Why Is Evil Necessary?

What would really happen if God did away with evil? You may have never thought of this before. Frank Turek Explains.

[spreadingthelightofchristj]

Brother Frank, praying for you, keep shining for Christ Jesus.

[DesGardius-megf]

"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?"

— Epicurus

[craigturpin]

0:51 "If he takes away our freewill, we can't do evil, but we can't love either."

Couldn't a perfect, all-powerful being figure a way around this?

[aproductionllc]

Charlie Daniels has a song, "Jesus how could You love me?" In it he sings, "When it comes to choose between bad and good, I choose bad two out of three." Lines up really well with Frank's point in this video.

[sven]

At the crux of the "free will" argument is the position that God values "free will" more than he values morality.

Would any apologists care to address the story of the Exodus, when Pharaoh WANTED to release the Israelites after the first plague, but then "God hardened Pharaoh's heart"?  So much for free will, huh?

[TheBaldmeister]

I am more interested in the question "Why would a loving God allow suffering that is not our fault?"
For example: disease, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, volcanoes - the list goes on. If volcanoes were devised by a thinking mind then it must have been a very malicious mind indeed. "Let's make volcanoes with some of the most fertile soils in the World around their base. That will encourage people to live there. Then we'll have them violently explode at irregular intervals and kill and maim the people. And we'll make it so there might be many years in between eruptions so people forget and we can catch out a whole new load of suckers."

[lauterunvollkommenheit]

"We will still have free will in heaven, but we'll have no reason to sin, because we won't lack anything we want - so evil exists because free will exists" - Mr. Turek is not afraid of contradicting himself.

[zhontac]

By your argument freewill exists therefore evil exists, it follows that if heaven exist and freewill exists, therefore evil exists in heaven.

[davidplummer]

Whenever anyone asks this question, I ask them: Have you really not lived ling enough to see what happens to people who are always in comfort and pleasure, who never meet any resistance or experience significant suffering?

[chris-solmon]

Evil is a CHOICE. It's a lack of morality in practice.

[TheStellarArcade]

Listen to the question carefully. "If there is a God, why doesn't he stop all the Evil in the world?"

Frank cleverly, and dishonestly, shifts the meaning of the question. He mentions that we usually talk about Evil in the form of Terrorism, Murder, Rape, etc. and expands the meaning of Evil to everyone. What exactly do we do that is Evil everyday? Is this attributed to ALL Sin according to the Bible? Regardless, he doesn't answer the question. This is very typical of him and many other Apologists.

The issue here is that we can keep our free will to do Evil, but there is a 'Lack of Intervention' for the Consequences. I agree that Evil is necessary in order for us to understand what is good, however stopping Evil acts from our free will is not TAKING AWAY our free will. It's simply putting it in check to prevent suffering. This should be a priority for a God who Loves all of humanity. We can easily relate this to a Parent and their children. What does a Parent do when they see their child start a fight with another child for example? They DISCIPLINE them! They stop the confrontation and educate their kid of the consequences! Therefore, preventing further confrontation. You would think a Perfect Loving God wouldn't have an issue with intervening in this way, to be sure that his children grow to love one another instead of killing each other.

[chinesefantasy]

If free will is the cause, then why aren't we all doing the exact same thing? We all have the same 'untouched' free will, right?

[emveilix]

Ah I love the free will excuse. We have free will, NOW USE IT THE WAY GOD WANTS YOU TO. There's 2 choices we "have."

1.) Love God
2.) Burn it hell


That's extortion, not free will. No true loving father would ever send the children he claimed to love, to hell, to burn for an eternity it.

[JESUSCHRIST-jwtb]

No evil - no temptation
No temptation - no test
No test - no difference

Between the children of GOD & of Evil

[danielhope]

So how does free will in heaven not result in a similar evil? What I find with these arguments is that the best they can do is push around the contradiction, or hide it, but never deals with it.

[peazshooter]

"Explains" is a strong word for what Turek's doing here.

[kerryhollowell]

If there is a god he will have to beg my forgiveness

[joshstrength]

I went in prejudicial BUT was impressed, makes sense!

[PM-rhyq]

If people say it’s God’s fault then they’re idiots. 1 he gave us free will like what Frank said because he loves us and he wants us to love him. And he wanted to share life so he created us.

[purdue]

I was always confused about why a good God wouldn't stop cancer. So it must be because God gave cancer free will so it would love him but because of cancer's sinful nature it decided to start making people sick. Thanks Frank!