Allah is All-Forgiving and Most Merciful with those who commit sins without insistence, given man's human nature and weakness, and who repent of such sins and do not mean thereby to challenge the Creator. However, Allah Almighty destroys those who challenge Him, deny His existence, or visualize Him in the form of an idol or an animal and those who exceed the limits in disobeying Him without repenting and whom Allah does not want to forgive. If one insults an animal, none will blame him; however, if one insults his parents, he will be harshly blamed. How about the Creator's right? We should not consider the insignificance of the sin; rather, we should consider the greatness of the One Whom we disobey.
Evil does not come from Allah. Evils are not of existential things, as existence is pure goodness.
If someone, for instance, hit another one until he made him lose his ability to move, then this person has acquired the attribute of oppression, and oppression is evil.
However, the existence of power in the one who grabs a stick to hit someone else is not evil.
Moreover, the existence of the will that Allah granted him is not evil.
Also the existence of his ability to move his hand is not evil,
and the existence of hitting function in the stick is not evil.
All these existential things are good in themselves and do not acquire the attribute of evil unless they lead to harm by being misused, which is the harm of paralysis as in the previous example. Consequently, the existence of the scorpion and the serpent is not evil in itself unless man comes their way and gets bitten. Evil must not be attributed to Allah's acts, which are pure goodness; rather, it must be attributed to the events that Allah has allowed to occur according to His decree and has predestined for a certain wisdom that leads to many benefits, despite His ability to prevent its occurrence. Such events were the result of man's misuse of this goodness.
The Creator has laid down nature's laws and rules that regulate it. On the outbreak of any corruption or ecological disorder, it protects itself by itself and maintains this balance with the aim of achieving reformation on earth and ensuring that life will proceed in a better way, and only what is beneficial to people and life will stay and survive. When catastrophes occur on earth and cause damages to mankind, like diseases, volcanoes, earthquakes, and floods, these are the times when the names and attributes of Allah become evident, for instance, the All-Powerful, the Healer, and the All-Preserver which are manifest in His healing the sick and preserving the survivors. Other names also become evident during such catastrophes like His name the Just, which is manifest in His punishing the oppressor and the sinner, the All-Wise, which is manifest in afflicting and testing the non-sinner to recompense him with goodness for his patience and with torment for his impatience. This way man gets to know the greatness of his Lord through such afflictions exactly as he gets to know His beauty through His favors. If man only recognizes the attributes of the divine beauty, then he does not truly know Allah Almighty.
The existence of disasters, evil, and pain was the reason behind the atheism of many of the contemporary materialist philosophers like "Antony Flew". Before his death, he acknowledged the existence of God and wrote a book called "There is a God", despite his being the head of atheism during the second half of the twentieth century. Acknowledging the existence of God, he said:
"The existence of evil and pain in people's life does not negate the existence of God; rather, it drives us to reconsider the divine attributes." Antony Flew believed that such catastrophes have multiple positive effects as they stimulate man's physical abilities to invent whatever would grant him safety. They also stimulate his best psychological qualities and drive him to help others. Because of evil and pain, the human civilizations were built throughout history. He said: "No matter how many theses are written to explain this aporia, the religious explanation will remain the most acceptable and the most compatible with the nature of life." [308] Quoted from "Khurāfat al-Ilhād" by Dr. ‘Amr Sharīf, edition 2014 AD.
In reality, we sometimes take the hands of our little children and lovingly lead them to the operation room to have their abdomens slit, while being fully confident of the doctor's wisdom, his love for the child, and his keenness on saving him.
The one who wonders why evil exists in this life, taking it as a pretext for negating the existence of God only reveals his shortsightedness and his fragile thinking in realizing the wisdom behind this, and reveals his lack of awareness about underlying issues. By posing such a question, the atheist implicitly admits that evil is an exception.
Therefore, before asking about the wisdom behind the existence of evil, it is worthier to ask a more realistic question, which is: How was goodness brought into existence in the first place?
Undoubtedly, the most important question to start with is: Who brought goodness into existence? We must first agree on the starting point or the original or prevailing principle, then, we can search for the causes behind the exceptions.
Scientists, in the beginning, lay down fixed and definite laws for physics, chemistry, and biology, after which they conduct a study on the exceptions and cases that deviate from such laws. Similarly, atheists cannot get past the hypothesis of the existence of evil unless they first admit the existence of a world full of beautiful, organized, and good phenomena beyond count.
Comparing the periods of health to those when diseases spread during the average lifetime, or the decades of welfare and prosperity to periods of destruction and ruin, or the centuries of calm and tranquil nature to periods when volcanoes erupt and earthquakes strike all bring up one question, which is: Where does goodness come from in the first place? A world built on chaos and coincidence can never produce a good world.
Ironically, scientific experiments confirm this. The second law of thermodynamics states that full entropy (degree of disorder or randomness) in an isolated system away from any external influence will constantly increase, and this process is irrevocable.
In other words, organized objects will collapse and vanish forever unless they are bound from the outside. Thus, blind thermodynamic forces could never produce anything good by itself or as good on a broad scale as it is without the Creator organizing such random phenomena that appear in magnificent things like beauty, wisdom, joy, and love. All this came after proving that goodness is the basic rule while evil is the exception and that there exists a Capable God, a Creator, and a Sovereign Who manages all affairs.