There are religious believers who claim that the appearance of evil is an illusion but this is wholly at odds with our experience, and at a deeper level it seems to be self-contradictory. If evil is an illusion then anyone who supposes it is real, as most of us do, is in ignorance; but, as we saw, ignorance is a bad state of affairs. Thus either our impressions of evil are veridical or they are illusory; if they are veridical there is evil and if they are illusory there is evil; ergo there is evil.
(J. J. Haldane, "Atheism and Theism," chap. 2 in Atheism and Theism, 2d ed., by J. J. C. Smart and J. J. Haldane, Great Debates in Philosophy, ed. Ernest Sosa [Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003], 76-150, at 138)
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 