How can an all-loving God allow evil?

[Tyler1256]

As an atheist/deist, I've always found the logical problem of evil to be a very convincing argument against Christianity. How can the characteristics of omnipotence and omnibenevolence be resolved with the existence of evil/suffering? I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a convincing answer, as I haven't come across one yet. Thanks!

[BroRog]

As an atheist/deist, I've always found the logical problem of evil to be a very convincing argument against Christianity. How can the characteristics of omnipotence and omnibenevolence be resolved with the existence of evil/suffering? I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a convincing answer, as I haven't come across one yet. Thanks!

God is the transcendent creator of all that exists. As such he is creating a narrative, which gives expression to his character. The presence of evil makes sense within the narrative, just as it provides opportunities for justice, punishment, redemption, forgiveness, courage, repentance, regret, confession, loyalty, endurance, patience, and other important aspects of reality.

[moonglow]

As an atheist/deist, I've always found the logical problem of evil to be a very convincing argument against Christianity. How can the characteristics of omnipotence and omnibenevolence be resolved with the existence of evil/suffering? I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a convincing answer, as I haven't come across one yet. Thanks!

Have you even googled this question? Just wondering because its such a common question we get asked all the time there are many Christian websites, video's, etc, that address it. Some are phrased a little differently, like why do bad things happen to good people? Or why does God allow suffering in the world. Its been addressed on here too, many, many times.

Here are just two:

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Why do bad things to happen to good people?

The answer is really very simple. In the beginning God created a perfect world..no death, no evil, no sin, no disease, no man's inhumanity to men, no wars. But in order for Adam and Eve to truly and freely love Him completely, they had to be given free will. The ability to choose. And they choose, like people do everyday, to not follow His word and they sinned, then sin entered the world and brought with it all the things I mentioned above because daily we choose to do good or evil.

Now sure God could make us robots, programmed only to do good to each other, and there would be no evil. You couldn't choose to not believe. All choices would be gone and we would be nothing but pull string dolls..unable to truly and freely love God...or anyone else. But God obviously doesn't want robots or pull string dolls and with that freedom sometimes people choose to do evil.

[Athanasius]

As an atheist/deist, I've always found the logical problem of evil to be a very convincing argument against Christianity. How can the characteristics of omnipotence and omnibenevolence be resolved with the existence of evil/suffering? I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a convincing answer, as I haven't come across one yet. Thanks!

Can you elaborate on what you perceive as the conflict? The logical problem of evil has been considered dead for quite some time. (i.e., the more preferred argument would be something like the gratuitous argument from evil.)

[Max Power]

Does coldness exist? No, it doesn't. We have heat, but cold is just the word we use to describe the absence of heat. Does darkness exist? No, it does not as it is simply the word we use to describe the absence of light. So what is evil? It's the word we use to describe the absence of God. And as moonglow explained above, because we have free will, we have the choice of accepting God into our hearts. To force His way in and remove all evil would be to remove our free will, and thus our love for Him would be fake.

[Scruffy Kid]

Hi Tyler1256!
Welcome to Bibleforums!
It's great to have you here!!!

And thanks for your important question!

As an atheist/deist, I've always found the logical problem of evil to be a very convincing argument against Christianity. How can the characteristics of omnipotence and omnibenevolence be resolved with the existence of evil/suffering? I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a convincing answer, as I haven't come across one yet. Thanks!

I do have some things to say. I'll say some of 'em in the next post. But let me be clear about what I'm doing in responding to your query. And not doing.

Preliminary: What Kind of an Answer to Your Question is Possible and Feasible?

I'm not exactly trying to give a knockdown, or an adequate, answer, or rejoinder, to the "problem" of evil -- that is, not trying to "argue against" the implied critique of belief in an omnipotent-benevolent deity that "solves" the problem.

What I'm trying to do, instead, is more like having a conversation along these lines:

I'm a Christian, who comes from a non-Christian background. That is, my family of origin were not religious; my Dad -- the most important and beloved intellectual influence in my life, now, alas, deceased -- was a smart articulate atheist. I read lots of thoughtful non- and anti- Christian authors, mostly British (Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, etc.), from the time I was a kid, and still value those people and their thinking on various subjects.

I'm a guy whose main instincts (inter alia) are, from my childhood were, logical (seeking philosophical consistency, truth, science, etc.) and humane (concerned about human suffering). My concerns for human suffering has worked itself out in practical projects (raising funds to do things about hunger), and in more indirect intellectual projects (studying, and learning about, ways to structure society, to reduce poverty, and other such ills), and in hands-on work with people who are poor, in the US, especially kids, and in spending lots of time listening to people -- including students of mine -- who have sadnesses and troubles in their lives, because of their own mistakes, or for reasons entirely beyond their or anyone's control. My point here is, I'm a guy much concerned with, and gut-wrenched by, human suffering (or, for that matter, animal suffering).

