#834 Does God Have Morally Sufficient Reasons for Suffering?
May 07, 2023Hi Dr Craig. I’m currently being challenged by an atheist friend of mine, for whom I don’t have many answers.
What is it about having morally sufficient reasons that make it morally good for God to allow evil, temporarily withhold the antidote for evil, and do things that humans might call evil (i.e kill Cananites )? If I punched someone in the face and then later gave the victim a billion dollars, clearly my punching him in the face would still be wrong.
How can Christians firmly say that it was good for God to do things like kill whole people groups or withhold a cure for a disease.
Thank you for your help,
Van
United States
Dr. craig’s response
A
The problem with your analogy, Van, is that it offers morally insufficient reasons for inflicting suffering on someone. Therefore, it is not analogous to God’s having morally sufficient reasons for inflicting or allowing suffering. What your atheist friend has to show is that it is impossible or highly improbable that God has morally sufficient reasons for allowing the suffering in the world. It refutes nothing to offer an analogy of someone who inflicts suffering without a morally sufficient reason for doing so.
We can all think of examples in which someone inflicts or allows suffering for morally sufficient reasons. For example, your dentist inflicts pain on you to fill your cavities or a policeman kills a shooter in a grade school. So the question is, does God have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world? As I’ve argued in Hard Questions, Real Answers, the atheist who says that it is highly improbable that God does have morally sufficient reasons is making probability judgments that are way beyond our capacity to make with any confidence.
Obviously, if God’s reasons are morally sufficient, then His permission of suffering is compatible with His goodness (otherwise they would not be morally sufficient!). Now in the case of the Canaanite slaughter, I have argued that such an act on God’s part is quite consistent with His moral goodness (QoW ## 16, 225, 331). I have yet to find an objector who refutes my defense of the consistency of God’s goodness and action in this case.
- William Lane Craig