< Previous: “The non-believer’s review of ‘The Case for Faith’ – first 50 pages”
Objection #1 “Since Evil and Suffering Exist, a Loving God Cannot” (continued)
“Christians believe in five things”, I said. “First, God exists. Second, God is all-good. Third, God is all-powerful. Fourth, God is all-wise. And, fifth, evil exists. Now, how can all of those statements be true at the same time?”
…
Attribute #1: God is All-Powerful
…
“Now, the classic defense of God against the problem of evil is that it’s not logically possible to have free will and no possibility of moral evil. In other words, once God chose to create human beings with free will, then it was up to them, rather than to God, as to whether there was sin or not. That’s what free will means. Built into the situation of God deciding to create human beings is the chance of evil and, consequently, the suffering that results.”“Then God is the creator of evil.”
“No, he create the possibility of evil; people actualized that potentiality. The source of evil is not God’s power but mankind’s freedom. Even an all-powerful God could not have created a world in which people had genuine freedom and yet there was no potentiality for sin”
Stobel’s “arguments” against Kreeft: “Then God is the creator of evil.” and later, “Then why didn’t God create a world without human freedom?” are pretty pithy. They’re perfectly setup for getting knocked down.
“Rabbi Harold Kushner reaches a different conclusion in his bestseller When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” I pointed out. “He says God isn’t all-powerful after all — that he would like to help, but he just isn’t capable of solving all the problems in the world He said, ‘Even God has a hard time keeping chaos in check'”
Kreeft raised an eyebrow. “For a rabbi, that’s hard to understand, because the distinctly Jewish notion of God is the opposite of that,” he said. “Surprisingly — against the evidence, it seems — the Jews insisted that there is a God who is all-powerful and nevertheless all good.”
…
“You don’t think much of Kushner’s God,” I said, more as a statement than a question.Frankly, that God is hardly worth believing in. Do I have a big brother who’s doing what he can but it’s not very much? Well, who cares?” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Practically speaking, that’s the same as atheism. Rely on yourself first and then maybe God, maybe not.”
“No, the evidence is that God is all-powerful.”
The evidence? What evidence? Kreeft doesn’t provide any evidence that God is all-powerful. He complains that Kushner’s God isn’t worth believing in — okay, but how does that change anything. If God were truly weak, people like Kreeft would be inventing new, more powerful versions of God that “are worth believing in”. He says that “the evidence is that God is all-powerful”, but fails to deliver anything substantiating that point. Further, the very idea that God is “all-powerful” seemed a bit unfounded to me even when I was a Christian. Sure, the God of the Bible is described as powerful – more powerful than anyone else, but the modern Christian idea of an omnimax God (omnipotent, omniscient) seemed unsubstantiated. The whole Biblical story of Lucifer and the angels rebelling against God and a war in heaven seems bizarre is you assume God is all-powerful. If God were all-powerful, Lucifer and the angel’s had no chance of success. On the other hand, if you say God is just “really powerful”, the story makes sense. Further, the description of God in the early Old Testament seems very limited. He seems to discover Adam and Eve’s sin only after He comes down from heaven. He comes down to look at the Tower of Babel. He tells Abraham that he won’t destroy Sodom and Gomorrah if Abraham can find 10 good men (doesn’t God already know if there are ten good men)? There are all kinds of stories in the Old Testament where God does miracles to prove he is more powerful than the gods of other tribes. The God of the Old Testament just seems like a powerful Greek god. How Christians turned him into an omnimax God, I simply don’t know. Perhaps it hinges on the psychological comfort that comes from believing your God is an omnimax God – which is Kreeft’s argument: it’s more psychologically agreeable to believe in an omnimax God, therefore, you should believe it’s true.
The point to remember is that creating a world where there’s free will and no possibility of sin is a contradiction — and that opens the door to people choosing evil over God, with suffering being the result. The overwhelming majority of the pain in the world is caused by our choices to kill, to slander, to be selfish, to stray sexually, to break our promises, to be reckless.”
Kreeft skips over the point that natural evil exists, and causes vast numbers of deaths: “Smallpox was responsible for an estimated 300–500 million deaths in the 20th century.” – and that’s despite the fact that smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s, thanks to a global vaccination campaign. Malaria “kills between one and three million people [per year]“, which probably works out to around 50-150 million deaths in the 20th century (depending on population growth). Tuberculosis and cholera used to kill large numbers of people (TB continues to kill, although only “1.6 million” per year). Those are not deaths due to man’s “sinfulness” or free will. Whether or not naturally caused deaths are more common than human-caused deaths (as Kreeft argues) is somewhat irrelevant. To argue that we should ignore naturally-caused deaths because they are much less common than human-caused deaths is a little bit like saying that we should ignore the crimes of a mass murderer because those deaths are dwarfed by the deaths in World War 2. God allows massive death tolls from natural phenomena which humans have no control over. These deaths are not caused because God wants to permit human free-will.
Even further, when Kreeft says, “[t]he overwhelming majority of the pain in the world is caused by our choices”, I question that assertion. Going back to deaths, when we add up the death tolls from the major wars and oppressions of the 20th century World War 1 (15 million), World War 2 (55 million), Russian Civil War (9 million), USSR under Stalin (20 million), Famine under Mao (40 million), we’re still only at 139 million deaths. Based on homicide statistics, the global homicide numbers are probably around 300,000 – 400,000 per year (which probably works out to around 20 million in the 20th century – depending on population growth). Obviously, the numbers would be higher with more through accounting, but the human-caused deaths (around 159 million) of those major sources of homicide are dwarfed by the deaths caused by one single disease: smallpox – which caused between 300-500 million deaths in the first 75 years of the 20th century. Despite Kreeft’s assertion that “overwhelming majority of the pain in the world is caused by our choices”, a significant and most likely the majority of deaths in the 20th century have been due to natural forces which humans don’t control.
Attribute #2: God is All-Knowing
Kreeft makes an argument that (like the Bear earlier argument), God is way smarter than we are, can foresee long-term good from short-term evil, and so we should trust Him. He doesn’t actually argue that God is “All-Knowing”, and doesn’t acknowledge the difference between ‘all-knowing’ and ‘really smart’.