I came to faith in God, the God of Jesus Christ, the God of Biblical religion, and of the historic (Nicene) Christian faith -- tentatively, at first, as a teen, definitively in my twenties, and with growing conviction, and God working more deeply in my life, as time went on, through several decades since. I believe the historic Christian faith, and thus in God, understood as Jesus taught of Him and as the Church historically has understood.

Yet, I don't experience a sense of contradiction between the existence of suffering and the omnipotence of a loving God whom I believe to know all things, and to be "omnipotent". And I don't -- as a pretty darn logical thinker -- find much of an intellectual contradiction there.

So why not?

That's all I can tell you: to try to help you picture how someone -- someone who's concerned with the issues you raise(very concerned, hurting over the pain around me, and sometimes in my own life) and whose faith has to be (I can't operate any other way) reasoned, not fideistic ("just believe it") -- can be not deterred from that historic and Biblical faith by the important considerations you raise, and which (of course) I've also wrestled with at various points in my life, in various ways.

So I'll try to explain.

But I'm giving the explanation, yes, as logical replies to your logical query; but not as a killer "answer" that "refutes" any objections you may have. Not so much a logical argument -- although logical reasoning's involved, certainly. Not as that, mostly, because I don't think that human and deep philosophical issues can be fully and satisfactorily answered by closed-form "answers" that are simply logical demonstrations. Are there sometimes such "answers" or philosophically tight replies. Yeah, I think there sometimes are (and sometimes aren't). But even where there are, they don't necessarily speak to the underlying issues.

I don't think one can come to understand how a logical person would not see a glaring contradiction between suffering and evil OTOH and OTOH a good, loving, omnipotent God by "proving" that there's no contradiction. Of course there's a contradiction, of a kind! No one, I think, is unaware of that. Certainly the authors whose works we have preserved for us in the Bible -- St. Paul, Jesus (as reported by others), St. Pete, King David and other authors of the Psalms, Moses (or whoever wrote Genesis and Exodus) -- were entirely aware of the contradiction there. So the question is, how is it that one doesn't find such a contradiction a strong argument against the existence of such a God?

I can share with you, about that, because that's where I am. Possibly, in seeing how, or discussing how, these things look to a believer who's sensitive to suffering, the whole outlook may start to make more sense to you, at least, whatever conclusion you come to.

(Sorry for the long intro. All my friends here say: "Scruff, your posts are way too long!" And they're right of course!)

In friendship,
Scruffy Kid

[Scruffy Kid]

So how do I live with the intellectual (and personal) tension between knowledge of, or belief in, a loving omnipotent God and a world that contains suffering and evil?

A first answer

I guess one way I think about this is: what other kind of a universe would I expect?

(This is a kind of standard approach in scientific, and other scholarly, reasoning, I think. The way I'm trained. To think through how one interprets data, one has to ask, what are other ways the data could have come out, and what would one make of those sorts of results as vs this result, or this result as vs those results.)

What is presupposed by a world of freedom? -- a world of beings, people, who can genuinely make significant choices and actions? That is, a world in which love is possible, in which people significantly thinking through life is possible, in which genuine relationship is possible, in which art is possible, in which genuine inquiry (including science) is possible, in which personal growth, and learning about life's significance and meaning is possible?

There are the things which I value about life, or some of them. They are very valuable!

Is is possible to have such things, to have such a world, without evil, without suffering?

I don't know definitively, of course -- such a question is a bit beyond me, beyond human reasoning that is constructed with the certainty of mathematical reasoning, for instance. But as i reason it out as best I can, it seems to me that the answer is "no".

It's not just that if you have a world of free creatures (human beings, angels) who can make genuine choices, then you have a world in which they therefore sometimes make bad choices, defiant choices, selfish choices, self-destructive choices, and so on, and that when that happens suffering, and other bad things, ensue. That's so, it seems to me. But it's not all.

In addition, it's that a world of freedom is a world of ambiguity and contingency. If all there was to life was taking tests with right and wrong answers, clearly wrong, and clearly right answers, that would not be the world I love, the world of genuine wonder, discovery, relationship, love, growth, vision, beauty. The way the world is actually constructed -- which I think to be an excellent way! -- is that we can understand some things, but other things are murky. So I respond to that world -- to the things I see, to the people around me, to making drawings or writing stories, to analyzing things -- not like a being who is supposed to just find the one right answer to a closed-form logical (or moral) puzzle. Rather, I'm encountering a world with depth -- and therefore beyond my full understanding -- and other people whose personhood, whose existence, has depths I can't fathom, out of the depth and creative freedom I myself have. In fact, I don't fully understand myself, and the depths of who I am, myself. I do things which puzzle me. Sometimes disturbing things that I don't understand; sometimes good things that surprise me, sometimes just things that are funny and odd, and not fully understandable to me (but not unintelligible, necessarily, either).

