Commentary

William Lane Craig explains how Christianity explains evil and suffering

4 Comments
A long journey through the night
A long journey through the night

A lot of people in the West complain too much about any little suffering they have to experience. But sometimes, when a very harsh suffering is felt by someone who has tried to follow Jesus, an explanation is necessary. I found something very good on the Reasonable Faith web site, written by Dr. William Lane Craig.

He makes the following points:

  1. We are not in a good position to assess the probability of whether God has morally sufficient reasons for the evils that occur.
  2. The Christian faith entails doctrines that increase the probability of the co-existence of God and evil.
  3. Relative to the full scope of the evidence, God’s existence is probable.

I’ve written before about point #1, in which Dr. Craig’s describes the limitations of human knowledge that make it hard for us to know for certain that a specific evil or suffering does not have a good reason for God to allow it. And I’ve written about #3, in which Dr. Craig makes some arguments for God’s existence. But #2 might be new to some of you, so let’s look at that.

He makes four sub points in section 2 about Christian doctrines that make the existence of evil and suffering more reasonable.

  • 2. a)The chief purpose of life is not happiness, but the knowledge of God.
  • 2. b) Mankind is in a state of rebellion against God and His purpose.
  • 2. c) The knowledge of God spills over into eternal life. 
  • 2. d) The knowledge of God is an incommensurable good.

My favorite one is 2. a), so let’s look at that one. He says:

2. a. The chief purpose of life is not happiness, but the knowledge of God. One reason that the problem of evil seems so puzzling is that we tend to think that if God exists, then His goal for human life is happiness in this world. God’s role is to provide comfortable environment for His human pets. But on the Christian view this is false. We are not God’s pets, and man’s end is not happiness in this world, but the knowledge of God, which will ultimately bring true and everlasting human fulfillment. Many evils occur in life which maybe utterly pointless with respect to the goal of producing human happiness in this world, but they may not be unjustified with respect to producing the knowledge of God. Innocent human suffering provides an occasion for deeper dependency and trust in God, either on the part of the sufferer or those around him. Of course, whether God’s purpose is achieved through our suffering will depend on our response. Do we respond with anger and bitterness toward God, or do we turn to Him in faith for strength to endure?

You know, I always get confused when I see Christians trying to follow the script of the world and trying to make themselves feel good with consumer purchases, travel, fun experiences, showing off to others, etc. When I read the story of Jesus, it’s pretty clear that the normal Christian life, if the person is following Jesus at all, is about suffering the disapproval and opposition of non-Christians while you remain faithful and obedient to God. Today, there’s probably no better example of this than defending unborn children from adult selfishness. Although, defending born children from selfish adults who seek to deprive children of their biological mother and father is pretty bad, too. Nobody is going to like you for restricting their fun (i.e. – abortion, divorce, adultery, homosexuality, etc.), but being willing to take the heat from non-Christians for the sake of promoting what God thinks is right is true Christianity. It’s what Jesus would do.

Anyway, the one I’ve been thinking about more lately is 2. d), where Dr. Craig writes this:

2. d) The knowledge of God is an incommensurable good. To know God, the source of infinite goodness and love, is an incomparable good, the fulfillment of human existence. The sufferings of this life cannot even be compared to it. Thus, the person who knows God, no matter what he suffers, no matter how awful his pain, can still say, “God is good to me,” simply by virtue of the fact that he knows God, an incomparable good.

I sometimes feel pretty stressed out about Americans who were born in conservative states, raised by two married Christian parents, attended Christian schools and youth groups, and then abandoned their faith for atheism as soon as they hit college. It really bothers me how people who had all these advantages turned their backs on God, and they’re ungrateful for all their blessings. They show no curiosity about God – they don’t want to know him. But when you read the gospels to see what Jesus has to say about these sorts of people, it’s very comforting. He really sees the problem, and he is on the side of the little guy who has to struggle to be faithful and obedient to God. The Bible has nothing to say to people who are able to feel happy and successful apart from God. It speaks to people who are struggling to follow God. Even when things are difficult, Jesus speaks to the problem of being an alien and a stranger in a world that turns its back on him.

News

An actual hate crime just happened, but the national news media is silent about it

15 Comments
Here's a bunch of violent fascist thugs
Fascist socialist Democrat thugs prefer violence to civil debate

An actual hate crime just occurred, but you won’t have heard about it. The victim of this hate crime is a straight white male Republican. The gunman is an angry hate-filled Democrat. This crime won’t be reported as national news, because the people on the secular left – journalists, celebrities, socialists – agree with the gunman. So it’s like the crime never happened.

Here’s the story from ABC local news in Kentucky:

 A Tennessee man is in jail after being accused of pulling a gun on a Sam’s Club customer Saturday.

According to the police report, officers were called to Sam’s Club due to a person with a gun.

According to the alleged victim Terry Pierce, a man pulled a gun on him because he was wearing a Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat.

“I have as much right to wear that hat and support my country and my president as he has not to,” said Pierce.

The police report confirms that the suspect, identified as James Phillips, admitted to flipping off Pierce and Pierce’s wife because of their hats.

Pierce tells 13 News that he was shopping with his wife when Phillips “Pulled a .40 caliber out and stuck it in my face, backed up and said, ‘It’s a good day for you to die.'”

