Philosopher Answers CHALLENGING Question about God (2 Levels of Complexity)

What do you think about Epicurus' argument that if God is omni-beloved, omniscient, and omnipotent, if he knows about kids in Africa that are born with AIDS, what do you think about him not intervening and him not changing that fact? That's a question that I've always struggled with, so I'm just wondering. The problem of evil and suffering has been greatly discussed by philosophers, and I think there's been genuine progress made in this century on this problem. I think it's important to distinguish between the intellectual problem of suffering and the emotional problem of suffering, because these are quite different from each other. In terms of the intellectual problem of suffering, I think that you need to ask yourself, is the atheist claiming, as Epicurus did, that the existence of God is logically incompatible with the evil and suffering in the world? If that's what the atheist is claiming, then he's got to be presupposing some kind of hidden assumptions that would bring out that contradiction and make it explicit, because these statements are not explicitly contradictory. The problem is no philosopher in the history of the world has ever been able to identify what those hidden assumptions would be that would bring out the contradiction and make it explicit. On the contrary, you can actually prove that these are logically compatible with each other by adding a third proposition, namely, that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evil in the world. As long as that statement is even possibly true, it proves that there's no logical incompatibility between God and the suffering in the world. So the atheist would have to show that it is logically impossible for God to have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evil and suffering in the world, and no atheist has ever been able to do that. So the logical version of this problem, I think, is widely recognized to have failed. Those atheists who still press the problem, therefore press it as a probabilistic argument, they try to say that given the evil in the world, it's improbable that God exists. Not impossible, but improbable. Well, again, the difficulty there is that the atheist has to claim that if God did exist, then it is improbable that he would permit the evil and suffering in the world. And how could the atheist possibly know that? How could the atheist know that God would not, if he existed, permit the evil and suffering in the world? Maybe he's got good reasons for it. Maybe, like in Christian theism, God's purpose for human history is to bring the maximum number of people freely into his kingdom to find salvation and eternal life. And how do we know that that wouldn't require a world that is simply suffused with natural and moral suffering? It might be that only in a world like that the maximum number of people would freely come to know God and find salvation. So the atheist would have to show that there is a possible world that's feasible for God, which God could have created that would have just as much salvation and eternal life and knowledge of God as the actual world, but with less suffering. And how could the atheist prove such a thing? It's sheer speculation. So the problem is that as an argument, the problem of evil makes probability judgments which are very, very ambitious and which we are simply not in a position to make with any kind of confidence. Now, I recognize that that philosophical response to the question doesn't deal with the emotional problem of evil, and I think for most people this isn't really a philosophical problem. It's an emotional problem. They just don't like a God who would permit suffering and pain in the world, and so they turn their backs on him. What does Christianity have to say to this problem? Well, I think it has a lot to say. It tells us that God is not some sort of an impersonal ground of being or an indifferent tyrant who folds his arms and watches the world suffer. Rather, he is a God who enters into human history in the person of Jesus Christ. And what does he do? He suffers. On the cross, Christ bore a suffering of which we can form no conception. Even though he was innocent, he bore the penalty of the sins of the whole world. None of us can comprehend what he suffered. And I think when we contemplate the cross of Christ and his love for us and what he was willing to undergo for us, it puts the problem of suffering in an entirely different perspective. It means, I think, that we can bear the suffering that God calls upon us to endure in this life with courage and with optimism for an eternal life of unending joy beyond the grave because of what Christ has done for us. And he will give us, I think, the courage and the strength to get through the suffering that God calls upon us to bear in this life. So whether it's an emotional issue or an intellectual issue, I think ultimately Christian theism can make sense out of the suffering and evil in the world. I was very intrigued by that reply and largely agree with it. If I was a believer, I would not feel God owed me an explanation. I'm not one of those atheists who thinks you can go around saying, complaining. I mean, if you make the assumption that there is a deity, then all things are possible. You just have to be able to make that assumption. If God were to eradicate all evil tonight at midnight, who of us would be left at 1am? That's a question to really think about because when you talk about, like this questioner did, the idea of intervention, won't God intervene? You really have to think about, what exactly do you mean? Because when you ask that in a certain way, you assume yourself to be not a part of the problem, to be not a part of what you want God to deal with. Secondly, and I think Dr. Craig is getting at this in his response, we have to consider our limited view. We are in the middle of time, space, and matter, and we're looking at the atrocities around us through this little pinhole. I want to give an analogy to try to explain this. If you were to look at pregnancy in isolation, you would say this is a terrible thing. It's bloody and it's horrific. There's no good in this whatsoever, if you look at it just during the pregnancy. But if you look at what that pregnancy is bringing about, if you look at the new life that gets to go on and gets to have meaning, joy, memories, etc., you realize that temporary amount of time of suffering in the pregnancy is well worth the life that it produces. This is the same thing with the human experience that we're all going through, is it is temporal. It is a specific amount of time. If you look at it just in that narrow context and you look at it just like you're looking at pregnancy, but without considering the fruit that that is yielding, then yes, it looks like, no, no, no, there's no point to any of this. There's no good that could possibly be achieved that would make this bad reasonable or could possibly make God good in light of this bad. Now, it's even more dramatic when it comes to the human experience because the life that is born out of the human experience is an eternal life. When a creature, when a human creature is united to God, when we understand the gospel, when God's redemptive plan fully unfolds, there's eternal life that is birthed out of that. And so, what Dr. Craig is basically saying here is God has actually made an assessment of the risk of free will leading to evil and the damage that that evil can do on the planet, on the cosmos, and on individual people. And his assessment has been that the goodness and the eternal life that can come out of people being the way that they are is worth the risk of giving people free will. And the deal is that you can't have love without free will. So, God is saying, I love people and I want people to be able to love me back. In other words, I want to have a relationship with people, not just to have robots or peons that are, that simply follow orders, but to have a species that is actually imago dei, in my image, capable of relationship with me. The collateral damage of that free will is evil. God has dealt with that evil. He has dealt with it in the gospel in the most beautiful possible way by taking that evil upon himself, by laying down his life, the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world. God, I mean, it's beautiful. God has dealt with evil on the cross and offers every single person eternal life. He's the ultimate human. He's lived the life that we, that we couldn't live. And then he died the death that we deserved to die. He took on himself the weight of the sin that we should have carried. And he's offering us life everlasting. So, God's solution to evil is the cross, simply put. And his assessment is that the eternal weight of glory that is to come is worth the temporary evil and suffering that still persists in the cosmos to this day, like a pregnancy though. Remember that it's like a pregnancy. Yes, bloody. Yes, horrific. Also, yes, temporary. Also, yes, producing life, producing a good fruit. Let me read you guys to close out here. One scripture that I think is absolutely relevant. It tells you the mindset that the early church had towards, towards suffering and how it compares to eternity. Here's what they said. So, we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. Woo! With that being said, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I hope some of that connects and makes sense. Feel free to write in the comments if you have any additional questions. This is such an important topic that I don't want to breeze over it or give just pithy short answers. There's a lot more that could be said about this topic, certainly, but I hope that there's some little dosages of wisdom, as they say, in this video for you guys to think on and hopefully enjoy. I'll see you guys in the next video. Thanks a lot. Bye.