All that goes together with the murkiness, the not-fully-known and not-fully-knowable character of the world we live in. In fact that hard-to-fathom kind of world is the kind of world is the sort of world that modern (post-mid-19th-century) science reveals to us. (The world of quantum physics, of chaos theory, of statistical mechanics, of Goedel's theorem, etc.) But simply that it's that sort of world that science shows us, even at an inanimate level, is not, in itself, responsive to your question. Your question would be: why did God (if such there be) make that kind of world? Why a world of quantum physics rather than of Newtonian physics? Simply that it's that sort of world we find does not exhonerate God, ethically, for making that sort of world (assuming ourselves to be in a position to judge God's works and ways).

The world of murkiness, rather than of Euclidean or Newtonian exactness, is (as I see it) the world that permits growth, relationship, learning, partial knowledge, art, scientific inquiry, growing personal self-knowledge (think: Socrates; think: Confucius), freedom. A world of freedom, and therefore of unknownness and contingency, is a world of risk. A world that's free from risk is a world of precise machines: a world in which everything is pre-programmed. That's not a world of free persons; not a world in which there is love, beauty, the heart that seeks, and to a degree attains, truth.

The answer, then, thinking along these lines, to your inquiry, would be something like this: that God made a world of freedom because what is valuable is free persons, persons in relationship with one another (and with God), and a world of growth and creative activity. The inevitable result of having such a world is that things can go wrong. People misbehave, imposing terrible consequences on others as well as on themselves. But then, they also act with creative beauty and kindness and love, and others, as well as themselves reap those consequences, too.

Let's take my own life, for a sec. I have various faults, many of which cause pain, and even damage, and wrong, both to me and to other people; and many of which get passed down to subsequent generations. Where do those faults come from?

Some of them are my own darn fault without mitigation. But, honestly, some of the problems which have beset me lifelong -- low self-esteem, getting annoyed easily, over-sensitivity, impatience, lack of punctuality, a tendency to get overwhelmed and stop functioning -- and caused damage to others as well as myself, come from my environment, and especially from my parents. My parents were great parents, and I'm so grateful for them -- for having known them as people, and for what they gave me: love of work, honesty, love of thinking, concern for others, including those who are hurting or reckoned as unimportant especially, love of beauty, desire for truth, lots of basic good habits (with some that aren't so good), and so on.

Am I then dissatisfied that I inherited -- perhaps partly biologically, but certainly from learning as a child and youngster and young man -- some bad traits from my parents? No, not in principle. Of course I wish that I'd avoided this or that vicious or dysfunctional trait, but I recognize that that's what it is to be a person, who's generated from the life of other people -- parents, first and foremost. I carry on the human project in relationship with those who are my ancestors, inheriting from them much good stuff, but also some considerable bad stuff. I can see where various problems my parents had came from previous generations, and also from the society in which they grew up; and I can see where various strengths, and good and admirable things in them came from previous generations, and from the society in which they grew up. They, like me, as free persons, in relationship with others, received life from those who came before, and passed it on to those (like me) who came after.

So then the question is -- is this the wrong kind of world for a loving God to have created?

Well as I said, such questions are a bit beyond my powers, but if I have to answer, I'd answer -- no, it seems a good world, and the best kind of world to live in. But with a world like this -- of contingency, growth, incomplete knowledge, relationship (and therefore of effort, of learning, of genuine love), of freedom, and the pursuit of beauty and truth and compassion) -- we get a world in which things go wrong. A pre-programmed world, one where we just have a machine, however nifty, doing a set of mechanical operations, doesn't really seem to me worth creating.

Why, according to classic Christian theology, did God create? The standard answer, which I believe to be right, is that God created to give us the gift of life, that is, of knowing and participating in love, beauty, truth, virtue. (That is: God made us in the imago Dei -- in God's own image!) God can be free, and complete in love and goodness, without being subject to contingency (because God's omnipotent, that is in-finite, without limitations internal or external, with no obstruction to the exercise of the goodness that is God's very nature). We, being finite creature, can't. Because there are limits to our powers (thank heavens! for we get in enough trouble as it is) we operate in a world of chance and contingency, and things can go wrong.

If that's the case, though, one might ask, why did God have to create at all? Was God lonely? Unfulfilled? Needing a project to keep busy?

Of course not! God didn't have to create, or need what was created, or need to exercise Divine powers! God, simply existing as God, has complete fullness of being, and doesn't need anything. Indeed, Christian theology -- in expositing (from Jesus' words) how God eternally (beyond time and space) exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yet one God -- makes it clear that God, who is the God of love, didn't need us (or angels, or anything) around in order to love: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have perfection of love, of mutual knowledge, of fully satisfying objects of attention and of interaction, within the Godhead (the Divine Nature) without creating anything at all.

