Astrophysicist Asks TOUGH Question: Brilliant Answer!

A few years ago, Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked about God on CBS and he challenged the interviewer with one of the hardest questions for Christians to answer.

[the_if_then_fallacy]

God bless you young man. Keep going and never lose faith. Pray daily. Praise god

[areacode]

One of the big questions. Well said. Two things I learned over time. True freedom of choice for humanity gives the option for evil. There really is no way around it. Also our lives are about love. Deep compassion unbridled by self. To truly know and feel the deepest depths of love you have to have experienced pain.

[paulhouser]

This is the age old question of the problem of evil. It has been examined multiple times and had infinite suggestions for answers. But it cannot be understood without also examining the problem of freedom. Freedom introducers choice and choice allows for evil.

[brittr]

@jaidenforrest
12:21 Generals have always struggled to shut off soldiers consciences.
I remember one historians account from the era around the time of the first introduction of guns to warfare. Soldiers would not aim at the enemy. It was only when their officer walked by that they aimed at the enemy. No one wanted to kill a man.

My father was in the Gulf War and he told me he did no thinking during battles that were 2 minutes long on average. The body is forced to learn reflexes during training. EVERYTHING is reflex while internally they are scared.

This is why men suffer from PTSD so awful. Their body moved in it's own to kill a man and their mind is left to pick up the pieces of remorse for what they did.

Even during WWII they had to force empathy out of men with drugs. Nazi soldiers were given a specific drug that dulls your empathy! I'm convinced drugs are one of the worst things cursed upon humanity. It dulls people's sense of right and wrong and now parents with kids have dulled love and empathy for their own kids.

[peterdobson]

It is often difficult to determine what is benevolence. A drug user will not see someone applying Narcan to them while they are overdosing as being benevolent. In fact, they are often upset at the person doing it because they are taking them off their high. Just because we sometimes perceive something wrongly as not being benevolent, doesn't mean that it is not. God has a far greater range of vision in terms of the fourth dimension, time, than we do. Thus he is able to see if his activity in the world is in fact benevolent and since we do not have God's perspective, we often cannot. God's judgment regarding this is better informed than our own.

[billbooth]

Did Dawkins say “There is No evil or No good”? In what context? There is evil & there is good in this world. No denying. And humans are born with morals. The problem is as we grow, some of us tend to also grow out of it! (with or without God!).

[iancraig]

We will never understand a holy God and His call to righteousness until we “nail” our sins on the cross of Calvary. It was there where our Lord Jesus Christ dealt with it becoming the sacrifice of all sacrifices. We can now live holy lives as an example of lives changed forever. We are no longer slaves to sin, but slaves for Him!

[refusebdcvd]

Saying if God isn't always nice he can't be real is a non sequitur.

[JonGreen]

Seeing, they do not perceive
Hearing, they do not understand.

[FL-Man]

So John only excepts things as evidence when?

[ricksidhu-xlef]

Neil deGrasse's argument against the existance of god is the same argument my brother presented to my parents when he was 16, , so this astrophysist's logic is either not at all impressive or my brother who is now 48 and does more or less believe in god is brilliant

[thethninjaturtle]

My thought on why evil exists, or moreover why Yahweh allows it. If Yahweh didn't, we as humans would not exist. For our actions to matter we as humans need free will to choose between good and evil. If good was all that existed, then our choice would matter.

[stephenwatts]

1 Corinthians 1:18-25 ~
Christ the Wisdom and Power of God.

18. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
19. For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."
20. Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
21. For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.
22. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom,
23. but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
24. but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
25. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God stronger than man's strength.

1 Corinthians 3:8-16 ~
8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
9. However, as it is written:
"No eye has see, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him"
10. but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

RETURNING TO GOD.
Upon entering the physical universe, you relinquished your remembrance of yourself. This allows you to choose to be Who You Are, rather than simply wake up in the castle, so to speak.
It is in the act of choosing to be, rather than simply being told you are, a part of God that you experience yourself as being at total choice, which is what, by definition, God is. Yet how can you have a choice about something over which there is no choice? You cannot not be My offspring no matter how hard you try - but you can forget.
You are, have always been, and will always be, a divine part of the divine whole, head of the body. That is why the act of rejoining the whole, of returning to God, is called remembrance. You actually choose to re-member Who You Really Are, or to join together with the various parts of you to experience the all of you - which is to say, the All of Me.
I do not show My goodness by creating only what you call perfection all around you. I do not demonstrate My love by not allowing you to demonstrate yours.
As I have already explained, you cannot demonstrate love until you can demonstrate not loving. A thing cannot exist without its opposite, except in the world of the absolute. Yet the realm of the absolute was not sufficient for either you or Me. I existed there, in the always, and it is from where you, too, have come.
In the absolute there is no experience, only knowing. Knowing is a divine state, yet the grandest joy is in being. Being is achieved only after experience. The evolution is this: knowing, experiencing, being. This is the Holy Trinity - the Triune that is God.

GOD the FATHER is knowing - the parent of all understandings, the begetter of all experience, for you cannot experience that which you do not know.

GOD the SON is experiencing - the embodiment, the acting out, of all that the Father knows of Itself, for you cannot be that which you have not experienced.

GOD the HOLY SPIRIT is being - the disembodiment of all that the Son has experienced of Itself; the simple, exquisite is-ness possible only through the memory of the knowing and experiencing.

