Problem of Evil (part 2)

Transcript Problem of Evil (Part 2)

Kevin Harris: Dr. Craig, we’ve been talking about quite a thorny problem – the problem of evil. If God exists, why is there so much evil in the world? We’ve defined the problem and talked about it and seen that many professional philosophers are really no longer arguing this as a strict disproof of God because God just may have a reason for evil.

Dr. Craig: That is right, Kevin. As long as it is even logically possible that God has morally adequate reasons for permitting the suffering in the world, then it follows that God and the suffering in the world are perfectly logically compatible with each other. So the real question is: does God, if he exists, have morally adequate reasons for permitting the suffering and evil in the world? And the atheist claims that he does not and that therefore the suffering and evil in the world are an argument against the existence of God.

Kevin Harris: Now, being that you can’t prove that God does not have perhaps a morally acceptable reason for permitting evil, some people would go from that point to saying, “Yeah, but it is improbable that God exists due to so much evil in the world.”

Dr. Craig: I think that is correct. The move that is typically made today is that given the suffering in the world, much of which appears to be pointless and unnecessary, that it is improbable that God could have morally adequate reasons for permitting it to occur.

Kevin Harris: They say evil makes more sense on a naturalistic worldview and that we would expect disease, we would expect things like this to happen in a natural world. We wouldn’t expect these things if this were a world that God created.

Dr. Craig: That’s right. And therefore atheism or naturalism is more probable than theism because the existence of pain and suffering would be more probable on a naturalistic worldview than on a theistic worldview.

Kevin Harris: Dr. Craig, give us some suggestions and some helpful hints on answering the problem of evil.

Dr. Craig: The atheist is making a couple of claims here which I think are enormously ambitious and difficult to prove. First of all, I don’t think that it is probable at all on the naturalistic atheistic worldview that the world would have a lot of pain and suffering in it. Now why do I say that? Because on a naturalistic worldview, it is utterly, utterly improbable that there would exist biological complex lifeforms capable of experiencing pain and suffering. In order to have pain and suffering there has to be a complex nervous system, a brain, some kind of sentient life. And yet as we saw, Kevin, when we talked about the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life, given atheism it is incomprehensibly improbable that sentient life would ever evolve or come to exist. So in a paradoxical sense, the very existence of pain and pleasure is evidence for the existence of God in the sense that in the absence of a divine designer there wouldn’t even be sentient life capable of experiencing pain and suffering. So on the one hand I dispute the atheist claim that pain and suffering is more probable on atheism. I think on atheism there would be no pain and suffering because there would be no sentient creatures.

On the other hand, is it improbable given theism or given God’s existence that there would be pain and suffering in the world? That depends on whether or not it is improbable that God would have morally adequate reasons for permitting the pain and suffering in the world. What I want to say here is that we are simply not in a position to make these kinds of probability judgments with any sort of confidence. We are limited in time and space, intelligence and insight. We have a very limited frame of reference in which we view the world. It may well be the case that God’s morally sufficient reasons for permitting some incident of evil or suffering to enter our lives may not emerge until centuries later in history, maybe in another country. According to the Bible God sees the end of history from the beginning and orders history so that his ends are achieved through the free decisions of human creatures. [1] It may well be the case that God’s purposes for human history will only be achieved by allowing a considerable amount of pain and suffering along the way. In particular, according to the Bible, God’s goal for human history is to bring as many people freely to a knowledge of himself and into the Kingdom of God as possible. And given that God doesn’t coerce people into believing in him into his Kingdom I think it is not at all improbable that only in a world suffused with pain and suffering would the maximum number of people freely come to believe in God and come to experience his salvation and come to know him personally. The atheist would have to show that there is a possible world that God could have created which has less suffering than this one but just as much knowledge of God and his salvation as the actual world, including not only the past and present but also the future. Well, that is completely beyond our ability to estimate. We are simply not in a position to make probability judgments of this enormity.

Kevin Harris: We couldn’t say, “If God allows 20% evil today, it would result in 60% . . .” I wouldn’t want to subject my calculator to that.

Dr. Craig: Absolutely not. And in other contexts, atheists recognize this. For example, there is a theory of ethics called utilitarianism, and according to utilitarianism you should act in such a way as to bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Well, the problem with utilitarianism that is universally recognized among ethicists and philosophers is that we are not in a position to make those kinds of judgments. We don’t know whether our actions will bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Some short term action that has great good might result in long term catastrophe whereas something in the short term looks like a disaster in the long term may turn out to be really a boon for mankind. So we simply aren’t in a position to make these kinds of probability judgments about whether or not God has a morally sufficient reason for allowing this or that to occur in our lives. Therefore, the atheist has shouldered a burden of proof here which he simply cannot bear.

Kevin Harris: Bill, you used a couple of words here – God permits evil, he allows or permits evil. That seems to contrast permitting evil with promoting evil.

Dr. Craig: Yes, I think that that is correct especially when it comes to human evil that we would call sin in theological terms – God does not will this, he does not promote it, but because of our free will he permits it. So he permits crime and war and oppression and so forth to occur because these are freely perpetrated by human beings even though they are against God’s will. But in his sovereignty and in his providence God in permitting these things does so only with a morally adequate reason for permitting these to occur knowing that ultimately his good purposes will be achieved even through the wicked and sinful decisions of creatures.

Kevin Harris: So this may be the way to ultimately destroy evil.

Dr. Craig: Yes, exactly. By allowing these things to happen, God will ultimately gain victory over evil, pain, and death. The supreme example of this, of course, is the crucifixion of Christ. Seen as an isolated event the crucifixion is a horrid event – a terrible evil perpetrated upon an utterly innocent man. And yet it is through this seeming tragedy that the redemption of the world is purchased and God brings good out of evil. God is in the business of doing that – of bringing good out of evil.

Kevin Harris: It seems to me that first of all this is very comforting that God is in control. Is there a technical name for this? Is this the Free Will Defense against the argument from evil?

Dr. Craig: This is part of what Alvin Plantinga has called the Free Will Defense. That given human freedom God cannot just guarantee that a world of free creatures will always do what he wants them to do but that they will freely perpetrate evils and suffering that God doesn’t absolutely will but permits knowing that ultimately he can bring good out of evil.

Kevin Harris: It is very humbling, and maybe we can take a humble approach when we address this problem when people ask us. We can give some reasons. We can give some answers. But there are several things where we can say I just don’t know. I don’t know why God would permit A but not permit B.

Dr. Craig: Of course. That is right. And we don’t have to know the actual reason why God permitted your son, for example, to die in an automobile accident. We don’t know why he permitted that. But what we can say is this: we have good reasons to believe in the existence of God, we have good arguments and evidence for God’s existence, and that given God’s goodness and omniscience we can trust him that he has morally sufficient reasons for permitting any incident of evil like this to enter into our lives. And thirdly the atheist has been utterly incapable of showing that it is impossible or improbable that God has morally adequate reasons for permitting these things to occur in our lives. Therefore, even though we may not see God’s reasons or purposes for permitting the suffering in our lives we can trust him as we go through it.  [2]