How does the atheist understand suffering and evil? What is the source or cause?
Atheism is not a world view. It's the position on a single proposition, that no theistic claims have met their burden of proof. That it! That's all it is, nothing more, nothing less.
What the mean, is however an Atheist understand suffering and evil just doesn't include any god claims. The vast majority of Atheist I know, do not accept any supernatural claims, so their understand of suffering and evil doesn't include any god(s), angles, demons, devils, pixies, ghosts, appertains, communing with the ancestors, astrology, numerology, reincarnation, magic, witchcraft, spirits.....you get the idea.
I can only speak for myself, but it's actually pretty straight forward.
Natural forces, or as we say Nature, is not sentient, so it is neutral. It knows not, and cares not what happens to us.
We are biological being. Biological being die. it is not a question of if you and everyone you know is going to cease to exist, but a matter of when, and how, and what you are going to do between this day and that.
Since nature does not know of, nor care about us, calamity will be visited upon us. Since you, and everyone you know is going to die, and we are social creatures who care and value those close to us, grief and suffering is inevitable. So the real question become what are you going to do to minimize the suffering, maximize the joy, and steel yourself psychologically, and those whom you can affect to prepare for can cope with the inevitable difficulties of life.
As biological creatures we need resources, and resources are limited. Limited resources leads to competition, but we can more effectively procure the needed and desired resources through cooperative efforts. At the most basic levels, there resources were distributed by natural processes, that are blind of the consequences to us of those distributions. This is one root cause of much conflict.
Once a person accepts these basic propositions about the nature of our physical world, there's a near infinite number of approaches to attempting to solve the above riddle, just like there's a near infinite number of interpretations of Christianity.
What are your thoughts on things evil?
Good question, but one that begs the question, what do we mean my Evil?
To begin with some clarification, just because something is harmful, I don't necessarily consider it evil. As an example, take the 2004 Tsunami that killed a quarter million people across SE Asia. Although tragic, and greatly harmful, not cognitive intent caused it, so it doesn't meet my definition of "evil". In contrast, by all appearances, the person who walked into the parts store 250 yards from my house and shot the young man behind the counter in the chest, killing him, committed an evil act.
My background's in Economics, so I largely see the world through that lenses. Where I perceive the greatest causes of evil, knowingly committing significantly suboptimum action that cause an unnecessary greater net level of pain and suffering, come from people who are:
1. Too stupid to get what they want via civilized means. 2. Too lazy to get what they want via civilized means. 3. Too anti-social to get play nice with others. 4. Corruption.
And if you get a group of stupid, lazy, anti-social corrupt politicians in charge...well, Haiti.
Since there are no supernatural forces to mitigate the impact of these people upon our society, it's falls upon good people to work together minimize the impacts of "evil" upon our society. However, in doing so they must be very careful, and work to understand the unintended consequences of their actions. After all, it's the war on drugs that allowed the Cartels to take over Mexico, effectively putting the leadership of country into the hands of corrupt psychopaths. Unfortunately, these corrupt psychopaths are very intelligent, and very hard working, which only magnifies the evil they can achieve.
You didn't use logic or reason to get into this opinion, I cannot use logic or reason to get you out of it.
You cannot over estimate the unimportance of nearly everything. John Maxwell