Attribute #3: God Is All-Good
“Good is a notoriously tricky word,” Kreeft began, “because even in human affairs there’s such a wide range of meaning. But the difference, once again, between us and God is certainly greater than the difference between us and animals,
…
“Granted,” I said. “But if I sat there and did nothing while my child got ran over by a truck, I wouldn’t be good in any sense of the word. I’d be an evil father if I did that. And God does the equivalent of that. He sits by and refuses to perform miracles to take us out of danger even greater than being hit by a truck. So why isn’t he bad?”Kreeft nodded, “It looks like he is,” he said. “But the fact that God deliberately allows certain things, which if we allowed them would turn us into monsters, doesn’t necessarily count against God.”
…
“I remember when one of my daughters was about four or five years old and she was trying to thread a needle in Brownies. It was very difficult for her. Every time she tried, she hit herself in the finger and a couple of times she bled. I was watching her, but she didn’t see me. She just kept trying and trying.My first instinct was to go and do it for her, since I saw a drop of blood. But wisely I held back, because I said to myself, ‘She can do it.’ After about five minutes, she finally did it. I came out of hiding and she said, “Daddy, daddy – look what I did! Look what I did!’ She was so proud she had threaded the needle that she had forgotten all about the pain.
“That time the pain was a good thing for her. I was wise enough to have foreseen it was good for her. Now, certainly God is much wiser than I was with my daughter … Therefore, he’s not being evil by allowing that pain to exist. Dentists, athletic trainers, teachers, parents – they all know that sometimes to be good is not to be kind.
…
“Let’s face it: we learn from the mistakes we make and the suffering they bring. The universe is a soul-making machine, and part of that process is learning, maturing, and growing through difficult and challenging and painful experiences. The point of our lives in this world isn’t comfort, but training and preparation for eternity. Scripture tells us that even Jesus ‘learned obedience through suffering’ — and if that was true for him, why wouldn’t it be even more true for us?” (p.56-57)
I understand that some struggle and some pain can be a useful thing, and that it might “build character”. However, there is a difference between a girl pricking her finger and the kinds of evil that exists in the world (genocide, death of a child, rape, etc). Kreeft’s argument is that there’s really just one class of pain that exists in the world – beneficial, character-building pain. I say that there is more than one type of pain in the world. Sometimes pain is soul crushing and non-constructive. Kreeft would argue that I’m simply not wise enough (as God is) to see that all pain falls into his one simple classification.
Few few pages earlier, he was arguing that suffering exists because humans disobey God. Now, he’s arguing that suffering is constructive. I’m unsure how he puts these two explanations together, but it seems to me that he has only two choices:
(A) All suffering (i.e. naturally-caused suffering and human-caused suffering) is constructive. Human-caused suffering is because of disobedience to God (although it’s still constructive for the victim).
(B) All naturally-caused suffering is constructive. Human-caused suffering can be either constructive or non-constructive. God allows non-constructive suffering to exist in order to protect free-will.
There’s problems with both of these positions. First of all, both positions assert that all naturally-caused suffering is constructive. But if we assume that all natural-evil has a constructive purpose, then does our efforts to stop natural suffering — by creating vaccines, cures, evacuating people from floods, etc — actually cause humans to avoid short-term harm and miss out on more important long-term benefits. Is Jonah Salk, who found the cure for polio, actually guilty of harming our long-term character building? This whole framework of thinking seems upside down: people who cure diseases or find ways to improve the human condition are actually harming it in the long-term by removing those “character building” experiences such as death, debilitating disease, and genocide.
Next is the question of human-caused suffering. If we say that all human-caused suffering is constructive, then we reach some bizarre conclusions. It means all crimes committed by humans against humans are actually constructive. Charles Manson and the Columbine killers were unintentionally improving the world through their violence. If we were “wiser” we would know to let our children play in the streets and be sexually abused. In fact, we’re doing a great disservice to our communities by not letting all the murderers and rapists out of prison. Sure, there’s short-term suffering, but the long-term gain will be beneficial and character-building, right? If we want to used the “suffering is always constructive” excuse, that’s the logical conclusion. Afterall, God didn’t strike-down criminals to prevent them from committing their crimes, meaning that he must’ve been “wise enough” to foresee the long-term benefits their crimes would produce, right? It seems like Kreeft want to argue that all suffering is constructive when you’re the victim, but if you’re the perpetrator, then the suffering you inflict is bad and worthy of punishment. From the standpoint of psychology, you can understand why he would want to hold that position: it condemns the criminal, but also provides an “answer” to the problem of evil and comforts the victim. Unfortunately, it’s also illogical. This position is completely upside down: it says that evil is good and good is evil. It says that rapists and murderers are improving society (even if their motives are bad), and our scientists, doctors, and other people who work to improve the human condition are actually guilty of favoring short-term pleasure at the expense of the more-important long-term benefits of suffering.
But what about the other position: that some human-caused suffering is non-constructive, but God permits it for the benefit of free-will? This also has problems. For one thing, God kills people in the Old Testament for their evil. He kills the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah for their evil. He kills all the people in the pre-flood world for their evil. He kills a man in the Old Testament for accidentally touching the Ark of the Covenant. This idea of allowing evil in order to “preserve free will” simply doesn’t hold up. If the Bible is true and if God is really angry, he’ll kill people. I guess Hitler and Stalin didn’t *quite* reach the level of evil required to kill them. Second, it’s possible to allow free will and prevent (or mitigate) suffering of the victim. For example, an old friend of mine lost her brother-in-law when a drunk driver ran-into their car (where the sister and brother-in-law were). Now, it was possible for God to guide that couple (who were Christians, by the way) away from the accident location – perhaps delaying them a little bit, or making them slightly earlier so that they weren’t hit by the drunk driver. God could’ve caused the drunk driver to run off the road earlier. God could’ve saved the brother-in-law from death. There’s plenty of possibilities here. The only option that would’ve actually conflicted with free-will is if God literally prevented the drunk driver from making the decision to drive his car in the first place.
Further, there’s thought experiments that show how wishy-washy this double-explanation is. Assume a mudslide crushes a village (natural evil), Kreeft would declare that God allowed it to happen for some constructive long-term good. But, if it’s later revealed that a group of evil men deliberately triggered the mudslide, it suddenly get redefined as “God allowed it to happen to preserve free will” and the “constructiveness” of the event is thrown out the window? It just goes to show how quickly these types of explanations can be dropped into place and retracted.
So neither position is a very good position.
