Tag Archives: Problem of Evil

Videos

William Lane Craig explains why God permits evil and suffering

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The first video is from his debate with Dr. Bruce Russell at West Point. Dr. Russell asks why an all-powerful, all-good, all-loving God would allow his creatures to suffer. Dr. Craig responds to the argument in the two clips below.

Part 1:

This is one my favorite debates. You can buy it here.

And here’s a clip from the re-match with Austin Dacey.

Part 2:

Craig says something like this in the first clip: (paraphrase)

It is not God’s purpose to create a comfortable environment for His human pets.  On the Christian view, we are not God’s pets.  And the purpose of life is not happiness, as such, but rather the knowledge of God and His salvation––which will ultimately bring true happiness.  But many evils occur in life which are utterly pointless with respect to producing human happiness.  But they may not be pointless with respect to producing a deeper knowledge of God.

I have to confess that the argument from evil and suffering lost all force for me when I began to think of it as the argument from self-centered hedonism, or “the argument from whining”. We don’t have a right to happiness in this life. That’s not the point of life. I think that God expects us to rise above that sort of selfish pleasure-seeking and to look to his interests – defending his reputation, telling people the truth about him, and achieving his goals. And it doesn’t matter if it makes us unpopular or causes us to suffer. We have to do the right thing, and there are no promises. Sometimes you will do everything right that God wants you to do, and you may still face some kickback. And it happened to Jesus.

When I look at Jesus I do not see a man trying to make himself happy in his own way. I do not see a man who views his relationship with God as a means of achieving happiness in this life. I see a man who thinks that his service to God may cost him everything, including his own life. The normal Christian life is a life of self-denial and suffering. We ought to do what is necessary (study, charity, chastity, sobriety, fidelity, self-sacrificial love, etc.) regardless of whether we like it. We do what is best for God. I think that some of us twist Christianity into hedonism. We just add an imaginary old man with a white beard sort of standing back and wishing us to have a good time in our own way. That’s not Christianity.

Related posts

Commentary

Can a meaningful standard of good and evil exist without a Designer?

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Check out this post over at Tough Questions Answered.

Excerpt:

If you truly believe that there is evil in the world, then you must believe that there is good in the world as well.  We can’t know what is wrong unless we know what is right.  We can’t know a crooked line unless we know a straight line.  We can’t know injustice unless we know justice.

But if there is real good and real evil in the world, then there must be an ultimate standard, a measuring stick by which to judge goodness and badness.  This measuring stick must be perfect, so that all moral activity can be compared to it, just like determining the straightness of any line requires a perfectly straight line by which to compare.

My previous post on this issue is here. The best post I’ve ever done on the problems of evil and suffering is here.

Moral judgments make no sense if the universe is an accident – there is no way we ought to be. The best that atheists can do is personal preferences or cultural conventions. But that’s just taste and fashion, not right and wrong. Atheism is an amoral worldview.

Atheists: please comment in one of my posts that I linked above, and read the post first. I’m not going to debate the TQA post here.

Commentary

Can atheists make sense of good and evil?

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Here is a post by Michael Egnor at Evolution News. He is responding to complaints by an atheistic evolutionary biologist named Jerry Coyne about the problems of evil and suffering.

Excerpt:

There are, of course, countless attempts to understand how an infinitely good God can allow evil. I believe that it is because he gives us freedom, and freedom entails the possibility of evil. My dilemma is with natural evil. Why did God not stop the Indian Ocean tsunami? Why does he allow innocent kids to die from accidents or disease? There are theories to account for natural evil. I still don’t know.

But there’s an issue with Coyne’s question. This is it: I believe in God, and as such the question, “Why is there evil?” is a natural question for me.

But what warrant has Coyne to ask that question? Coyne is an atheist, and therefore he believes that there is no transcendent purpose in the world. And Coyne is a Darwinist, so he believes that there is no purpose in the origin of man. And Coyne is a materialist, so he believes that the human mind is, in some way, merely the brain — evolved meat.

Does it make sense for an atheist to ask, “why is there evil?”

This might might be a fun question to ask your co-workers, family and friends who are atheists. What do they mean by good and evil? Is there a way humans ought to be that is independent of personal preferences and arbitrary cultural conventions? Is there a way that the universe ought to be? If there is no way the universe ought to be, then what are we to make about atheist complaints about evil and suffering?

Leave a comment with your story, but try not to get fired. Just ask questions, don’t fight. Unless you know what you are doing!

I’ll leave some hints in the tags for the post about what I would say to answer the problem of natural evil. Here is my full response to the problem of evil. Here is my full response to the problem of divine hiddenness. And my full response to the problem of those who have never heard of Jesus. And my full response to the problem of religious pluralism. These are all from the index of Christian arguments and rebuttals.

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