Righteous are the Wicked, For They Can Do No Wrong

=====Atheists, in their never-ending quest to distribute rationality throughout the world, rely on certain intellectual weapons pretty regularly. Of these weapons, one is a particularly popular bit of philosophical criticism which is usually challenged with the same go-to response from their opponents -- "[God] works in mysterious ways." The bit of philosophical criticism I am referring to is, of course, the question, "If there is a God, then why do bad things happen to good people?"
=====I have never been very impressed by the question. For one, it is a hypothetical and philosophical point being used to win an academic argument. Philosophy is ok for spiritual discussions, but, when one is dealing in academics, facts are the only truly useful weapons in one's arsenal. Since no debate about religion is a debate of the spiritual -- the spirit is a hypothetical object which, in order to use in debate, must be proven to exist -- no one should really be falling back onto philosophy to get an advantage. However, if one is going to turn to the philosophical to stagger an opponent before delivering a deathblow with fact, I think the question should be rethought.
=====Instead of asking why bad things happen to good people, I think it would make more sense to ask why good things happen to "bad" people. By "bad" I mean the people that religious opponents would ordinarily label as such -- atheists, agnostics, homosexuals and evolutionists (evolutionist being anther word for scientist). Instead of asking "why would God flood New Orleans and kill so many devout Christians," ask "why do people like Bill Gates and Ted Turner, an atheist and an agnostic respectively, have billions of dollars, healthy families, and extremely successful careers?" Instead of asking "why would God allow infants to die of AIDS and cancer every day," ask "why do people like Ian McKellen and Elton John have such mass appeal and enjoy so much success in their endeavors?" In this sense, it is OK to allow your opponent's assumptions of what is morally right and wrong, according to their dogma, to be accepted as truth.
=====If it is an unquestionable truth that the bible and God define what is right and wrong, then the opponent will have to accept the fact that good is being done to bad people, despite God's will. In the reverse case, it is too easy to say that "[God] was punishing the greater wickedness of the people, and some of the faithful were sacrificed to do this greater good," or that "[God] works in mysterious ways." In this case, it isn't just mysterious, it's basically mocking.
=====If God punishes the evil by creating floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, diseases, and mudslides, then why are some of the evil people doing so well? To suggest that God actively punishes people is to suggest that God has a favoured people. To suggest that God is actively playing favorites is to suggest that God is a participating player in the events of the world, every day. It would stand to reason that God would also actively reward the righteous, as He regularly does in most Holy books. While this slightly negates the concept of "free will," it also necessitates a very reasonable conclusion to be drawn; God's favorites aren't always as they appear.
=====Clearly, some of God's favorites are atheists and homosexuals. In the scheme of things, these people must really be his favorites for, no matter what they seem to do against his Word, they can apparently do no wrong in His eyes. If God is actively punishing the wicked and rewarding the righteous, then Bill Gates, Ted Turner, Ian McKellen and Elton John are being rewarded for something -- and then some. While others are struggling to fit into God's bizarre model of human behaviour, and still only managing to be lower to middle class (as, statistically, most devoutly religious people are), others knowingly and intentionally laugh in the face of God yet still receive his hearty blessing in the form of success, happiness, and excess.
=====Even some of the most rabid opponents of God as a concept are routinely being blessed with bounty and success. Richard Dawkins's every book goes directly to the best seller's list in multiple countries. Neil Tyson has several television shows, well sold books, and a successful teaching career to his credit. Albert Einstein, who once said, "I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion" (Letter to Hans Muehsam March 30, 1954), and who suggested that the idea of a personal God was naïve, had an incredibly successful career and became a living legend in the scientific and pop-culture worlds before dying at a respectable old age. Joseph Stalin, who murdered hundreds of thousand of monks, nuns, and priests of various religions, converted the Orthodox Russian Church into a Stalinist patriotic institution in his own mental image, and committed general mass genocide and countless acts against humanity, died as a successful, undefeated, and essentially worshipped ruler at the age of 74 in his own bed. Clearly, these individuals just have something about them that God can't help favoring in spite of brash disrespect and misbehavior.
=====It is harder for the opponent to dismiss this idea as God working mysteriously, or as God committing a seemingly unjust act to accomplish some greater good. To conclude that God has made these men successful to accomplish a greater good would be to admit that these men, despite their positions and beliefs (Stalin aside), are good people who share their wealth through charities and spread their wisdom which advances the sciences and improves the state of living in general. The opponent will only have two weapons against this understanding and both can be turned on their wielder.