God created out of pure generosity: so that we, coming into being, also might join (in our smaller way) in the joy of love, knowledge, uprightness of heart, creativity, beauty, and so on.

But to do that necessarily entailed making finite beings, that is free persons (humans and angels) in a world of freedom and therefore contingency. Such a world is necessarily prone to going wrong, and thus to suffering and to evil.

A second quick answer

But was the project worth its risks?

Maybe such a world -- a world of freedom and love -- entailed making a world of contingency, risk, and also of people doing wrong things (which is where most of the suffering in the human world comes from).

Maybe God did this not selfishly (for Divine amusement, or pleasure in workmanship, or delight in human society), but simply as a gift to us.

But still we can ask: was that a good idea? Was that fair?

All I can say is: most people think so. They'd rather be alive than not-alive. They don't spontaneously wish that there was no world. The idea of having all life on earth (or all human or higher animal life) wiped out in a nuclear war, or by a meteorite crashing into our planet and busting it to smithereens doesn't strike us as being a good thing. True, if earth and all its creatures were destroyed there'd be no more suffering, and no more evil. But no one seems to think that that would be a really great outcome, a splendid thing. Somehow people seem to feel that for all its troubles life is worth leading! Annihilating human life, or all life, doesn't generally seem to appeal to us as a way of ending all suffering. (Schopenhauer, I guess, and a few other pessimist philosophers have sort of disagreed and said that would be best.) Despite its difficulties, people find life worthwhile.

A Third Quick Answer

There's suffering and evil in the world, but those who bear its brunt the worst don't usually find it something that convinces them that there isn't a loving and omnipotent God.

When natural disasters happen -- the Tsunami for instance -- lots of people die, and lots are injured. In the Tsunami, this was mostly in SE Asia and the area of the Indian Ocean, etc. I had friends who were working with fishing villiages on the E. Coast of India, where many died, and where others had their fishing boats and houses, their whole livelihood -- precarious in any case -- wrecked.

When this happened, lots of Westerners said: "how can a loving God let such things happen?" Lots of Western cultured clergy also said "how can such things happen, if God is good? This shakes our faith."

But the people directly affected don't generally say that. They are glad that they were spared, when the disaster hit. They give thanks to God for preserving them though it. It's tough, but they start to rebuild. They grieve those who have died. (But remember: tsunami or no tsunami, those who died were due to die sooner or later: the death rate for human beings is 100%.) This is not to take the deaths, the suffering, the problems lightly. It is, though, to say that all that is part of the stuff of life. People who live not highly insulated from life and its crude realities understand, without being told, that life is full of suffering. It's in that context that people come to believe in God. Simple people -- people in fishing villiages, say -- often are more accepting of life, with its roughness (of which they experience far more than us). They see God present, even amid, especially amid, life's troubles and disasters. Somehow it doesn't seem to them a refutation of God's goodness, or life's bounty. But amid tough times, they find from God's love and beauty strength and sustenance.

There are people here on this board who live with extreme pain every day. Physical pain, crippling, deteriorating bodies, vast limitation on what they can do, great difficulty in doing even the simplist things. We know these folk, and pray for them. One crippled woman is in constant pain, and perpetually bedridden, through various diseases, for various years. Many people on the board pray for her. Of course, we pray that God would heal her, but also that, if not, God would give her strength. Yet for all her suffering, which is really hard for her to bear, she spends her days in thankfulness for what God goes give her -- with some plaints to God too, of course -- and in prayer for other people (including many here on the board) who are in trouble, difficulty, or pain. Life is very difficult for her -- and for her husband, also in quite poor health, who met her when her diseases were far advanced, and came to love her, and married her. Yet these difficulties are not meaningless, and not hopeless. The lives of these people are fruitful, beautiful lives, an inspiration and source of strength to many; and they themselves see life as a good (but tough to handle) gift.

More to be said

There is, I think, a good deal more to be said, in reply to your question.

I can't say it now, and maybe not at all. I'm tight on time at work, and overdue on a bunch of projects. Mostly working about 11-14 hours a day these days. Wonderful work which I enjoy, BTW. So it's hard for me to find off hours when I can post.

I do, however, want to thank you for your excellent question.

I'm not trying to beat you down, or your dismay at suffering down, with arguments.

I'm just trying to help you see -- since you seem to want to hear about how people might view it who believe in God and are concerned about suffering and evil -- how it is that a few people (me especially, since I can speak for me) who have come to believe in God handle the tension that you so rightly bring up as an important one.

In friendship,
Scruffy Kid

[Radagast]

As an atheist/deist, I've always found the logical problem of evil to be a very convincing argument against Christianity. How can the characteristics of omnipotence and omnibenevolence be resolved with the existence of evil/suffering? I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a convincing answer, as I haven't come across one yet. Thanks!

