We can know that the Christian God cannot exist. If he is

In the voice of Vincent Bugliosi, there emerges a challenge as old as philosophy itself: “We can know that the Christian God cannot exist. If he is all-powerful and all-good, as Christians maintain, there would not have been, for instance, the Holocaust. This is an inherent self-contradiction. So if Christians insist on having a God, they can do so, but if they have any respect for logic they’ll have to redefine who he is.” These words are not uttered lightly; they carry the weight of humanity’s darkest hours and the eternal struggle to reconcile suffering with belief in divine goodness.

The core of Bugliosi’s challenge is the ancient problem of evil, wrestled with by thinkers from Epicurus to Augustine. If God is truly all-powerful, then he could prevent evil. If God is truly all-good, then he would desire to prevent evil. Yet evil exists—monstrous evils, such as the Holocaust, where millions of innocent lives were consumed by hatred and cruelty. Here, Bugliosi declares that the contradiction cannot be reconciled. The coexistence of these three claims—divine omnipotence, divine goodness, and the reality of evil—forms a triangle that cannot hold without breaking.

History has borne this dilemma with unflinching clarity. When the camps of Auschwitz and Dachau were revealed to the world, even the faithful staggered. Rabbis and priests alike asked: Where was God? For some, faith endured, believing suffering to be a mystery beyond human comprehension. For others, faith shattered, unable to accept that an all-good deity could remain silent amidst such horror. Bugliosi speaks from this crucible of doubt, asserting that if logic is to be honored, one must redefine God or else release Him altogether.

Yet his words also echo the path of many philosophers and reformers. In the Enlightenment, Voltaire, after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, asked how a benevolent God could allow a city of worshipers to be buried alive while palaces of the corrupt still stood. His conclusion was that blind optimism in divine goodness was folly. Similarly, the 20th century produced existentialists like Camus, who saw in the suffering of the innocent proof that the universe is indifferent, and that man must carve meaning through his own courage.

But not all reached the same conclusion. Thinkers like Augustine and later C.S. Lewis argued that evil is the price of free will—that to remove the possibility of suffering would be to remove the possibility of true love and virtue. Others suggested that suffering may serve purposes beyond mortal sight, that even the Holocaust, though beyond comprehension, must be framed in the vastness of eternity. Bugliosi rejects such reasoning, calling it a breach of logic, a bending of truth to preserve belief. He demands that if God is to remain, He must be redefined—perhaps stripped of omnipotence, perhaps reimagined as distant or imperfect, but no longer the paradoxical Being described in Christian doctrine.

The deeper lesson here is not merely about theology, but about intellectual honesty. Bugliosi warns against clinging to contradictions out of fear, comfort, or tradition. He calls for courage: to test beliefs in the furnace of reason, and to admit when they fail. For without truth, faith is but self-deception, and without respect for logic, man loses the very tool that separates him from blind obedience. His words press upon us the responsibility to question, to seek coherence, to not turn away from the hard problem of suffering.

And yet, whether one agrees with Bugliosi or not, the challenge he poses is a summons to deeper thought. If you are a believer, wrestle earnestly with the problem of evil, and let your faith be refined rather than shallow. If you are a skeptic, let your doubt not curdle into cynicism, but grow into compassion for those who still seek hope in the unseen. Above all, respect truth—for truth, whether it affirms God or denies Him, is the path to wisdom. And let us remember: every age must answer anew the ancient cry of Job—Why do the innocent suffer?—and in answering, define not only God, but humanity itself.