Further, if suffering exists for constructive purposes, then why was the “Garden of Eden” supposed to be a world without suffering and death? Are we supposed to believe that God planned for the Garden of Eden to be a place where no character-building could take place? Is heaven a place where evil and suffering is added so that people can build some character?
“Suppose we didn’t have any suffering at all,” he added. “Suppose we had drugs for every pain, free entertainment, free love — everything but pain. No Shakespeare, no Beethoven, no Boston Red Sox, no death — no meaning. Impossibly spoiled little brats — that’s what we’d become.”
And, apparently, that’s what God’s plan was when he created the Garden of Eden. Actually, what Kreeft is doing here is creating a false dichotomy. He says that either the world has all the pain and suffering of our world, or it’s completely devoid of any suffering. As I stated earlier, I understand the usefulness of some pain and suffering. Kreeft never considers the possibility of a world with less suffering. When I look around, I see a mixture of constructive and non-constructive suffering. Why isn’t there less non-constructive suffering?
“If you don’t [believe that], then pretend you’re God and try to create a better world in your imagination. Try to create a utopia. But you have to think through the consequences of everything you try to improve. Every time you use force to prevent evil, you take away freedom. To prevent all evil, you must remove all freedom and reduce people to puppets, which means they would then lack the ability to freely choose to love.” (p.58)
So, if you created a world just like this one, but removed, say, smallpox, then you would diminish human freedom? If you were God and you caused Hitler to have a fatal blood-clot in 1939, you’d diminish human freedom? How ridiculous. I agree that it would be impossible to remove all suffering in a world with human freedom, but you could have a radically better world without diminishing free-will at all. Further, if you were to ask most Christians “is there evil in heaven?”, they would immediately say, “no!” But, according to Kreeft’s argument, it’s impossible to have a world with no evil unless you take away free will. So, apparently, heaven will either have evil and free will, or no evil and no free-will.
Clue by clue, Kreeft was shedding more and more light on the mystery of suffering. But each new insight seemed to spawn more questions.
“Evil people get away with hurting others all the time. Certainly God can’t consider that fair,” I said. “How can he stand there and watch that happen? Why doesn’t he intervene and deal with all the evil in the world?”
“People aren’t getting away with it,” Kreeft insisted. “Justice delayed is not necessarily justice denied. There will come a day when God will settle accounts and people will be help responsible for the evil they’ve perpetrated and the suffering they’ve caused. Criticizing God for not doing it right now is like reading half a novel and criticizing the author for not resolving the plot. (p.58)
So, Kreeft is saying that they’ll all get punished in the afterlife. As a non-believer, I don’t believe that to be true, although Christians reading this book would consider it to be. One of the problems with the “they’ll get punished in the afterlife” argument is that it delays things so long while suffering continues to occur. It’s a bit like God standing there quietly writing down a list of everyone’s sins, without punishing them – not yet anyway. Then, in the afterlife, giving them a massive, eternity-long ass-whooping. Imagine if you did that to your pet: every time your dog pooped in the living room you didn’t punish him, but instead wrote down the infraction; every time your dog bit someone, you stood there quietly and wrote down the event without punishing him. Your dog has become an intolerable little creature because you never punish him. Then, when your dog is old, you bring out that little book and punish him for everything he has done wrong in the last decade. You yell at him and spank him for several weeks or months in a row. That’s what Kreeft’s argument is. So, human beings become mean and evil because they were never punished (like your dog), and now God is going to do an eternity-long ass-whopping that is supposed to make everything better.
“But in the meantime, doesn’t the sheer amount of suffering in the world bother you?” I asked. “Couldn’t God curtail at least some of the more horrific evil”
…
Kreeft was sympathetic to the problem, but wasn’t buying that solution. “That’s like saying it’s reasonable to believe in God if six Jews die in a Holocaust, but not seven. Or sixty thousand but not sixty thousand and one, or 5,999,999, but not six million,” he said. “When you translate the general statement ‘so much’ into particular examples like that, it shows how absurd it is. There can’t be a dividing line.“It’s true that there are some instances where quantity does become quality. For example, boiling water: once a temperature of 212 degrees is reached, you get a new state – gas – and gas laws rather than liquid laws apply. But suffering isn’t like that. At what point does suffering disprove the existence of God?”(p.59)
Kreeft is right in saying that you can’t put defined cutoff points on those numbers, but his argument seems to be an intellectual diversion to obscure the fact that the problem still exists. His argument’s setup is to say that “it’s reasonable to believe in God if X people die, but not if X+1 people die”. He also uses the weasel word “prove”, which is a definite rhetorical setup. No one would claim that there is a defined yes/no cutoff that hinges on a single additional death. Let’s take the 2003 Iraq war as an example: imagine we step back in time to 2002 and ask the question, “Do you agree that it’s a good idea to go to war with Iraq?” Now, Americans are generally happier if fewer Iraqis and American soldiers die in that war. They are more likely to support it if it involves fewer deaths, and more likely to oppose it if there are larger numbers of deaths. There is no definite cutoff point where we can say “it’s a good idea to go to war if X people die, but not if X+1 people die”. Most Americans would be happy with the outcome if zero people died in that war. However, if 10 million people died in that war, the vast majority of Americans would oppose the war. That doesn’t mean there’s a definite point where “support the war” is reasonable when there are X deaths, but unreasonable if there are X+1 deaths. It’s philosophical slight of hand that Kreeft employs here. His argument (if true) would support the bizarre assertion that 1 death is no different than 100 million deaths.
“One purpose of suffering in history has been that it leads to repentance,” he said. “Only after suffering, only after disaster, did Old Testament Israel, do nations, do individual people turn back to God … And, of course, repentance leads to something wonderful — to blessedness, since God is the source of all joy and all life.” (p.60)
The “suffering leads to repentance” game is so overplayed. When the tsunami hit Southeast Asia in 2004, Muslim clerics argued that it was because the people there needed to be more devout, that God was punishing them and they needed to turn to Allah. It’s used by all kinds of religious leaders to promote their own particular brand of religion. Further, I’ve known good Christian people who have died from random things. One guy I went to college with was working with inner-city kids when he got pancreatic cancer and died at in his mid-twenties – leaving behind a widow. I fail to see how he would’ve been more in need of repentance than the average man on the street. Further, the fact that he died means that he didn’t really have much chance to reap the benefits of that so-called constructive suffering. The fact of the matter is that all kinds of people all over the world suffer. To say that suffering is to bring repentance – well, repentance to whom? The majority of people don’t believe in the Christian God. Assuming they repent, they will be repenting to false gods.