Read this book.

[dan]

As an atheist/deist, I've always found the logical problem of evil to be a very convincing argument against Christianity. How can the characteristics of omnipotence and omnibenevolence be resolved with the existence of evil/suffering? I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a convincing answer, as I haven't come across one yet. Thanks!

In my opinion, God allows evil to test us.

God wants us to be the stumbling block in the path of evil.

God admits creating evil here:

IS 45:6 That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else.
IS 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
IS 45:8 Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the LORD have created it.
IS 45:9 Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?

Others in the Bible confirm it:

AMOS 3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?

Also, God has said that specific evils will happen in the future, and, in order for those things to happen, men must be tempted to take advantage of certain situations.

[RockSolid]

As an atheist/deist, I've always found the logical problem of evil to be a very convincing argument against Christianity. How can the characteristics of omnipotence and omnibenevolence be resolved with the existence of evil/suffering? I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a convincing answer, as I haven't come across one yet. Thanks!

You admit evil exists. As an atheist, how to you guage what is evil and what is not evil? Also, what makes something evil?

[watchinginawe]

As an atheist/deist, I've always found the logical problem of evil to be a very convincing argument against Christianity. How can the characteristics of omnipotence and omnibenevolence be resolved with the existence of evil/suffering? I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a convincing answer, as I haven't come across one yet. Thanks!

Hello Tyler and welcome to Bibleforums. We are glad you brought your questions here.

Your profile states that you are currently 15 years old. I conclude from that and your post here in Bibleforums that you are awake to certain things and exploring them. I wish there had been an internet and a Bibleforums when I was 15 years old. It might have cut down on the 10 years or so it took in my seeking God. Even though I was a determined atheist in my later teen years, I see all of that through the lense of who I am now, thus I now recognize that I was seeking God in whom eventually I found satisfaction (peace) in. I could fluff that up with a bunch of theologically correct statements but I think I will leave it just as it is.

In my opinion and in many aspects, Christianity is all about logical contradictions. I am sure there are many who disagree with how I phrased that, but I don't see how one could ever come to see Christianity as perfectly logical and consistent. As one of the thieves crucified with Jesus observed: Luke 23:39 And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. To that malefactor, it wasn't logical that the man Jesus who was beaten and crucified was the Christ, and if by some circumstance He was, then surely He allowed all to happen in order to then save Himself in some undisputable fashion from unjust Roman condemnation and death. However, it is in this gulf of logical contradiction where the power of the cross exists.

Regarding evil, I'd like to piggyback on RockSolid's post (atheism and evil), and to an extent, Scruff's post (what is the nature of the universe we live in?).

It is possible to see evil solely as the construct of the contemplation of Christianity. In this case evil would be hypothetical and not necessarily real or observed. One could consider the whole of the argument and conclude that evil, if it exists, seems contradictory to the God of Christianity and thus weakens the logical consistency of Christianity. Thus, "the problem of evil" only exists as a problem to a logical consideration. Outside of the contemplation, evil would no longer be a "problem".

However, it is another thing altogether to conclude independently the existence of evil. You suggest in your post that you acknowledge evil and/or suffering and thus the real existence of these. From that end you begin to see if your observations can be resolved with a benevolent God, etc. But as RockSolid suggests, evil isn't an objective "problem" for atheists. At best evil would be a relative or subjective problem. For example: Those evil Bible thumping Christians are shoving their morality down our throats.

If you believe evil is real and observable (and a problem), then you can begin to contemplate very important considerations about your observation. For example, will evil go unjudged? Is there an ultimate answer to evil? Is evil present within me? Will/how will I be judged?

[Yaaqov ben Yisrael]

As an atheist/deist, I've always found the logical problem of evil to be a very convincing argument against Christianity. How can the characteristics of omnipotence and omnibenevolence be resolved with the existence of evil/suffering? I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a convincing answer, as I haven't come across one yet. Thanks!

God is not all Love, but is Hate as well. God does both good and evil. It is the natural order of things, even if you are an atheist/deist you can see this in the nature around you. God provides food and water to all living things in an equal and just manner; yet it is never a good thing in the eyes of a rabbit being the dinner of a fox. The rain which waters the earth and brings life to the planet, also causes havoc, death and many other sorrows. All things are from God, both the good and the bad, and this is evident in the nature which He created.

Yaaqov ben Yisrael

[Itinerant Lurker]

God provides food and water to all living things in an equal and just manner

You literally could not be more wrong. Were you going for some kind of figurative meaning here?




