&gt; I wouldn&#x27;t say it&#x27;s begging the question. Of course evil is an illusion in an atheistic viewpoint.<p>Well, fair enough. If someone who doesn&#x27;t believe in evils asks and a theist provides the Augustinian answer (evil is the absence of good), then we should all be enlightened, appreciate each other, and move on. But much more often, the people asking <i>do</i> believe in some sort of evil (rape warfare, slavery, child abuse, genocide, etc.) and don&#x27;t realize the premise of the question is flawed. Again, it may be for reasons of aesthetics and emotion, but it&#x27;s hard to make the case that there is <i>nothing</i> objectively evil. It&#x27;s at least as dissatisfying as claiming that God exists and allows the same evils to happen.<p>The thought processes around this question typically boil down to what matters more: morality or observation. There are some who assume objective good and evil are irrefutable and can fairly cleanly proceed to thinking that something is behind all that. And there are people who assume that physical matter is the only way to prove the existence of things, and so all immaterial things (good, evil, God) are illusions unless we can use matter to somehow measure them.