“But good people suffer just as much — or sometimes more — than the bad,” I pointed out. “That’s what’s so striking about the title of Kushner’s book: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. How is that fair?”
“Well, the answer to that is that there are no good people, Kreeft replied. (p.60)
(Roll eyes) The “there are no good people” argument is always a cop-out. It’s basically a “you suck and you deserve everything bad that happens to you” argument, and it conveniently ignores the “God’s love” part of Christianity. Funny, I don’t know why Kreeft didn’t start out with that argument in the beginning and be done with it. There’s simply no reason to talk about constructive suffering if everyone deserves to suffer.
It seems like Kreeft has just started taking pot-shots at the problem of evil. He’s throwing out arguments left and right, hoping that the reader will accept at least a few of them, even if they dismiss the majority of them.
[Mother] Teresa said, ‘In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth, a life full of the most atrocious tortures on earth, will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel’ (p.65)
Kreeft is trying to minimize the importance or significance of anything that happens in life – because eternity is so much bigger. I don’t really see that as an answer. Even ignoring the fact that I don’t believe there will be a heaven (and, coincidentally, the diary of Mother Teresa revealed years after Strobel’s book was published that she had deep doubts herself), I think it’s wrong to try to diminish and minimize our experiences. That African woman pointed out by Templeton? Bah, her life was but a blink of an eye – that seems to be Kreeft’s argument here.
In fact, it’s significant that most objections to the existence of God from the problem of suffering come from outside observers who are quite comfortable, whereas those who actually suffer are, as often as not, made into stronger believers by their suffering. (p.67)
Kreeft seems to be looking for a way to dismiss most people’s opinions regarding the problem of evil. I happen to think there are psychological reasons people cling to religion in times of uncertainty and suffering. What they aren’t doing is thinking about the situation from the standpoint of rationality. Besides, that argument conflict with a sentiment stated eight pages earlier, on page 59:
“I suppose a person could say, ‘If I’m having the pain, then that’s too much suffering in the world!'”
So: if you’re comfortable, then your ideas about “too much suffering in the world” are discredited, and if you are suffering then your ideas about “too much suffering in the world” are discredited.
Kreeft goes into a section about how God suffers with us – how Jesus suffered and died, and how God is “with us” during our suffering:
[H]ow could you not love this being who went the extra mile, who practiced more than he preached, who entered into our world, who suffered our pains, who offers himself to us in the midst of our sorrows? What more could he do? (p.63)
What more could he do? Is he joking? Did he completely miss the obvious answer: stop the suffering? This goes on for several pages, but it’s not really an answer. He goes on:
If your friend is sick and dying, the most important thing he wants is not an explanation; he wants you to sit with him. He’s terrified of being alone more than anything else. So God has not left us alone. (p.71-72)
It’s essentially saying that the parent who has a sick child just wants the doctor to hang around and comfort them. No, actually, the parents don’t want that. They want the doctor to do something. A suffering person accepts companionship because it’s the best thing that can be done. We can’t heal their cancer. We can’t bring their child back from the grave. They know we can’t do that. God can, so the whole comparison breaks down. Further, remember when Kreeft attacked Kushner’s God of limited-power:
Frankly, that God is hardly worth believing in. Do I have a big brother who’s doing what he can but it’s not very much? Well, who cares?” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Practically speaking, that’s the same as atheism. Rely on yourself first and then maybe God, maybe not.”
Now, Kreeft has come around and said that God doesn’t need to do things that require him to be all powerful. According to Kreeft: God suffers with us, and is there next to us. Isn’t that pretty much the God that Kushner believes in, the one that Kreeft dismissed as being too wimpy to believe in? Now, Kreeft suddenly thinks that hanging out and not using his power is the most important thing God can do.
Now, at the end of the chapter, we find out that a man named Marc sat through this interview Strobel had with Kreeft:
“What Kreeft said — it’s true. I know it. I’ve lived it.”
Several years earlier, Marc had been shoveling snow on his driveway when his wife said she was going to move the car and asked him to watch their young daughter. As the car backed out, they were suddenly thrust into the worst nightmare that parents can imagine: their toddler was crushed beneath the wheel.
Like the African woman, Marc has known what it’s like to hold a dying child in his arms. While I wasn’t able to talk with that grieving mother, I could converse with him.
So deep was Marc’s initial despair that he had to ask God to help him breathe, to help him eat, to help him function at the most fundamental level. Otherwise, he was paralyzed by the emotional pain. But he increasingly felt God’s presence, his grace, his warmth, his comfort, and very slowly, over time, his wounds began to heal.
Having experienced God at his point of greatest need, Marc would emerge from this crucible a changed person, abandoning his career in business to attend seminary. Through his suffering — though he never would have chosen it, though it was horribly painful, though it was life-shattering at the time — Marc has been transformed into someone who would devote the rest of his life to bringing God’s compassion to others who are alone in their desperation.
…
Sometimes skeptics scoff at the Bible saying that God can cause good to emerge from our pain if we run towards him instead of away from him.” Marc said. “But I’ve watched it happen in my own life.” (p.72-73)
Actually, skeptics would not scoff at the idea of good things emerging from suffering. While I feel bad for Marc, I don’t think his story offers anything to confirm the existence of God. I think that people in horrible situations have a variety of psychological pressures going on in their heads – particularly in Marc’s case when he could very legitimately hold himself accountable for his daughter’s death. Some people may rely on “God” or religion to get through their pain. That’s essentially the appeal of religious belief – to provide comfort. This is the reason some religious and cult groups target victims of tragedy – for example, when Scientologists sent “grief counselors” to New York after 9/11. They know grieving people are easily drawn in to the soothing words of religion. The other force is the desire for explanation, for understanding of the situation under the assumption that a benevolent deity exists. The answers aren’t forthcoming, and people who choose a rational explanation over their desire for emotional comfort end up being atheists and agnostics. People who chose emotional comfort first end up becoming “strong in their faith”. People who are suffering are also most likely to value emotional comfort over rational explanations, so I’m not surprised so many of them cling to religion. In Marc’s case, he needs for something good to come out of this tragedy. The only other option for Marc is that his daughter’s death is an unmitigated tragedy, and he is responsible — something that is far to painful to even contemplate. As far as the question of God’s existence, I can’t help but read Marc’s story and think that a benevolent God would chose the least harmful way to get Marc into the ministry (assuming that was His purpose). I couldn’t help but think, “Gee, getting Marc into the seminary only cost him the death of his daughter. Isn’t there a way to accomplish that goal without ending someone’s life?”
