Someone to Teach Me

I just finished watching the first part of a documentary that has atheists discussing why they are atheists.  In the first interview with an atheist philosopher something struck me as an odd contradiction in his own thought.  He first mentioned that people do not need a god in order to have an idea of a moral absolute because moral absolutes are just that, absolute, and that they are "just known."  Furthermore, as people who have knowledge of the moral absolutes, we generally follow those moral absolutes.  In other words, people are generally good and do good.

He continued making the argument that there is no god because the very abundance of evil makes God an impossibility.  This does raise a legitimate question of why there is evil if God is all-powerful and all-good?  A question which I believe Scripture answers but that this philosopher believes Scripture doesn't answer.  On that point (for now) I'll simply agree to disagree with him.

However, I do believe that he has committed an error in his own reasoning. I wonder, if people are generally good, then why is there an abundance of evil?  Shouldn't there be less evil by the very nature of the fact that everyone has a clear understanding of the moral absolutes?  Now he does contend that not everyone does have a clear understanding of the moral absolutes for we are after all, "just human."  But then, would that mean that there is something fundamentally wrong with us?  That in fact we do not "just know" what the moral absolutes are?  Does not the very fact that we do not "just know" what the moral absolutes are, that we are indeed "just humans" who fail at those moral absolutes, suggest that there is a standard of rightness that we are to live toward and that somehow we need a teacher who is not "just human" to teach us those moral absolutes?  For if the teachers are all "just human" then how can we be sure that they teach us correctly?  It seems to me that at some point, if we are to recognize that we do not "just know" moral absolutes, then we are going to need someone to show us both in word and in deed just what a fully moral, dare I say, righteous life is.