Podcasts

William Lane Craig debates Walter Sinnott-Armstrong: evil, suffering and God

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This is one of the top 4 best debates that William Lane Craig has done in my opinion. (The other three are Craig-Millican debate and the first and second Craig-Dacey debates).

Sinnott-Armstrong is very courteous, respectful and intelligent scholar and he is very good at defending his side. This is a very cordial and engaging debate, and because it was held in front of a church audience, it was targeted to laymen and not academics. So if you are looking for a good first debate to watch, this is it!

The MP3 file is here.

There is also a book based on this debate, published by Oxford University Press. I was actually able to find a PDF of it online. I should also remind people that you can get the wonderful Craig-Hitchens debate DVD from Amazon.com if you are looking for a debate to watch, or show in your church, this is the one to start with.

The debaters:

The format:

  • WSA: 15 minutes
  • WLC: 15 minutes
  • Debaters discussion: 6 minutes
  • Moderated discussion: 10 minutes
  • Audience Q&A: 18 minutes
  • WSA: 5 minutes
  • WLC: 5 minutes

SUMMARY:

WSA opening speech:

Evil is incompatible with the concept of God (three features all-powerful, all-god, all-knowing)

God’s additional attributes: eternal, effective and personal (a person)

He will be debating against the Christian God in this debate, specifically

Contention: no being has all of the three features of the concept of God

His argument: is not a deductive argument, but an inductive/probabilistic argument

Examples of pointless, unjustified suffering: a sick child who dies, earthquakes, famines

The inductive argument from evil:

  1.  If there were an all-powerful and all-good God, then there would not be any evil in the world unless that evil is logically necessary for some adequately compensating good.
  2.  There is evil in the world.
  3.  Some of that evil is not logically necessary for some adequately compensating good.
  4. Therefore, there can’t be a God who is all-powerful and all-good.

Defining terms:

  • Evil: anything that all rational people avoid for themselves, unless they have some adequate reason to want that evil for themselves (e.g. – pain, disability, death)
  • Adequate reason: some evils do have an adequate reason, like going to the dentist – you avoid a worse evil by having a filling

God could prevent tooth decay with no pain

God can even change the laws of physics in order to make people not suffer

Responses by Christians:

  • Evil as a punishment for sin: but evil is not distributed in accordance with sin, like babies
  • Children who suffer will go straight to Heaven: but it would be better to go to Heaven and not suffer
  • Free will: this response doesn’t account for natural evil, like disease, earthquakes, lightning
  • Character formation theodicy: there are other ways for God to form character, by showing movies
  • Character formation theodicy: it’s not fair to let X suffer so that Y will know God
  • God allows evil to turn people towards him: God would be an egomaniac to do that
  • We are not in a position to know that any particular evil is pointless: if we don’t see a reason then there is no reason
  • Inductive evil is minor compared to the evidences for God: arguments for a Creator do not prove that God is good

WLC opening speech:

Summarizing Walter’s argument

  1. If God exists, gratuitous evil does not exist.
  2. Gratuitous evil exists.
  3. Therefore, God does not exist.

Gratuitous evil means evil that God has no morally sufficient reason to permit. WSA doesn’t think that all evil is incompatible with God’s existence, just gratuitous evil.

Everyone admits that there are instances of evil and suffering such that we cannot see the morally sufficient reason why God would allow it to occur.

The claim of the atheist is that if they cannot see that there is a moral justification for allowing some instance evil, then there is no moral justification for that instance of evil.

Here are three reasons why we should not expect to know the morally sufficient reasons why God permits apparently pointless evil.

  1. the ripple effect: the morally sufficient reason for allowing some instance of evil may only be seen in another place or another time
  2. Three Christian doctrines undermine the claim that specific evils really are gratuitous
  3. Walter’s own premise 1 allows us to argue for God’s existence, which means that evil is not gratuitous

Christian doctrines from 2.:

  • The purpose of life is not happiness, and it is not God’s job to make us happy – we are here to know God. Many evils are gratuitous if we are concerned about being happy, but they are not gratuitous for producing the knowledge of God. What WSA has to show is that God could reduce the amount of suffering in the world while still retaining the same amount of knowledge of God’s existence and character.
  • Man is in rebellion, and many of the evils we see are caused by humans misusing their free will to harm others and cause suffering
  • For those who accept Christ, suffering is redeemed by eternal life with God, which is a benefit that far outweighs any sufferings and evils we experience in our earthly lives

Arguing for God in 3.

  1. If God exists, gratuitous evil does not exist.
  2. God exists
  3. Therefore, gratuitous evil does not exist.

Four reasons to think that God exists (premise 2 from above):

  • the kalam cosmological argument
  • the fine-tuning argument
  • the moral argument
  • the argument from evil
News

One charge against David Daleiden dropped by Texas judge

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Planned Parenthood senior executive: organ harvesting so she can get a Lamborghini
Planned Parenthood senior executive: organ harvesting so she can get a Lamborghini

Great news about the man who discovered the trafficking of human organs by abortion providers.