In the end, I’m not impressed with Strobel’s answers. He argues that God permits suffering because of the greater good it brings to people. Even further, since the earth has famines, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, malaria, smallpox, and so on – and all of those things are directly part of “God’s creation”, then God not only permits suffering, but designed a planet to produce it. All of this means that scientists who work to find cures for disease must be working against God’s plan? Are they doing the devil’s work?
The pattern of suffering seems pretty random to me, and seems to indicate that God either doesn’t exist or doesn’t care. Humans didn’t know even basic things for a long time: like how washing one’s hands could reduce the transfer of disease in medieval hospitals. Was God looking down shaking his head at the millions of people who died in medieval hospitals because doctors continually transfered diseases between patients? Couldn’t he have said something, like tell someone? That wouldn’t even require that he use his divine powers, it only requires that he open his mouth.
And what about genetic disorders, like Huntington’s disease, which causes people to progressively lose brain functions over years, beginning in their 40s if they’re are unlucky enough to inherit a particular allele from one of their parents. Meanwhile, by that time, you’ve already given birth to your children and passed on the gene to 50% of them. A ticking timebomb in their cells which won’t be discovered until after they have children. Why would God allow entire family lineages to suffer from such a horrible disease?
But, if God allows it to exist, then it must exist for a purpose. And if it exists for a divine purpose, then woe to anyone who eliminates this terrible disease.
Next: The non-believers review of “The Case for Faith”, Objection #2 >
Great continuation. I’m enjoying the read.
Nice write-up. I’m enjoying this a lot.
One thing though – this:
The whole Biblical story of Lucifer and the angels rebelling against God and a war in heaven seems bizarre is you assume God is all-powerful.
is wrong. The rebel angels/Lucifer story is non-biblical – it’s a medieval bit of folklore pulled from a misreading of two different verses in the Bible (one in Isaiah and one in Ezekiel) and then extrapolated on by medieval Christians until Milton made it really popular with Paradise Lost. But the rebellion of the angels and the fall of Lucifer don’t show up in the Bible.
Also, you say:
How Christians turned him into an omnimax God, I simply don’t know.
If this isn’t just a rhetorical construct and you’re actually interested in how God turned from the really powerful Middle Eastern tribal god of the Old Testament into the uber-God of Christianity, I’d suggest reading some of the books by Bart Ehrman. He’s a professor of religious studies at UNC and a former fundamentalist Christian turned agnostic. His books are actually good sources for the textual history of the Christian Bible, as well as for discussions of how Christianity grew out of previous religious and philosophical movements (and they’re written for a popular audience so they’re a breeze to read).
I think the specific book for this case was “Lost Christianities”, though I’m not entirely sure. Regardless, the basic idea is that during the time of the Christian movement, Jewish theology had been influenced by other movements in Greek philosophy at the time. The Greeks were coming to the conclusion that their gods weren’t worth worshipping, and that the ideal god worthy of worship would be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnicompassionate. Judaism was affected by this, as was the burgeoning religion of Christianity, and so by the time of the New Testament the God of the Bible had become a fusion of the Hebrew tribal god of the Old Testament and the ideal god outlined by the Greeks – good stuff. But a lot of contradictions end up left in place – like the whole book of Genesis, good portions of Exodus, most of Kings – that make God look not all-powerful and omnicompassionate, but just like any other petty tribal god.
(I could be wrong about the book that had this information in it – I’ve read a number of them by Ehrman and others about the history of the Bible and the God of the Bible over the years and they tend to say similar stuff about the infusion of Greek thought into the Judaic tradition, but I think it was Lost Christianities had this discussion in it.)
Thanks for the info, NonyNony. I do remember that there were some verses that involved 1/3rd of the stars falling from the sky in Isiah or Ezekiel, and being told that the verses were supposed to be interpreted as the fallen angels who rebelled:
“How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations! “But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. ‘I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’” (Isaiah 14:12-14).
It looks like most of the clear verses don’t appear until the New Testament. Example:
“For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment” (2 Pet. 2:4).
“And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him” (Rev. 12:9).
http://www.carm.org/questions/angels.htm
[…] 3, 2007 by tinyfrog And just a few days after I reviewed Lee Strobel’s apologist arguments for why suffering exists, I (coincidentally) get an email forward from my family. This is the same […]
KREEFT
‘“But the fact that God deliberately allows certain things, which if we allowed them would turn us into monsters, doesn’t necessarily count against God.”’
CARR
God passes by on the other side, but hypocritically Jesus rails against people who pass by on the other side.
It is the hypocrisy of Christians which is their worst fault.
STROBEL
Marc has been transformed into someone who would devote the rest of his life to bringing God’s compassion to others who are alone in their desperation
CARR
Gosh. I think I’ll run Strobel’s wife over now.
It would turn Strobel into a better person, and he will thank me for it. It’s what God would want.
I wouldn’t want a reward. The joy of knowing that I have made Lee a better, kinder person will be reward itself.
God doesn’t mind how many African children die of malaria, as he knows Lee Strobel is a better person after each and every death of a child, as Strobel has shown that little bit more compassion.
And in the end, that’s what really counts.
Really.Do you even care about how many African children die of malaria!
It just doesn’t make sense for a creator to be all-knowing, all-powerful, and good, given the amount of suffering in the world. He had to know exactly what would happen when humanity was created. Yet he did it anyway. He thought the system up, planned it out, and implemented it to the last detail, all the while knowing exactly what was going to happen: lots of terrible, pointless suffering. Isn’t this comparable to (but much, much worse than) a parent giving a toddler a gun without any safety instructions?
The argument that we need the suffering to improve morally holds absolutely no water. A benevolent creator could have made us in such a way that we would need very little suffering in order to improve ourselves to any extent needed or wanted. One needle prick, and we’re all Ghandis. A creator could have created a universe like this, but obviously chose not to.
Conclusion: either there is no creator, or the creator is evil.
Of course, there are always the myriad other possibilities: 1) the creator is powerful, but not all-powerful; 2) there is/was a number of creators, with conflicting agendas; 3) the gods have a vile sense of humor; etc. There is no reason to consider one of these creator-scenarios as more likely than any of the others, and clearly no reason to favor the Christian god.
