Tag Archives: Suffering

Videos

Christopher Hitchens debates William Lane Craig: Does God Exist?

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Here’s the full debate on video. Hugh Hewitt is the moderator.

Now I think most people are familiar with Christopher Hitchens and his arguments – he is widely regarded as the top atheist debater in the world, and has written bestselling books on atheism. So below is a little more about the Christian debater William Lane Craig. Craig is  regarded as the top defender of Christianity in the world, although many people are unfamiliar with his arguments. Here is a written explanation of the five arguments he uses in the debate with Hitchens, if you want to follow along. This is a good debate for any of you who have never seen a debate on God’s existence before.

About William Lane Craig

Let’s review William Lane Craig’s qualifications:

William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California.

Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity… In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until assuming his position at Talbot in 1994.

He has authored or edited over thirty books, including The Kalam Cosmological Argument; Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus; Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom; Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology; and God, Time and Eternity, as well as over a hundred articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology, including The Journal of Philosophy, New Testament Studies, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy, and British Journal for Philosophy of Science.

Craig’s CV is here.

Craig’s list of publications is here.

Here is a partial list of his past debates against the top atheist scholars. Many of those have audio and video. His best recent debate was against the British philosopher Peter Millican. Recommended for advanced students only. For a more basic debate against a very poorly prepared opponent, you can watch the Craig-Atkins debate. Atkins is a retired professor of chemistry from Oxford.

Mentoring

The Wintery Knight’s favorite apologetics lectures

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These are the lectures that made me who I am today. Each of these is awesome. If you only have time for two, listen to Dr. Bradley’s Journey to Faith and Giants in the Land.

Dr. Walter L. Bradley

Ph.D. in Materials Science, University of Texas at Austin, 1968
B.S. in Engineering Science, University of Texas at Austin, 1965

Dr. J.P. Moreland

B.S. in Chemistry, University of Missouri
M.A. in Philosophy, University of California Riverside
Th.M. in Theology, Dallas Theological Seminary
Ph.D. in Philosophy, University of Southern California

Dr. Philip E. Johnson

A.B., Harvard University, 1961
J.D., University of Chicago, 1965

Dr. Douglas Geivett

Ph.D., University of Southern California
M.A., Dallas Theological Seminary
M.A., Gonzaga University
B.S., Multnomah School of the Bible

Dr. William Lane Craig

D.Theol., University of Munich
Ph.D., University of Birmingham (UK)
M.A., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
M.A., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
B.A., Wheaton College

Polemics

Why does God allow his creatures to suffer?

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Another great post from Christian Apologetics UK. This thing is so full of arguments, it’s hard to choose what to excerpt!

I’ll choose something from Section 2:

Third, there is the free-will defence. Love is only genuine when it is not coerced. True love requires the ability to exercise free will. Thus, to facilitate the ability of free creatures to genuinely love God requires that one take the risk that these free creatures will choose to reject God or to violate His commandments. 

Fourth, as suggested by proponents of Molinism, it is possible that only a world which was suffused with a certain amount of evil and suffering would result in the maximum number of people freely coming to know God. The doctrine of divine middle knowledge attests that God has knowledge of counterfactuals: That is, God has knowledge of what His free creatures would do under any circumstances. If this is the case, then it is possible that God has chosen to actualise a world — out of an array of possible worlds — in which the maximum number of people would choose to know God as their Creator and Saviour, without being in violation of their rights of autonomy and existential freedom of the will.

Fifth, God often uses evil and suffering to accomplish his ends. One classic example of this is in the story of Joseph being sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, an incident which set in motion a chain of events which ultimately led to Joseph being falsely accused of a crime and subsequently being thrown into prison. Later, Joseph is promoted to the position of Pharaoh’s right-hand man, and is in a unique position to be able to administer food during times of severe famine: Including the saving of his family. In Genesis 50:20, Joseph says, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Everybody needs to know how to answer this objection, so read the post.

Here’s an excellent lecture on the problems of evil and suffering by Doug Geivett, if you want something to listen to. And here’s a good text post on the problem of proving that God doesn’t have a morally sufficient reason to permit suffering.