It was 1978, nearly two years after I had graduated from college, when news broke of what would come to be known as the Jonestown Massacre. The tragedy took place in Guyana and became one of the most horrific events in American history. At the direction of the charismatic cult leader Jim Jones, 907 of the 909 Americans present died after drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.

I was recently reading about psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who had studied the extensive news coverage of the event. He noted that politicians, journalists, psychiatrists, and other experts universally concluded that Jim Jones was insane. Yet Dr. Szasz found no evidence that anyone had questioned Jones’s sanity before the incident. In fact, a gala fundraising dinner in Jones’s honor—endorsed by seventy-five prominent San Francisco leaders—had been planned in the city. It was, of course, canceled after the massacre.

Szasz’s conclusion was, “I think he was an evil man.” I share this because many people today are quick to assume that a monstrous act like Jones’s must be the result of insanity. There seems to be a growing reluctance to believe that evil acts can be committed by evil people. It is as if the word evil has been erased from our modern vocabulary.

But what do we really mean when we use the word evil? Why are certain things considered evil in the first place? Before we can discuss evil or point to examples of it, we first need to understand what it actually is.

I think that Greg Koukl has provided great insight into this when he says, “…we use the word evil when we see things that are not the way they are supposed to be.” It is as if we have some standard of good that we expect people to live by, and evil is at the very bottom of the goodness scale.

However, you have to explain where the goodness scale comes from that enables us to identify evil. Where is the stan­dard of good that makes this notion of evil to be intelligible? Atheists are forced to acknowledge that this is a thorny problem, because who determines the ultimate “good” in life?

So how does a person with an atheistic worldview deal with the problem of evil and wickedness? He does not have a good basis to be outraged over the evil he sees in the world. Think about it, if in this world you see what you know to be evil and cruel, you have to assume the reality of some type of transcen­dent standard in order to make your judgment.

The highly respected philosopher Alvin Plantinga had these profound words to say on this issue:

“Could there really be any such thing as horrifying wicked­ness [if there were no God and we just evolved]? I don’t see how. There can be such a thing only if there is a way that rational creatures are supposed to live, obliged to live… A [secular] way of looking at the world has no place for genuine moral obligation of any sort… and thus no way to say there is such a thing as genuine and appalling wickedness. Accord­ingly, if you think there really is such a thing as horrifying wickedness (…and not just an illusion of some sort), then you have a powerful…argument [for the reality of God]?”

Plantinga’s words are quite powerful. Modern people so eas­ily dismiss God because of the presence of evil in the world. Without realizing it, the notion of evil implies that there is a standard of goodness that has been violated. Who then decides this standard of goodness?

Only God can provide a universal standard of goodness. If He is not there to supply that standard, then evil does not exist. It cannot exist.

 Richard E Simmons III is the founder and Executive Director of The Center for Executive Leadership and a best-selling author.