“His argument (if true) would support the bizarre assertion that 1 death is no different than 100 million deaths.”
“One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.”
– Joseph Stalin.
Mr. Kreeft can sit there and ramble about the Holocaust as much as he wants, but I doubt he really comprehends what happened in those camps. Humans have, I think as a psychological defense mechanism, a tendency to dampen empathy as the numbers climb. Which makes sense. Think on Mr. Marc’s grief. Think of that body crushing sorrow. Now multiply that by two. Already we have a good case for suicide. Now multiple it again by six million. The thing is, is that if we felt that kind of raw empathetic grief for every Holocaust victim, it would destroy us, utterly. I have a very good feeling that if our dear Mr. Keeft had to feel the totality of the horror of the Holocaust as not the death of twelve million (liberal estimate) strangers, but as twelve million individuals, it would destroy him utterly and completely, God or no god. By all of the gods that ever were, I have no definite connection with the people who died during those years, yet I’ve teared up before just thinking about it. So with this empathetic dampening its very easy for Keeft to talk about “constructive suffering” and that there are “no good people.”
He doesn’t really feel the pain of those suffering mothers in Africa or the victims of the Holocaust. Let him sit on his cross-shaped high horse and tell the nation of Israel that the unadulterated murder of their friends, their brothers, and their sisters was deserved and for the best. I’m sure if me and twenty of my buddies lined him, his immediate family, and a few of his neighbors up and one by one shot them in the back of the head executioner’s style, striking his entire life from existence because of the shape of his nose, he wouldn’t be so glib. If he honestly believes the vile filth he lets dribble from his mouth, then maybe he deserves no better. If the man honestly believes that the Holocaust, as his logic suggests, was a good thing perpetrated by God, then his is truly a monster, no better than the Nazis he makes light of.
And as to his argument about the silliness of a definite cut off point? I think its personally very reasonable. The Holocaust would have been tolerable if not a single man, child, or woman died, and it becomes a tragedy if, as Joseph Stalin said, only a single one dies.
I’m a mother of a 19 month old little girl. When I saw this film (haven’t read the book yet – perhaps don’t mind me if I don’t) and got to the last 10 minutes where Marc began telling his story of his daughter’s death, my stomach fell. I thought, “Oh shit, here we go…”
Overcoming the fear that if I’m not a good, God-fearing Christian then if and when anyone I love dies, I’ll never get to see them again, was the biggest challenge I faced as I began to accept that I didn’t believe in God. With a child, for whom I feel more love than I ever would have thought possible, this fear has been at times almost paralyzing. Now to see again how Christians love to play on this fear and use it to throw their religion in other people’s faces makes me all the happier to be rid of it.
And yet… for all that I am glad to be free and very comfortable in my life with the choices I have made, that fear lingers and they know it. I suppose this is just one of those things I will have to deal with every now and then so long as I live in this country and am surrounded by holier-than-thou’s. Finding this website of yours, however, has put one more voice of reason in my ear. Thanks.
debg,
You know, though, religion isn’t always very comforting, either. I was raised in a fundamentalist family, and was taught that Christians go to heaven while non-Christians go to hell. I worried myself sick over the possibility that I was wrong in my beliefs and that I would be the one to end up in hell, suffering for all eternity because I said the wrong prayer or had even a slight spiritual misstep somewhere along the way. Even now, out of that lifestyle, my biggest worry is that I am wrong now in my atheism, and that my atheism will set my own daughter on a path to hell. For the first year out, I was worried about myself, too, being wrong and going to hell because I didn’t believe it anymore. I quite literally worried myself sick and refused to admit I didn’t believe in God anymore.
So it is all in your perspective, I guess. Losing a child is terrible, awful. I don’t know why anyone WOULDN’T want to believe in heaven under those circumstances!
>>>>>The answers aren’t forthcoming, and people who choose a rational explanation over their desire for emotional comfort end up being atheists and agnostics. People who chose emotional comfort first end up becoming “strong in their faith”. <<<<<
I do not agree with this, statement, which I believe is made from a Western “Christianity or atheism are your only choices” point of view. Judaism offers a truly intelligent and rational religious alternative, where people are encouraged to ask questions, study facts and are free to disagree regarding interpretation.
Evil exists because God wants it to. He stated , “I set before you life and death, good and evil”, and “I create both evil and good”. We rely upon both an evil/strong side of our being and a good/benevolent side which work together. Evil exists when we allow the “evil side” (yetzer Ra) to wander out of its useful sphere.
Natural phenomenon cannot be considered either good or evil. It is simply natural phenomenon. Man makes his own decisions as to his views of good and evil. On what basis is killing a person evil if you do not believe in a moral code? Why do you think a small pox epidemic is “evil” or “bad”, if you have nothing for which to measure but your own feelings about it? Atheists base their judgments on feelings just as much as religious people do.Even to an athiest, killing a child is wrong because it “seems” wrong. The question is, why does it seem wrong to you, since good and bad cannot be objectively arrived at with the intellect alone?
And why is it that there seems to be a “natural law” that is programmed into the human mind (there are exceptions in the case of extensive exposure to custom)? The fact that atheists have consistent morals are proof of the existence of the yezter tov (good side) and of the existence of God. The fact that atheists make mistakes and knowingly and willfully do things they regret is proof of the yetzer ra, and of God, as well.
Anyway, I feel I can be rational and intelligent and still believe in and obey God. The Jewish answers are just as good as the Atheist ones, IMO. I see no intellectual high ground in agnosticism or atheism over Judaism.
🙂
I would also add, do not take your brain out of one ditch (blind faith Christianity) and throw it into another one (skepticism for the sake of skepticism). Atheism is just as much of a religion of “faith” as any other world religion.
Natural phenomenon cannot be considered either good or evil. It is simply natural phenomenon.
It is good or bad as soon as it interacts with conscious beings. An intelligent creator chose to create things that would harm human beings. Would you put a rattlesnake in a crib with your child? Is that “simply natural phenomenon” or do you bear some responsibility for your choice of putting that snake in the crib? Isn’t God the one putting disease and predators on earth?
The question is, why does it seem wrong to you, since good and bad cannot be objectively arrived at with the intellect alone?