=====The first point of attack the opponent may make could be to point out that Carl Sagan died of cancer -- albeit at a respectable age -- and that Stephen Hawking suffers from Lou Gehrig's disease. This approach has a pretty major flaw. The flaw is in the fact that, despite being stricken with illnesses, both Hawking and Sagan were able to advance their sciences and our understanding of the Universe and were it came from. Stephen Hawking continues to push on, discovering more information about our true origins, every day. Both men's unyielding success, in the face of great illness, would mean that God, despite his best efforts, cannot stop an over-intelligent and extremely determined and mortal human being from accomplishing a goal. This fact would suggest that God is not all powerful; in fact, it would make Him a little less powerful than Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking's will to discover and spread knowledge.
=====The second point of attack for the opponent may be to use the old and reliable standard: "God does these things to test our faith." That would mean that God, in his infinite wisdom, can be equated to a blatantly biased school teacher. If one, even the opponent, had a school teacher who gave all the kids he liked, for personal reasons, good grades, but, no matter how well you did or how hard you studied, never gave you more than a C, one would naturally hate that teacher and think he was unprofessional. Also, if one had a teacher who regularly gave out bad grades to good students, but good grades to bad students, just to teach the good students to try even harder, he would most likely be fired and barred from teaching in general. Rewarding good behavior with negative reinforcement is psychotic and proven to be detrimental to a learning mind; wouldn't God know what best works, psychologically, on minds He himself created?
=====God might make the occasional bet with the Devil regarding the faith of his subjects, take poor Job in the Abrahamic religions for example, but nowhere in the Holy texts, that I've read, does God openly reward evil doers to prove a point. In fact, God regularly punishes evil doers and rewards the righteous accordingly. God only "tests the faith" of his followers by nonsensically punishing the righteous to the breaking point. This is true of pretty much every religion with a God or gods.
=====The final cop out that the opponent may try to use is the idea that "God is beyond our mortal understanding, so we cannot question his work." This is, usually without realization, an open admittance that the opponent cannot possibly know anything about God. This means that the opponent must also acknowledge -- likely with coaching -- that they cannot be sure that any text written is an accurate illustration of God or God's behavior. In other words, you wouldn't allow, in any other context, someone to propose that a particular story that they've heard about someone "sounds like something that someone would do," and then, in the next breath, say that they really don't know how that someone thinks and could never predict or understand any of that someone's thoughts or actions. If you point out the fact that to understand a Holy text as the true sentiment of God is to suggest a knowledge of the mind and motivations of God, then you will back the opponent into a corner to either reject an unquestionable understanding of Holy texts as the true work of God or gods, or to accept that God doesn't just seem to favour the wicked to an inferior mortal mind which cannot conceive of His motivations, but that he does, sometimes, favor the wicked and his actions can be understood and recognized by mortals for what they are.
=====It is best to avoid debating religion in completely philosophical terms. The first step to any religious debate is to point out the fact that religion is so devoid of any real information or fact that it cannot legitimately be debated in academic or scientific terms. To do so would mean to use physical evidence to dispute a metaphysical idealism. Obviously, disproving claims and stories found in religious texts with facts and information is easy -- sometimes too easy, causing your audience to be confused by the simplicity. Religiously minded people are more receptive to philosophical ideas; so, starting a religious debate with some philosophical criticism is a good way to prime the opponent for more academic questions and information later in the debate.
=====The rewording of this classic philosophical proposition strengthens the point that is being expressed and removes many of classic philosophic rebuttals. It leaves three possibilities on the table between you and your opponent. One -- God does play favorites, and sometimes his favorites are the wicked. This possibility would be uncomfortable to even the most profoundly devout zealot. Two -- God does not share your definition of right and wrong and is rewarding and punishing people for reasons other than what is read in Holy texts. This possibility means that the Holy texts are incorrect, fallible and, thusly, not the word of an infallible God. Three -- God does not punish or reward anyone, wicked or good. Again, a possibility that would suggest that the stories in the Holy texts never actually took place or that God stopped actively caring about three-thousand years ago. All three possibilities turn the tide of any philosophical religious debate in the atheist's favor and create the leverage needed to ask more concrete, scientific, and academic questions that can genuinely create an irrefutable impact.