Lurker

[Bandit]

God is not all Love, but is Hate as well. God does both good and evil. It is the natural order of things, even if you are an atheist/deist you can see this in the nature around you. God provides food and water to all living things in an equal and just manner; yet it is never a good thing in the eyes of a rabbit being the dinner of a fox. The rain which waters the earth and brings life to the planet, also causes havoc, death and many other sorrows. All things are from God, both the good and the bad, and this is evident in the nature which He created.

Yaaqov ben Yisrael

Hello Yaaqov ben Yisrael,

The Christian God is described as a God of love (1st John 4:8), and "God is light, and and in Him is no darkness at all" (1st John 1:5). Yaaqov ben Yisrael, you are entitled to your own definition of god, but the god you describe is not the same God as revealed through the bible.

[Eyelog]

Have you even googled this question? Just wondering because its such a common question we get asked all the time there are many Christian websites, video's, etc, that address it. Some are phrased a little differently, like why do bad things happen to good people? Or why does God allow suffering in the world. Its been addressed on here too, many, many times.

The answer is really very simple. In the beginning God created a perfect world..no death, no evil, no sin, no disease, no man's inhumanity to men, no wars. But in order for Adam and Eve to truly and freely love Him completely, they had to be given free will. The ability to choose. And they choose, like people do everyday, to not follow His word and they sinned, then sin entered the world and brought with it all the things I mentioned above because daily we choose to do good or evil.

Now sure God could make us robots, programmed only to do good to each other, and there would be no evil. You couldn't choose to not believe. All choices would be gone and we would be nothing but pull string dolls..unable to truly and freely love God...or anyone else. But God obviously doesn't want robots or pull string dolls and with that freedom sometimes people choose to do evil.

I wonder how anyone here would respond to this critique of Zacharias:

http://atheistexperience.blogspot.co...arias-six.html

Someone sent me a link to this via Facebook and after spending some time addressing it, I thought I'd post it here. It's another long (though not insanely long) post, but it addresses the "questions" of a popular apologist that is often cited in e-mails from Christians.

Zacharias' original text is in black and my responses are in red.


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Many times, as Christian theists, we find ourselves on the defensive against the critiques and questions of atheists. Here, then are six key questions you can ask of atheists as you engage them in honest conversation about the trajectory of this worldview:

First, we need to clarify that atheism isn’t a worldview. There are no tenets, dogma or edicts because atheism isn’t an “ism”…it’s simply the label we use to identify a position on a single question; do you believe a god exists? If the answer is yes, you’re a theist, if not, you’re an atheist.

Atheism can be the result of a worldview and it is certainly consistent with a number of secular philosophical worldviews, so for the sake of this discussion I’ll address the questions without quibbling over that detail but it’s essential to point out that there’s an underlying misconception that tends to encourage theists to frame their questions in a way that doesn’t really make sense.

1. If there is no God, “the big questions” remain unanswered, so how do we answer the following questions: Where did everything come from, and why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there conscious, intelligent life on this planet, and is there any meaning to this life? Does human history lead anywhere, or is it all in vain since death is merely the end? How do you come to understand good and evil, right and wrong without a transcendent signifier? If these concepts are merely social constructions, or human opinions, where do we look to determine what is good or bad, right or wrong? If you are content within an atheistic worldview, what circumstances would serve to make you open to other answers?

The entire paragraph is an implied argument that if we haven’t yet explained the big questions (without making an appeal to the god hypothesis) that we’re then justified in accepting that a god exists. This is a thinly-veiled argument from ignorance, a classic logical fallacy.

In addition to that problem, the god hypothesis has no explanatory power. Explanations increase our understanding and we tend to explain things in terms of other things that we already understand.

Attempting to ‘answer’ the big question by appealing to the supernatural doesn’t accomplish this because it’s an attempt to solve a mystery by appealing to another mystery. That’s not an explanation; it’s a gap-filler. It doesn’t solve a mystery; it obscures it in an attempt to assuage our discomfort with the unknown.

How do we answer the big questions? The same way we’d answer any other question. First, we acknowledge that we don’t have an explanation and then we investigate until we do. The time to believe a proposed explanation is after it has been supported by argument and evidence - and not a moment before. Explanations are supported by evidence; they’re not supported by a failure to come up with a better response.

In the end, this question isn’t an implied argument for the existence of god; it’s an implied argument for belief as a means of placating curiosity and xenophobia. Accepting a pacifying non-answer retards progress toward discovering the real answer.

2. If we reject the existence of God, we are left with a crisis of meaning, so why don’t we see more atheists taking their worldview more seriously like Jean Paul Sartre, or Friedrich Nietzsche, or Michel Foucault? These three atheists recognized that in the absence of God, there was no transcendent meaning beyond one’s own self-interests, pleasures, or tastes. The experience of atheistic meaninglessness is recorded in Sartre’s book Nausea. Without God, these three thinkers, among others, show us a world of just stuff, thrown out into space and time, going nowhere, meaning nothing.

