Consider, for example, how under a godless evolutionary argument things like rape should in fact be morally good—since, under an evolutionary framework, rape is a form of sexual reproduction that evolved by selective forces as an advantageous behavioral adaptation within our species. Isn’t that how godless evolution-based ethics work? The further we spread our genetic material and reproduce offspring, the greater the benefit for our species, as population groups and in general. Since it exists as an advantageous behavioral adaptation and contributes beneficially to our species, it should follow that it’s morally good. Right? That it happens to produce a certain biochemical state in the limbic system of this or that mammalian brain is a non-issue, ethically speaking, for it would actually contradict evolutionary ethics to value the psychological health of a singular animal above the survival health of the population group. However, to say that “rape is good” cuts violently across the grain of our moral compass and common sense, so evolutionary arguments must not be right; the predictions of the model don’t square with the facts that it’s supposed to explain.

You are correct. Discussions about evil cannot have any real coherence outside the Christian world view, because non-Christian metaethics are unintelligible and result in conclusions that run contrary to the very ethics they mean to explain. Views that give us predictions which fail to explain the facts or outright contradict them are views we have good reason to abandon. The Christian world view easily accounts for objective morality and propositions which reflect such, while atheistic world views invest great effort in developing explanations which end up failing to square with how the world is.

We have his assertion that natural disasters are gratuitous evils but not any reason to think that is true, while under the Christian view we have an abundance of reason to think it false.

Would it also be fair to say that even under a strict atheistic framework, that nothing – including natural disasters, but also things such as murder and rape – can be considered evil in any sense? In fact Stalin is said to have claimed that killing a million people was no different from mowing a lawn. I think he was just being consistent.

Therefore, can discussions about evil have any real coherence beyond a theistic framework, especially a Christian one?