This simple being is bliss. It is God-state, after knowing and experiencing Itself. It is that for which God yearned in the beginning.
Your mind can best hold the relationship as: parent-offspring. Or: that-which-gives-rise-to, and that-which-is-risen.
Adding the third part of the Trinity produces this relationship:
That which gives rise to / That which is risen / That which Is.
This Triune Reality is God's signiture. It is the divine pattern. The three-in-one is everywhere found in the realms of the sublime. You cannot escape it in matters dealing with time and space, God and consciousness, or any of the subtle relationships. On the other hand, you will not find the Triune Truth in any of life's gross relationships.
The Triune Truth is recognized in life's suble relationships by everyone dealing with such relationships. Some of your religionists have described the Triune Truth as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Some of your psychiatrists use the terms super-conscious, conscious and subconscious. Some of your spiritualists say mind, body, and spirit. Some of your scientists see energy, matter, ether. Some of your philosophers say a thing is not true for you until it is true in thought, word, and deed. When discussing time, you speak of three times only: past, present, future. Similarly, there are three moments in your perception - before, now, and after. In terms of spatial relationships, whether considering the points in the universe, or various points in your own room, you recognize here, there, and the space in between.
In matters of gross relationships, you recognize no "in-between." That is because gross relationships of the higher realm are invariably triads. Hence, there is left-right, up-down, big-small, fast-slow, hot-cold, and the greatest dyad ever created: Male-Female. There are no in-bet-weens in these dyads. A thing is either one thing or the other, or some greater or lesser version in relationship to one of these polarities.
Within the realm of sublime relationships nothing which exists has an opposite. All Is One (Energy), and everything progresses from one to the other in a never-ending circle.
Time is such a sublime realm, in which what you call past, present, and future exist inter-relationally. That is, they are not opposites, but rather parts of the same whole; progressions of the same idea; cycles of the same energy; aspects of the same immutable Truth. If you conclude from this that past, present, and future exist at one and the same "time, " you are right. Yet now is not the moment to discuss that. We can get into this in much greater detail when we explore the whole concept of time - which we will do later.
The world is the way it is because it could not be any other way and still exist in the gross realm of physicality. Earthquakes and hurricanes, floods and tornados, and events that you call natural disasters are but movements of the elements from one polarity to the other. The whole birth-death cycle is part of this movement. These are the rhythms of life, and everything in gross reality is subject to them, because Life Itself is a rhythm. It is a wave, a vibration, a pulsation at the very heart of the All That Is.
"If God wanted strict obedience to His Laws, why did He create the possibility of those Laws being violated?"
Ah, your teachers tell you - because God wanted you to have "free choice." Yet what kind of choice is free when to choose one thing over the other brings condemnation? How is "free will" free when it is not your will, but someone else's, which must be done? Those who teach you this would make a hypocrite of God.
You are told that God is forgiveness, and compassion - yet if you do not ask for this forgiveness in the "right way, " if you do not "come to God" properly, your plea will not be heard, your cry will go unheeded. Even this would not be so bad if there were only one proper way, but there are as many "proper ways" being taught as there are teachers to teach them.
Most of you, therefore, spend the bulk of your adult life searching for the "right" way to worship, to obey, and to serve God. The irony of all this is that I do not want your worship, I do not need your obedience, and it is not necessary for you to serve Me.
These behaviors are the behaviors historically demanded of their subjects by monarchs - usually ego-maniacal, insecure, tyrannical monarchs at that. They're not Godly demands in any sense - and it seems remarkable that the world hasn't by now concluded that the demands are counterfeit, having nothing to do with the needs or desires of Deity.
Deity has no needs. All That Is is exactly that: all that is. It therefore wants, or lacks, nothing - by definition.
If you choose to believe in a God who somehow needs something - and has such hurt feelings if He doesn't get it that He punishes those from whom He expected to receive it - then you choose to believe in a God much smaller than I. You truly are Children of a Lesser God.
No, my children, please let Me assure you again, through this writing, that I am without needs. I require nothing.
This does not mean I am without desires. Desires and needs are not the same thing (although many of you have made them so in your present lifetime).
Desire is the beginning of all creation. It is first thought. It is a grand feeling within the soul. It is God, choosing what next to create.
And what is God's desire?
I desire first to know and experience Myself, in all My glory - to know Who I Am. Before I invented you - and all the worlds of the universe - it was impossible for Me to do so.
second, I desire that you shall know and experience Who You Really Are, through the power I have given you to create and experience yourself in whatever way you choose. (Ye are all gods)
Third, I desire for the whole life process to be an experience of constant joy, continuous creation, never-ending expansion, and total fulfillment in each moment of now.
I have established a perfect system whereby these desires may be realized. They are being realized now - in this very moment. The only difference between you and Me is that I know this.
In the moment of your total knowing (which moment could come upon you at any time), you, too, will feel as I do always: totally joyful, loving, accepting, blessing, and grateful.

[daboffey]

Whilst all that Lennox said is true, as you pointed out, it does not answer the question. Why is so much natural evil in a world that a good God is purported to create?

The answer must start from God's Word, particularly in the early chapters of Genesis. Sadly, Lennox has a compromised view of Creation, and so is unable to answer the question posed.

[MoStBlEsSeD]

This guy as a "scientist" doesn't hold to biology with this gender trend .. so UNQUALIFIED 😅

[edwinaustin]

To convince someone of the existanc of a god you need to lie and lie some more