The implication in this question is that if there is no transcendent, ultimate, externally imposed meaning that there can be no meaning. That’s a bit of an equivocation fallacy – conflating “meaning” and “transcendent meaning” and then spinning it into “atheistic meaninglessness”.

I have no crisis of meaning. A secular worldview doesn’t result in meaninglessness. My life has whatever meaning I attribute to it, and this would be true whether a god existed or not. Value is the result of desire and while he’d like to dismiss our “selfish interests, pleasures, or tastes” as negatives, that’s not the case. Our selfish interests can result in benefit or harm, all with respect to the things we value. He dismisses the very foundations of meaning in order to claim there is no meaning… that doesn’t sound like the “honest conversation” I’m looking for.

The broader, implied argument is that one should believe in a god because it’ll prevent you from feeling as though your life has no meaning. This is not an argument for the existence of a god; it’s an argument for belief which has no dependency on the object of that belief being true. It’s like arguing that one should believe that they’re holding a winning lottery ticket if it makes them happy.

The problem, of course, is that our beliefs inform our actions and our actions have consequences for ourselves and others. The person who sincerely believes that they hold a winning lottery ticket may well take actions that prove devastating when they discover they actually don’t have a winning ticket.

3. If people don’t believe in God, the historical results are horrific, so how do we deal with the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot who saw religion as the problem and worked to eradicate it? Countless millions lost their lives under these godless regimes, regimes more influenced by Nietzsche’s concept of the ubermensch (superman) than they were by transcendent morality.

Once again, we have an implied argument that has nothing to do with the actual existence of god but rather on the purported benefits of believing that a god exists; if people stop believing in gods, bad things will happen, so don’t stop believing.

The assertion that atheism leads to horrifying atrocities is simply not true. It’s a vile, slanderous charge, rooted in ignorance and deception that isn’t the slightest bit softened by Zacharias’ stylish, questioning form.

In the case of the examples given, atheism is neither necessary nor sufficient to be identified as the cause of the actions taken. In truth, the atrocities were the result of belief systems which, while consistent with atheism, are not caused by atheism. You simply cannot draw a causal chain from “I do not believe a god exists” to “I’m going to destroy religious organizations and religious people” without an additional belief — and it is that belief that would be the cause of the atrocities.

To claim otherwise is to claim that atheism necessarily leads to horrifying acts (which is what he’s trying to do) and there are millions of secular people who testify to the false nature of that assertion every single day.

Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot took actions based on beliefs that are akin to religions. They were powerful zealots of socio-political ideologies and a belief that the opposition must be eliminated. To claim that those beliefs were caused by atheism is as much a non sequitur as claiming that they were caused by a stomach ache.

Hitler, on the other hand, gave conflicting reports about his beliefs. He publicly and privately identified as a Catholic, yet there’s also testimony that he was anti-religious or anti-Christian at times. If he had done great work, I suspect that the Christians would claim that he was opposed to organized religion, but a devoted, personal believer. Because of the atrocities he committed, they take a different tact, labeling him an atheist.

We can no more know Hitler’s true beliefs about the existence of gods than we can know the mind of any other. What we can know, though, is that even if he was an atheist, that wasn’t the cause of the actions he took. As Zacharias points out, it was the ideology of the Übermensch (among other beliefs) that encouraged those actions.

While that ideology is consistent with atheism (everything except for a belief in a god is consistent with atheism) it is not caused by atheism nor is it necessarily connected with atheism. It is not, though, consistent with modern secular humanism.

4. If there is no God, the problems of evil and suffering are in no way solved, so where is the hope of redemption, or meaning for those who suffer? Suffering is just as tragic, if not more so, without God because there is no hope of it being rendered meaningful or transcendent, redemptive or redeemable, since no interventions in this life or reparations in an afterlife are possible. It might be true that there is no God to blame now, but neither is there a God to reach out to for strength, transcendent meaning, or comfort. There is only madness and confusion in the face of suffering and evil.

His claim is that suffering is just as tragic, if not more so, if there is no God. This is another roundabout way of saying, “Hey, you might as well believe, you’ll be no worse off” — another argument for belief with no ties to the truth of the proposition one is being asked to believe. It reminds me a bit of the people who try to claim that atheism is “just another religion” without realizing the implication of what they’ve just said.

I disagree with his assessment, though, that suffering is just as or more tragic if there is no god.

If there isn’t a god, then suffering isn’t the result of original sin or impious thoughts and it isn’t a test from God or a torment from demons and devils. If there is no god, then suffering is a natural part of reality and that means that we can equip ourselves to alleviate unnecessary suffering by learning more about reality. We can also take comfort in knowing that the unavoidable is actually unavoidable and not punishment.