Morality is a system for interacting with other human beings. It was designed to be “fair” to all sides, so that there would not be a need for the other party to explicitly agree to it in order to hold them to it.
And why is it that there seems to be a “natural law” that is programmed into the human mind (there are exceptions in the case of extensive exposure to custom)?
I think there are plenty of possible reasons morality exists in humans. It could be everything from the fact that we internalized the teachings of our parents (and those parents wanted us to behave well towards them and other people), or cultural reasons, or the fact that living morally is simply a good way to navigate life. Human beings tend to punish people who hurt them, so if you can avoid punishments, you can live a better life. The alternative makes you untrustworthy, lowers your social status, makes people not want to interact with you, do business with you, or help you. Humans are animals of reciprocity. Once you sit down and think about the full implications of reciprocity, you realize that morality is a good rule of thumb to live by. I could go on with other possibilities.
You also state that, in the case of morality, “there are exceptions in the case of extensive exposure to custom”, but I don’t know why you can’t turn it around and say culture gives us morality in the first place.
The fact that atheists have consistent morals are proof of the existence of the yezter tov (good side) and of the existence of God.
For reasons I outlined above, I doubt that’s the only possible conclusion. Also, if God gave me my morality, then why am I offended by the morality displayed by God in the Old Testament? In the Old Testament, God kills all the first-born of Egypt (even the slave children). God commands genocide of the Canaanites. (Would you want to be an Israeli solder who has to murder infants and toddlers with a club or sword? That’s exactly what God commanded.) He permits slavery. He even kills King David’s son as an act of punishment against David. Isn’t there something wrong with killing children to punish their fathers? There are plenty of other examples I could take from the Old Testament. My conclusion from this is that even if I accepted your premise that morality can only come from God, it would lead me to the conclusion that the God described in the Old Testament is different than the God who actually exists – hence, Judaism is wrong.
You should not be outraged by anything if you are a true atheist, frog. YOu would realize that one person’s morality, even God’s, has as much correctness as your does, since moraility is not objective, but subjective. Morality is only objective if it was given by a greater source for all people equally. I myself, your next door neighbor, the thug in jail and yes, even God, are entitled to an opinion and morality that is as valuable as yours. You simply pass judgment against the God of the Tanakh out of subjective criteria that you impose on others, saying that because of your opinion, God does not have a right to be God. The finite passing judgment on the infinite. Hmmm… INteresting concept. It appears you seem to have a bit of Christianity in your soul. At least the same judgmentalism.
You blame God for putting dangerous animals on earth, believing it to be evil to do such a thing. Interesting. BUt then again, are you ignoring the natural system and the food chain? People can keep their babies safe from snakes if they make it a priority, frog. Even if you disagree with the methods and decisions of the infinite God, you are still doing so with the belief that there is a morality that transcends animal instinct. Humans are the only thing on earth, whose intellect exceeds its instinct. If one looks at the story of Moses and Pharoah, there is no doubt that Pharoah was given every chance and brought disaster upon his people.
If you are a true atheist, then you would believe that people are mere animals and are worth nothing in the big picture. But you seem to be imposing higher ideals to humanity than atheism should be imposing. Humanity is only valuable if there is a greater purpose, source or existence. Value must be placed by somebody who controls a thing, otherwise there is no value.
If we are only animals brought about by mere chance, then certainly the life of a first-born Egyptian means nothing to you, no more than the life of a spider or an ameoba. If it means something, then it is an admission by you that we are more than meets the eye, and that there is a greater purpose and calling on the human than the animal.
I know I am several months behind here chiming in but, I’m here now and I’ve nothing better to do at the moment. 🙂
From Fred:
— If we are only animals brought about by mere chance, then certainly the life of a first-born Egyptian means nothing to you, no more than the life of a spider or an ameoba. If it means something, then it is an admission by you that we are more than meets the eye, and that there is a greater purpose and calling on the human than the animal.
How is a human having greater regard for the life of another human over a spider or amoeba proof that life didn’t arise by chance or that humans have some greater “purpose and calling” than any of the other life in existence?
If spiders were conscious to the same extent that we (the human race) consider ourselves conscious, then a spider would probably have more regard for the lives of other spiders than for humans. Not because the spider is making some admission that it has a “greater purpose and calling,” but because it is a fucking spider, and as such, is biased in favor of other spiders.
Furthermore, life arising by pure chance makes life, all life, even more amazing and precious. It screams to us “Experience and enjoy everything you can, because just as it came by chance, it can be wiped out by chance. So don’t squander it!” And every time I remind myself of that, it makes me feel incredibly lucky to exist in this reality, share it with other living creatures and explore it.
Assigning it to an omnipotent god, however, is not miraculous or amazing, instead, it’s rather typical for such a being.
It is frustrating when people act as though there HAS to be some meaning or purpose to life. Does there really HAVE to be a meaning and purpose, or is it just that you WANT there to be one? I’m pretty sure there doesn’t HAVE to be anything at all.
If you ask a million different people what the meaning of life is, you will probably receive a million different answers. And that is the point.
Fred,
At first I was “outraged” by your insensitive and ignorant assumption that atheists hold no value for human life. Then I remembered your wise, wise words that as a true atheist I should never be outraged and you know you’re right! All I had to do was consider the source and POOF! Outrage gone!! Thanks;-)
BTW, I would suggest meeting a real life atheist and talking to him/her before assuming to know how we all think and feel. Perhaps you know what it feels like to be typecast?
You should not be outraged by anything if you are a true atheist, frog. YOu would realize that one person’s morality, even God’s, has as much correctness as your does, since moraility is not objective, but subjective.
Well, you’re wrong. And, you should be happy you’re wrong – because otherwise, I would be living an immoral life.
Morality is only objective if it was given by a greater source for all people equally.
If morality is merely what God says it is, then morality is arbitrary – based on the desires and ideas of whatever God created things. It actually becomes meaningless to call God good if good is merely “what God says it is”.
You simply pass judgment against the God of the Tanakh out of subjective criteria that you impose on others, saying that because of your opinion, God does not have a right to be God.
You could make that statement about any deity of any religion. I think Islamic laws are unfair and wrong? I am passing judgment on Allah. I think Hindu laws are unfair and wrong? I am passing judgment on Brahma. I think the Volcano God is unfair and wrong? I am passing judgment on the Volcano god. Now, you just shut-down any criticism of the actions of any god of any religion – because doing otherwise would somehow be ‘taking away God’s right to be God’.