Life News reports:

Undercover investigator David Daleiden has been vindicated. Today, a Harris County, Texas judge dismissed the bogus misdemeanor charge against David Daleiden for allegedly trying to buy body parts from the Planned Parenthood abortion business he was exposing for selling them as a part of the Center for Medical Progress’ undercover investigation.

Daleiden has maintained from the beginning that he and the Center for Medical Progress followed all applicable laws in the course of its investigative journalism and that the indictments were politically motivated.

[…]CMP responded to the dismissal in a statement to LifeNews:

Judge Diane Bull’s swift dismissal of the bogus charge against CMP founder David Daleiden of trafficking human organs is the latest confirmation that the indictments from a runaway grand jury in Houston were a politically-motivated sham all along. In finding that the indictment was void on its face, Judge Bull’s ruling directly contradicts the District Attorney’s argument that the indictment was valid despite the DA’s collusion with Planned Parenthood.

[…]District Attorney Devon Anderson’s office has indicated it will not appeal the dismissal.

[…]Daleiden still faces bogus charges alleging he used a false ID to gain access to a Planned Parenthood clinic for a meeting with staff.

That’s good news, and nice rebuke to the district attorney Devon Anderson. You’ll remember that she is alleged to be working closely with Planned Parenthood to persecute David, because they didn’t like their organ trafficking operation being exposed.

The Federalist reported on that:

Lauren Reeder, one of the prosecutors in the Harris County district attorney’s office, revealed last August that she was a member of the board of directors for the Planned Parenthood affiliate that was targeted by Daleiden.

Reeder’s LinkedIn page indicates that she has been a Planned Parenthood board member since 2013 and a fundraiser for the abortion provider since 2009.

The maximum sentence for “tampering with a governmental record” (using a fake ID, which almost every teen does) is 20 years. That’s a serious charge that’s still outstanding.

 

 

News

Is the Human Rights Campaign blaming Christians for Orlando terrorist attack?

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Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign
Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign

My Christian friends who follow these things and try to read the times are telling me that they are seeing a lot of articles blaming Christians for the recent terrorist attack committed by an Islamic terrorist.

National Review reports:

Well, that didn’t take long. It was just a matter of time before opposition to the Obama administration’s transgender bathroom policies was linked to the massacre at an Orlando gay bar, committed by a shooter who took time out from his horrific killing spree to pledge allegiance to ISIS.

And sure enough, this morning’s New York Times reports that gay rights “movement leaders” wonder whether “high-profile policy fights like the one over the Obama administration’s recent directive requiring schools to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice” is increasing violence against gays. The Times’s article, by reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, offers potential frames for the mass murder, none of which include Islamic terrorism: “What did it mean that it happened in June, Gay Pride Month? Was it a hate crime against gay people or simply evidence that gun violence is out of control — or both? Gay rights have been advancing at a rapid clip. Has that lessened homophobia? Or maybe made it worse?”

The Atlantic’s religion reporter, Emma Green, posited a “loose connection” between what she called “anti-trans rhetoric” and the Orlando violence, during a segment on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show this morning entitled “Orlando and the State of the Gay Bar”: “There is a loose connection that is very difficult to pin down between some of the anti-gay and anti-trans rhetoric that we’ve seen in the U.S. not primarily from Muslim groups but from Christian groups that have laid a foundation for homophobia and transphobia. Although most of the groups that are supporting that type of rhetoric would not condone the type of violence we saw in Orlando, it does create an environment of bigotry and acceptance of homophobia against LGBT people.” (Green went on to say that some people who hold “sincerely held beliefs” about homosexuality can “still extend messages of love and fellowship.”)

Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, told MSNBC today that what happened in Orlando was an example of the toxic mix that occurs when a “deranged, delusional person is taught to hate” by a “preacher on Sunday morning in church or by a politician.” Actually, no “Sunday preacher” taught mass murderer Omar Mateen to hate; we can be sure, however, that radical Islamic propaganda did.

You might remember that the Human Rights Campaign has been featured on this blog a number of times, because they are the leading group seeking to silence, coerce and otherwise suppress Judeo-Christian values in the public square.

Let’s review the history the Human Rights Campaign to discover their agenda from actual actions:

And so on.

A friend of mine pointed out that if you Google “Human Rights Campaign”, Google displays a special rainbow colored banner to celebrate their group. That’s not surprising since many large corporations are on board with the Human Rights Campaign agenda of anti-Christian bigotry.

Here are their Platinum corporate partners:

Human Rights Campaign Platinum Partners
Human Rights Campaign Platinum Partners

Here is Hillary Clinton, being endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign:

Hillary Clinton and her ally, the Human Rights Campaign
Hillary Clinton and her ally, the Human Rights Campaign

Having strong allies in the White House will enable them to destroy his “religious right” enemies all the more effectively. How far would the Human Rights Campaign go to achieve their ends? We’re going to find out, because lots of Democrats who falsely claim to be Christians keep voting for the Democrat Party.

By the way, the Orlando Islamic terrorist was a registered Democrat.