Atheism and the Problem of Evil

Why is it in the US you can't be a conservative without also being a religious bigot?

For example:

Where Is Atheism When Bad Things Happen? by Dinesh D'Souza
Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found. Every time there is a public gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritual healing. Even secular people like the poet Nikki Giovanni use language that is heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning.
The atheist writer Richard Dawkins has observed that according to the findings of modern science, the universe has all the properties of a system that is utterly devoid of meaning. The main characteristic of the universe is pitiless indifference. Dawkins further argues that we human beings are simply agglomerations of molecules, assembled into functional units over millennia of natural selection, and as for the soul--well, that's an illusion!
To no one's surprise, Dawkins has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community. What this tells me is that if it's difficult to know where God is when bad things happen, it is even more difficult for atheism to deal with the problem of evil. The reason is that in a purely materialist universe, immaterial things like good and evil and souls simply do not exist. For scientific atheists like Dawkins, Cho's shooting of all those people can be understood in this way--molecules acting upon molecules.
If this is the best that modern science has to offer us, I think we need something more than modern science.

What a fucking non-sequitur.

I mean, apart from the fact that it's not Dawkins' job to give his condolences to every man and his dog, I don't recall him ever saying that the universe is necessarily meaningless. Even if Dawkins did say that, most atheists are happy to admit that people's lives can have as much meaning as any individual cares to get out of it.

And surely the problem of evil is a no-brainer for atheists. The Christian has to explain that God gave us free will because that makes the world a (net) better place, and then has to fumble over why children are born with birth defects and other painful things unrelated to free will. Atheists have never asserted that there exists an all-powerfull, all-knowing, all-good being who could stop those things if he wanted. The atheist simply has to reply, "Some people enjoy doing bad things to others." There's probably an evolutionary explanation out there for most forms of anti-social behaviour (I'm sceptical of most of the explanations that have been offered so far) but with or without it, we should just try to stop it happening. Likewise natural disasters, accidents just happen. Somethings nobody can anticipate, it's sad but you just have to work through it.

There is no problem of evil if you're a atheist.