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

This is one of the top 4 best debates that William Lane Craig has ever done in my opinion. (The other three are Craig-Millican debate and the first and second Craig-Dacey debates). If you’ve never seen Dr. Craig in a debate with a non-Christian, this one is probably the best introductory one out there. Dr. Craig is the foremost defender of Christian theism on the planet, and probably of all time.

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! Normally, Dr. Craig debates at major universities in front of students and faculty.

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

Australia’s chief fascist Julie Inman Grant censors video of Iryna Zarutska murder

How desperate are open-borders secular leftists to conceal evidence of the harms caused by soft-on-crime policies? Well, in Australia, a country ruled by fascists, they are threatening fines of $825,000 (AUD) to anyone who posts the video of the murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska. They don’t want voters to see the result of coddling criminals and banning self-defense.

Here’s the story from Rebel News:

Australia’s controversial eSafety Commissioner has threatened social media giant X with daily fines of up to $825,000 for refusing to take down or block posts containing CCTV footage of the fatal attack on Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska in the U.S.

The footage shows Zarutska being killed by Decarlos Brown, a man with a long record of violent crime who had been released just weeks earlier under North Carolina’s bail laws.

I blogged about the story previously, and noted that the accused killer was a 14-time repeat offender. Leftists like Julie Inman Grant don’t believe in opposing real evil or punishing real evil. They get extremely upset when their “don’t judge” policies are exposed as failed policy to voters. So what to do? Well, they just use political power to suppress anyone who shows the evidence of their failed “don’t judge” policies. After all, if people complain about being murdered, then that spoils the virtue signaling of the leftists.

This isn’t the first time they’ve tried to cover up crimes against law-abiding victims:

Inman Grant’s previous attempt to compel X to censor footage of a church stabbing in Sydney ended in failure after the platform argued Australia had no authority to impose global content restrictions. X later hailed that case as a victory for free speech.

Is Julie Inman Grant an exception, or does she represent the way that most white progressive women see the issues of crime and self-defense? Well, we know from recent surveys that leftism has surged among young women. Not just in America, but worldwide.

Young men are more conservative than young women, and more religious than young women, too.

And women’s groups are opposed to people who point out the results of their “don’t judge” policies.

Here’s a recent article from the UK Daily Mirror:

More than 100 women’s rights groups have warned “racist” attempts to link sexual violence with immigration are putting victims at increased risk.

Rape Crisis England and Wales, the End Violence Against Women Coalition and Refuge are among the organisations warning anti-migrant groups and politicans are “hijacking” survivors’ trauma.

[…]In their statement, co-ordinated by End Violence Against Women Coalition, Women for Refugee Women, Hibiscus and Southall Black Sisters, the groups said linking sex offences with migration is a “racist diversion”.

Lately, I have been seeing many posts from conservative Christian women demanding that men protect and provide for women. However, none of these conservative Christian women have said anything about the voting patterns of young women. How are men supposed to protect women, when women keep voting for more dangerous criminals, and against police and self-defense? We can’t. And we know that if we try, we’ll end up just like Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Perry.

Conservative, Christian women  need to think more carefully about how to solve problems. They have an addiction to their knee-jerk reaction of “men, fix it!” and “men, serve us!” But that ship has sailed. Now, the best policy of conservative, Christian women is to turn to young women, and warn them that no one is coming to save them from the consequences of their own choices. Young women need to stop voting on feelings and the desire to virtue signal.

Finally, can you imagine being married to Julie Inman Grant? That’s what parents and pastors are producing for good men these days, but what good man would be stupid enough to marry a leftist fascist like her? Men are coming to their senses, and judging women correctly. The new “10” is the stay-at-home mother who will respect her husband and homeschool the kids. Nobody wants a Karen.

Virginia Democrats OK with candidate who wished death on political opponent

The big political news on the weekend was about the elections for statewide offices in Virginia. Right after the politically-motivated assassination of a leading Christian speaker, Charlie Kirk, we’re hearing about text messages from the Democrat candidate for attorney general. What does he say? Oh, just that he thinks that a Republican he doesn’t like should be shot in the head.

Here’s an article from Daily Signal to explain:

Less than a month after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Virginia Democrats are carrying water for a candidate who wished death on his political opponent, hoped his opponent’s wife would watch as her children died, and said he would urinate on his opponent’s grave.

Jay Jones, the Democrat nominee for attorney general in the Old Dominion, has not denied the report of these horrifying comments, though he said he regrets them and has apologized to Todd Gilbert, the Republican former speaker of the House of Delegates about whom he made the remarks.

Now, you would think that in a purple state like Virginia, Democrats would be anxious to withdraw this man as a candidate. But as of October 6, 2025, no prominent Democrats—including Abigail Spanberger, Ghazala Hashmi, Mark Warner, or the Virginia Democratic Party—have demanded Jones step down. It’s just not a big enough deal that Jones should have to resign for saying these things. Maybe this is the mainstream Democrat view?

The article explains the context of the text messages, and the content as well:

Jones texted the death wish to Republican House Delegate Carrie Coyner on Aug. 8, 2022, after Republicans had eulogized Joe Johnson Jr., a moderate Democrat. Gilbert had honored Johnson’s memory, though he had disagreed with Johnson on many issues.

Jones reportedly condemned Johnson’s political centrism and attacked Republicans for paying him tribute. After suggesting the texts were meant for someone else, he continued to comment to Coyner. He reportedly joked about what “that POS” Gilbert “would say about me if I died.”

“If those guys die before me,” Jones wrote, “I will go to their funerals to piss on their graves.”

He then suggested that, in a hypothetical situation in which he had two bullets and had the choice of shooting Gilbert, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, or Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, he would save the bullets for his Republican former colleague “every time.”

“Three people, two bullets,” Jones wrote. “Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot.”

“Gilbert gets two bullets to the head,” he added. “Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time.”

I’m not surprised by Jones leaving Hitler and Pol Pot alone, because Hitler and Pol Pot were leftists. They believed in banning guns, banning homeschooling, banning free enterprise, etc. Big government and high taxes all the way for left. So, of course Jones would let the two leftists live, and shoot the conservative. This shooting of conservatives actually happened a lot in history in countries that were run by people on the left. 100 million deaths in the 20th century alone. Of course, not all of that was shooting. There was some stabbing, some starving, some working people to death in cocentration camps.

And:

Jones called Coyner to explain himself. On the call, he reportedly wished Gilbert’s wife could watch her own child die in her arms so that Gilbert might reconsider his political views.

Look, all we have to do to find out what mainstream Democrats think about domestic terrorism against their political opponents is see what they do with Jones. If Jones represents their views, and they keep him as a candidate, then we know that they don’t think that political violence against Republicans is wrong at all. You have to disregard the words, and look at the actions. The actions show you what they really believe about murdering their opponents.

It’s very funny to me that young Democrat women are complaining that no one wants to approach them, date them or marry them. Do you think that marriage-minded men are anxious to get into a legal contract with someone who supports violence? Men don’t want to get married to people who vote for violence. We don’t want to get married to people who cheer for violence either. Men already know that Democrat women support violence against unborn babies. And lesbian relationships have the highest rates of domestic violence. Why would marriage-minded men want to share a home with someone who takes this lenient attitude towards violence?