Pierce went on to tell 13 News, “I said, ‘Then pull the trigger. Put the gun down and fight me or pull the trigger. Whichever one you want.’ And he backed up and he said it again, he said, ‘It’s a good day for you to die.'”

Pierce said the Phillips then took off. That’s when Pierce followed him out into the parking lot.

“I went out the front of the store to confront him again and that’s when I got him in his car. He couldn’t leave because his mother was still in the store. And we were having a verbal altercation outside,” said Pierce.

Pierce added, “He tried telling me I assaulted him and I said, ‘I never touched you.'”

According to the police report, surveillance video confirms Pierce’s story that he did not put his hands on Phillips.

Now, I know what journalists on the secular left will say to this story. It’s the same thing they said about the Covington kids. It’s hate speech to smile at someone while wearing a Trump-supporter hat, so of course a violent response is justified. This is how journalists on the secular left think.

In a recent post, Newsbusters contrasted the coverage of fake hate crimes that fit their narrative with coverage of real hate crimes that don’t.

As NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck documented early Sunday morning, between January 29 and February 14, the networks spent 101 minutes and 22 seconds helping to push Smollett’s claims of being assaulted by racist and homophobic Trump supporters.

[…]In sharp contrast, when a young white man was kidnapped for two days in the run-up to then President-elect Trump’s inauguration and tortured live on Facebook by black teens, the story was there and gone in just four days. As Houck also exposed on January 4, 2017, both ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News skipped the story while CBS Evening News allocated a mere 27 seconds.

I’m troubled by this story of a Democrat pulling a gun on people who are just out shopping. We have elections so that the majority can decide who will be in charge. If you lose the election, then wait for the next one, and persuade people with reason and evidence to vote for your candidate. Now you can’t even go shopping without some Democrat fascist thug pointing a gun at you and threatening to shoot you.

News

Will the mainstream media correct their #FakeNews stories after they’re caught?

12 Comments
Why do people think that CNN are biased leftist clowns?
Why do people think that the mainstream media is biased?

So, we’ve had three stories that reported over and over in the mainstream media. The Trump-Russia collusion story, the Jussie Smollett hate crime, and the Covington kids hate crime. All three stories had doubts cast on them.  So how did the media respond to the new information?

Well, everyone knows about the Trump-Russia collusion story, but that came to an end last week with this Senate Intelligence Committee report.

NBC News reported:

After two years and 200 interviews, the Senate Intelligence Committee is approaching the end of its investigation into the 2016 election, having uncovered no direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to both Democrats and Republicans on the committee.

Now the mainstream media made much of the Trump-Russia collusion charges. But did they admit their mistake after the truth came out? Not at all.

Newsbusters explains:

It’s been two days since NBC’s exclusive reporting that the Senate Intelligence Committee has found no material evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and as of yet none of the three major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) have given it even a single second of coverage in their evening newscasts. Considering these networks have given the Russia probe a massive 2,202 minutes of airtime, their silence on this major development is deafening.

The mainstream media isn’t going to spend nearly as much time reporting the facts that challenge their narrative, because that would make their Democrat allies look bad.

Well, fine, but what about the Covington kids? The mainstream media believed every story about that event that made the Trump supporting kids look bad. But then video emerged that countered their narrative. Did the mainstream media correct themselves?

Life News reports:

The liberal media took another massive blow on Wednesday after an independent investigation found that the high school students of Covington Catholic didn’t harass anyone last month at the Lincoln Memorial. Effectively proving that the liberal media reports about them were smears and lies, all three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) and principal Spanish-language networks (Telemundo and Univision) omitted the findings from their evening reports.

One of the mainstream media sources moved to the next scandal, instead:

Instead of reporting on the Covington Kids being vindicated, ABC’s World News Tonight gave more airtime to Empire star Jussie Smollett despite the continued absence of evidence he was assaulted.

So what about that alleged hate crime against Jussie Smollett? Well, Democrat politicians, Hollywood celebrities and the mainstream media spent a great deal of time blaming Trump supporters for the attack. Even though evidence was a problem from the very beginning.

And then CBS News reported this:

A source close to the investigation confirms to CBS News the brothers told detectives Smollett paid them to participate in the alleged attack on January 29 and that they purchased the rope — which was found around Smollett’s neck — at a nearby hardware store. The source said detectives have evidence to corroborate the sale, something the men’s attorney alluded to Friday night.

[…]Police said the two men — identified as Ola and Abel Osundairo — were captured on surveillance video at the time that Smollett said he was attacked.

Ola Osundairo is connected to Smollett through the hit show “Empire” where he played a prisoner in season two.

Both brothers apparently left Chicago on the day of the alleged attack and were detained when they returned Wednesday. Chicago detectives tore through their apartment looking for clues, and an evidence log shows they found ropes, masks and bleach. They were released Friday night without charges.

And how did the mainstream media respond? Most of them responded with silence. Because this isn’t want they wanted to believe, so they didn’t report it. Tweets were being deleted by people who backed Smollett’s account (check my Twitter feed for some examples of famous Democrats deleting their tweets, without apology).

So, if you’re relying on mainstream media to tell you the truth about what’s going on in the world, then I have to ask you: why do you trust the mainstream media to report the facts?