Is God Responsible for Evil? | Episode 1402 | Closer To Truth

It's the problem of evil. How on earth could God be reconciled with massive, monstrous Evil? If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, and if God is the creator, wouldn’t God be responsible for evil? Featuring interviews with Dean W. Zimmerman, Holmes Rolston III, Jesse Couenhoven, John Bishop, and Keith Ward.

Season 14, Episode 2 - #CloserToTruth

Closer To Truth host Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes viewers on an intriguing global journey into cutting-edge labs, magnificent libraries, hidden gardens, and revered sanctuaries in order to discover state-of-the-art ideas and make them real and relevant.

Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

#Theology #ProblemOfEvil

[jamespotts]

No matter how deeply I contemplate God's need for evil, and or the suffering of any humans, there is absolutely no justifying the way humans have been tortured, suffered and then died, in the most inhumane examples one can think of. Absolutely no redemptive quality what so Just plain man's inhumanity to man, as it always has been!!!

[oldpariah]

Ask a tortured child and her family whether music is "worth it".

[BarnegateBoys]

I seem to remember a verse stating that God created everything, nothing exists that God did not create. So, if evil exists then God created it. Religions can not exist without an enemy. To create a religion you need to create an enemy so that religion all of sudden has a purpose. God being an all knowing god knows everything and knew what would happen and created it anyway. When something bad happens we blame the devil. When something happens and we can't explain it we say God works in mysterious ways. Satan, was supposed to be God right hand man. God gave man free wil. Which I suspect that Satan didn't have free will. How could Satan choose to rebel and the third of all the Angel chose to follow Satan and rebel. No free will? Really? Remember, God created "everything", nothing can exist that God did not create. If evil exists then God created it

[TehNetherlands]

The answer is obvious: God is responsible by virtue of his omniscience and omnipotence. To deny his responsibility is to deny his omniscience.
If God is responsible for the creation of everything, then it follows that he is responsible for its consequences as foreseen through his omniscience.

There can be no exception, even for free will. If God were to deny himself omniscience with respect to people's future actions, then he would necessarily be in a state of increasing ignorance as the actions of people are going to chaotically impact the future state of the universe down to the quantum level.
In fact, the very moment the first conscious person of free will came into being, a bubble / rift in God's omniscience would become manifest, centered around that person, chaotically expanding outward at rougly the speed of light. God would necessarily be increasingly ignorant of future events.
If this is the type of experiment that God chooses to carry out, then it is somewhat analogous to putting rats in a cage with limited resources and numerous diseases and parasites, fully aware of the potential for evil that such a scenario presents. God essentially set the stage for evil.
Fortunately I do not believe in God.

[paulthomas]

If god is all powerful that he could with folded hands watch babies die of cancer, then evidently, he cannot be good.

[iggyburton]

If God created everything, then he must have created evil

[Oleg.G.]

Mr. Zimmerman, suffering is not a mathematical equality that can be reduced to zero by bringing all its positive and negative terms to the same side. And the idea that a child who is abused, tortured or murdered will find the experience valuable or redeeming in the "afterlife" and that this would somehow exculpate the supposed god persona from having allowed the evil act to happen in the first place is not a "pious hope." It is, rather, an epitome of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of a vapid mind, bent on selfishly defending an unsustainable premise at ANY cost, just because it FEELS comfortable. It doesn't take a genius to follow the breadcrumbs to an understanding that this kind of apologetics not only admits, but actually encourages and enables evil. It's no wonder that so many serial killers rotting away in jail seriously believe that Jesus loves them. The interviewer didn't go NEARLY hard enough on this intellectual and moral coward, and some of the others who came after...

[bradwhelan]

Epicurus sublimely exposed the fallacy of an omnibenevolent God, when he challenged its logical existence by saying; Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

[nobody]

There are two options, either god doesn't exist, or he exists but does not interfere with this world or care about it that much

[radhabhaav]

Yes God does all good and bad with us for his own fun.
Just like we can't eat delicacies without burning them and hurting them, we hurt them for our own fun n joy, we behave like this because we have the same tendencies which God has in him, because we are His part and parcel we also have same tendencies but very minute in quantity, but qualities are same as He has in Him

[EugeneKhutoryansky]

There are many other options, such as that God exists but is not infinitely powerful.

[sheenaalexis]

There absolutely needs to be an amazing afterlife to compensate for all this suffering for all creatures.

[mjss]

"Is God Responsible for Evil?"

Yes.


Lots of apologists in the video.


"what God wants and what God makes possible...."


Um...to believe in God means that you must accept the omniscience of God which means that He knows the outcome even before He acts. Therefore, God is either evil since He chose to create Lucifer and then when Lucifer and 1/3 of the Angels went against God He then cast them down to Earth. Of all the places in the universe, let's do Earth. Then, allow temptation to happen for the newly created beings which then leads to many millennia of pain and suffering followed by resurrection, judgement, and then the eternal and forever soul death of billions of people because they didn't accept God into their heart based on no physical evidence for billions of people but faith alone. If God did exist then we are talking about a tiny sliver of the entirety of all humans that ever existed that had first hand experience. Everyone else has to base belief on blind faith.


Great job. Everyone give God a standing ovation for implementing a plan with billions of casualties on top of the already millions or billions of angels lost along with Lucifer.


The other option is that there is another god higher than God and God is just following a script and is lacks omniscience and omnipotence.


Oh, I guess lastly he could be like the D&D alignment called Chaotic Neutral.


I have no fear of standing in front of God at my judgement and asking Him, 'What were you thinking?'.

[hzhz]

I really don't understand all this nonsense: if God is capable of creating an afterlife which compensates and even outweighs all evil in this life, then why isn't He capable of just skipping this life and create the circumstances as they exist in that afterlife?

Let alone the question, why would an omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, unchanging God even need to create anything at all? Isn't He enough as He is, just by Himself? Does He need a creation, which would make Him imperfect I guess?

[lauterunvollkommenheit]

In Christianity, afterlife can't be an answer to earthly suffering: many people go to hell, which involves eternal suffering, while animals don't have an afterlife at all.


To answer the question in the title of the video: "I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things" (Isaiah 45:7).

[matf]

The idea that children should suffer evil for some pius hope, is evil

[mockupguy]

I seriously don’t buy any of the “evil is necessary” arguments, at least none of the ones I have heard, except for the no evolution without struggle argument.

[Boulos-cbun]

God didn’t just create evil... God is evil beyond comprehension.

[davidbrawn]

What I don't understand is that they say we die because of sin. The wages of sin are death. So if Jesus died to take away are sins then why are we still dying.?

[DavidSmith-wpzb]

How can an all good God allow for slavery or genocide? I think that question must be answered by theologians before we can make any forward progress