistic naturalism, there is no guaranteed final judgment, resurrection, or ultimate restoration of those who have suffered injustice.
Christianity, however, teaches that evil will not have the final word. God will ultimately judge wickedness, restore His creation, and eliminate suffering and death.
Truth Bullet
Rejecting God does not solve the problem of evil. Christianity offers something naturalism cannot guarantee: ultimate justice, redemption, and the final defeat of evil.
Helpful Scripture
“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”
Revelation 21:4
Helpful Quote
“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.”
C.S. Lewis—Mere Christianity
Challenge Question: If there is no God, no final judgment, and no life beyond death, what ultimate justice is there for innocent victims whose murderers escape punishment?