Properly speaking, the Christian should respond with Scripture, such as verses regarding the goodness of God (e. g., Matthew 5:45). I personally respond with the creation account. God created everything very good, without aging, disease, death, suffering. However, Adam rejected that world for one in which he could be autonomous, at least in his own imagination. The autonomous world is a world of chaos. The proper target of the atheist's indignation is Adam, not God.
The predictable part of this discussion now comes as the atheist objects that he doesn't believe in creation or Adam or the Fall. Of course, that response is invalid, because that wasn't his challenge. His challenge was, Given the Christian belief in God, how can Christians explain the presence of evil. The atheist created the original parameters of the discussion, but now changes them.
Which is very revealing!
The response I would now make to his altered challenge would be two-pronged. First, he must explain how he can determine what is evil. Evil is not a meaningful concept apart from the existence of God. Second, he must explain why he changed the rules of the discussion when the Christian answered his question. The atheist makes no attempt to address the Christian's answer, even though it was given to the atheist's own question. The atheist cannot answer that biblical answer! Therefore, to escape the implications of the trap he has set for himself, he tries to dodge the answer by changing the question. That is a tacit admission that his worldview cannot explain reality, and places him in the necessary choice between capitulation, i. e., repentance and conversion, or escape.
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