If there is no god, then those who blame natural disasters on immodest women, abortionists, homosexuals and atheists are simply arrogant bigots and not the voice of a deity. That’s no small comfort and, since we’re talking about the impact of suffering, that’s a valid point.

We do not require a god for comfort, we can reach out to other people and we can reach within, to the confidence and security that is bolstered by the understanding that one is not simply a plaything of a transcendent being.

5. If there is no God, we lose the very standard by which we critique religions and religious people, so whose opinion matters most? Whose voice will be heard? Whose tastes or preferences will be honored? In the long run, human tastes and opinions have no more weight than we give them, and who are we to give them meaning anyway? Who is to say that lying, or cheating or adultery or child molestation are wrong — really wrong? Where do those standards come from? Sure, our societies might make these things “illegal” and impose penalties or consequences for things that are not socially acceptable, but human cultures have at various times legally or socially disapproved of everything from believing in God to believing the world revolves around the sun; from slavery, to interracial marriage, from polygamy to monogamy. Human taste, opinion law and culture are hardly dependable arbiters of Truth.

This is simply false. The standard by which I critique religion and religious people is not contingent upon the existence of a god. This is a thinly-veiled claim of “no moral authority” and it’s a bit like saying that a room full of people can have no opinions or shared principles without someone outside the room telling them what those views should be.

Secular morality is superior to religious morality in every regard, save one; religious morality is simplistic. Secular morality requires thought and effort, religious morality is for the lazy and the thoughtless — those who would be duped into thinking that something becomes ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ for them, simply because of an edict attributed to some other being.

Religious people already intuitively recognize the superiority of secular morality and they’ve been adopting the moral views of the secular societies that surround them.

The Bible, for example, clearly and explicitly endorses slavery. For those who believe that the Bible is the ultimate source of moral law from the ultimate lawgiver, there is no moral justification for opposing slavery — yet that’s exactly what some of them did and what most of them continue to do. Nowhere does the Bible denounce slavery, it’s supported in Old and New Testaments; so why do Christians generally oppose slavery?

It’s because we live in a cooperative society which helps form and shift our values. While dogmatists were blindly proclaiming their god’s endorsement of slavery, freethinking people (religious and non-religious) were actually considering the subject and evaluating its impact on the health of society.

It was the application of reason that changed the moral landscape, not the God of the Bible.

6. If there is no God, we don’t make sense, so how do we explain human longings and desire for the transcendent? How do we even explain human questions for meaning and purpose, or inner thoughts like, why I am so unfulfilled or empty? Why do I hunger for the spiritual? How do we deal with these questions if nothing can exist beyond the material world? Atheists, particularly atheistic scientists go way beyond their scientific training when they depart from the “how” questions to prognosticating about the “why” questions. Even terms like “natural selection” seems a misuse of words, since only an intelligent being can assess options and choose. How do we get laws out of luck, or predictable processes out of brute chance? If all that makes us different from animals is learning and altruism, why do the brutish still widely outnumber the wise in our world?

He’s basically arguing that his desire for the transcendent can only be explained in a case where the transcendent exists. This is an obvious fallacy. If there are no aliens, why do people long for alien encounters? Does their desire only make sense if aliens are beaming messages to their brains?

More importantly, I have no longing for the transcendent and no hunger for the spiritual. If Ravi’s desire is sufficient to support the existence of the supernatural, then is my lack of desire sufficient to refute a claim of existence?

Finally, there are no “how” questions or “why” questions — you can form the questions either way:

Why is the sky blue? How does the sky appear blue? What makes the sky appear blue? Where does the blue in the sky come from? When…well, maybe we can’t use every interrogative.

What he means by “why” would be better labeled “for what transcendent reason…”, but if he says that, he exposes a flaw that we can expose with another “why” question: Why do you think there must be a transcendent reason?

His answer to that question is obvious. He thinks there must be a transcendent reason because he can’t imagine that there couldn’t be and wouldn’t want to live in a world where there wasn’t a transcendent reason… yet another argument for belief or against the consequences of disbelief, with no bearing on the truth of the issue.

His claim that “natural selection” misuses words is a bit obtuse when you realize that the term is a metaphoric response to unsupported claims of supernatural mechanisms. Only someone unfamiliar with evolution or willing to misrepresent it to make a point would claim that this is a misuse. Would he object to someone claiming that something was “decided by a coin toss” since only an intelligent being can “decide”?

In the end, this is really the same as the first question: if there is no God, “the big questions” remain unanswered…

I think “does some god exist” qualifies as one of the big questions. If Zacharias was as interested in examining the truth of his religious beliefs as he is in defending his belief with appeals to the fictitious consequences of disbelief, he might see that.

We’ll have a hope of answering those big questions when curious thinkers, dissatisfied with appeals to mystery, question the claims of religion and investigate with any eye toward truth, rather than comfort.