The finite passing judgment on the infinite.
Religions can’t escape criticism simply be defining their god as “infinite”. Heck, I could create my own version of God whom I define as “infinite”. Then, I say that God is telling me to steal from you. Any criticism you throw at my God is automatically becomes “The finite passing judgment on the infinite”. You must be very, very arrogant if you think you can pass judgment on my “infinite” God and his ways.
You blame God for putting dangerous animals on earth, believing it to be evil to do such a thing. Interesting. BUt then again, are you ignoring the natural system and the food chain?
If God created the world, then the food chain is whatever God made it to be. According to some interpretations of Genesis, all the animals on earth were created to be vegetarian. Why wouldn’t that work? (And, no, the idea that life was created as vegetarian flies in the face of evidence – too many animals are too well-suited to be predators.) Further: Malaria, Smallpox, mosquitoes, tapeworms, etc – all of these things have nothing to do with the food chain.
If one looks at the story of Moses and Pharoah, there is no doubt that Pharoah was given every chance and brought disaster upon his people.
There are two problems with that:
First, whether Pharoah did the wrong thing is different than the question of whether killing the firstborn of Egypt is right. If George Washington did something wrong, would it be okay for God to kill the firstborn of all Americans alive at the time – including killing the firstborn of the African slaves living in America who had absolutely no control over the actions of George Washington?
Second, the book of Genesis says that God hardened the heart of the Pharoah – on several occasions. This means God forced the Pharoah to do the wrong thing.
“But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said to Moses.”
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?version=31&search=Exodus+9-12
Maybe these two situations make sense to you, but, to me, they smack of stone-age morality and made-up fiction.
If you are a true atheist, then you would believe that people are mere animals and are worth nothing in the big picture.
No, I believe that human beings are conscious, intelligent beings. There are certain moral requirements that come into place when dealing with conscious beings.
But you seem to be imposing higher ideals to humanity than atheism should be imposing. Humanity is only valuable if there is a greater purpose, source or existence. Value must be placed by somebody who controls a thing, otherwise there is no value.
No, value is derived from the fact that humans are conscious and aware beings.
This is the same reason that I think animals should not be tortured – they might not be so intelligent, but they are conscious. A pet’s value isn’t derived simply from the value their owner places on them. And a pet owner can’t torture their pet. (On the other hand, if you’re right that “value must be placed by somebody who controls a thing, otherwise there is no value”, then, logically, there is nothing wrong with a pet owner torturing their pet.)
Again, I only recently found Tiny Frog’s site and love it. Thank you for the somewhat rational debate as opposed to the typically, “no I’m not, you are!” type discussions found elsewhere.
I consider myself an Agnostic Pantheist – that is, the acceptance of all / any god(s) (pantheist) without knowledge (agnostic). I do consider myself deeply seated in the science and logic camp and what I admire about that camp, is that any TRUE scientist will be the first to say, “We don’t know!”.
I experience a “miracle” every time I truly look at the world, look out into space, look into the faces of my beautiful children. I’m not about to say that it is IMPOSSIBLE that a god made everything but SO WHAT if he / she / it did? If there is an “omnimax” entity out there, the human mind is simply not able to conceive of such an entity. To say god is “good” or “just” or “expects this to that” is simply ludicrous. The discussion of any “god” to me is a fun academic experience at best. It’s when these gods become an organized religion that entire populations are wiped out, or are considered “evil” that I take exception. If you tell me the Bible is a “literal, inerrant work”, then we need to sit down and discuss the numerous obvious fallacies with that statement. If it is a “metaphorical” work, then fine. Metaphors speak to each individual differently.
To address one other point which I’m sure many will take offensively; the statement:
“If you are a true atheist, then you would believe that people are mere animals and are worth nothing in the big picture.”
What is wrong with being “mere” animals. I say in the BIG picture, human life is meaningless! I’m not afraid to take that stand. My life is NOT meaningless to me… I want to raise my beautiful children whom I would willingly die for in an instant so that they can experience the miracle of life as I have. A great philosopher once wrote “In a hundred years it all won’t matter” (from the book of Parrot(t)head dom headed by the great Jimmy Buffett :-)!). Taken to an extreme, weather there is a Big Bang / Big Crunch or Big Bang / Big Freeze or any of the other “End of Time” events, When it’s over, it’s over. Why does there HAVE to be a reason?!? The “Worth” of being human is to ENJOY the time you have with your loved ones. We were blessed (pun intended) with self-awareness to ask these wonderful questions and to enjoy flexing our mental skills. I assert again, there is a difference between faith and BLIND faith. I have a LOT of faith in science. I personally have not retested the numerous hypothesis / theories that have been put forth in the scientific community and therefore have “faith” they are correct. Difference is, I CAN do the tests if I so choose. The many “facts” put forth by science have been tested over and over again and has stood up to the rigors of independent verification. The Beautiful thing is, is they can be proven wrong at any time. And yes it is beautiful to be proven wrong because we can then more FORWARD and GROW. At one point, the vast majority of not ALL people thought the world was flat. A POPULAR belief, no matter how strongly held, does not make it a CORRECT belief!
It takes a LOT more soul searching and asking the hard questions then LISTENING to the answers to be an atheist. What self aware being wouldn’t WANT eternal life and love, peace, joy with their loved ones for all eternity? You can’t simply snap your fingers and believe, especially in light of the “evidence” or lack thereof! I appreciate the miracle that is life BECAUSE of my lack of an organized religious god.
I actually meant to write about 2-3 sentences :-)! The topic of religion is absolutely fascinating to me. I love the questions it raises and the discussions it brings forth as long as there is an open mind on both ends of the discussion.
“I plan to live forever… so far so good!”
First of all, I want to thank you for taking the time to write this. I find it a very interesting read, and I agree with pretty much everything.
So far one thing I found that I think you might want to elaborate on is this part:
“Further, if you were to ask most Christians “is there evil in heaven?”, they would immediately say, “no!” But, according to Kreeft’s argument, it’s impossible to have a world with no evil unless you take away free will. So, apparently, heaven will either have evil and free will, or no evil and no free-will.”
Presumably, if any soul is admitted into heaven, they wouldn’t willingly commit evil anyway. So that could potentially solve the problem of no evil in heaven with free will.
I just want to make sure there are no holes in your argument for christians to potentially exploit.