How to Respond to the Problem of Evil

Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason answers a question about how to respond to someone who rejects God because of the problem of evil.

#StandtoReason #Apologetics #Christianity

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[vincentdeporter]

My problem with the example of the child getting a shot to benefit their health, is that Greg Koukl equates it to an “evil” instead of just “bad.”

My issue with the problem of evil is the equivocation between bad and evil.
The problem with God is not just the existence of “bad”, since, sometimes bad things can result in good outcomes.
—The problem of evil is WHY does God tolerate “evil/bad with INTENT!"
He may not be powerful enough to stop natural catastrophes (which makes me wonder about his omni-attributes), but for sure, he can address the evil intent of his now alleged fallen angels and at least, humans with a modicum of Love.

There is a LOT of rationalizations here.

[robmc]

I'm discussing morality with someone right now, thank you for the pointers, God bless you STR ministry!

[daverogg]

I don’t even know how or when I subscribed to this channel, but I thank God it’s reality now. That was so good for the “evil” argument. Thank you, kind sir, for this teaching!!!!

[redhen]

Go ahead and put "Harlequin's disease" into the search engine of your choice and hit the Images tab. I'll wait right here for your answer.

[briward]

Free Will answers this question very easily. Using the Word Allow presupposes a Free Will. Now if the person believes that God is the Determiner of everything then you have a real problem. However, A.W. Tozer answers this very nicely “The eternal decree of God decided not which choice man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, 'What doest thou?' Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.”

[RegalLouise]

Interesting answer but I feel like you deflected from the actual question. Or the question was phrased in a wrong manner. The problem of evil has to do with God being all powerful, all knowing yet loving at the same time. If he is all powerful, then he has the power to stop evil while still giving human beings a freedom of choice. If he cannot do this then he is not all powerful as there seems to be a more powerful thing (I say thing for lack of a better word) that is setting up the rules for him to abide by. If he is all powerful yet lets evil (by the way by evil I not only mean the evil perpetrated by human beings but also natural disasters or rules of nature that cause a lot of pain, loss and suffering for both men and beasts) to continue existing while doing nothing to stop it other than offering us a better life after we go through all the suffering, then he is not loving is he?

I really want to get an answer to this as I want to hold on to may Christian faith but responses like the ones in this video are not helping at all.

[dragonsigner]

I tried Google-ing the hebrew and Jewish words for Evil and sin..google is no help?

[homealoneuniverse]

Reevaluating the 'Problem of Evil' 'syllogism:'

In formal logic, there'd be dozens of individual premises to unpack. I'm going to render it in a simplified form, just for brevity:

A: God exists, and is both omnibenevolent and omnipotent

B: God was the active first cause that produced all subsequent effects

C: Evil exists objectively and is the root cause of human suffering

D: Evil exists as a consequent of God acting

E: If God is truly all powerful, he could have found a way to prevent evil from happening at all

F: If God is truly all good, he would have wanted to find a way to prevent evil from happening at all

G: The objective existence of evil demonstrates that God is necessarily either not all powerful or not all good or possibly neither.

PLEASE NOTE! This is NOT the atheist assumption set. This is all grounded on the Christian apologist's assumption set. Atheism per se makes NO CLAIM about good or evil. Atheism is simply the default rational position when there is a lack of evidence for god or gods. How can one believe in something without evidence it is true?

Instead, the above logic shows that the theistic worldview is internally inconsistent. It has a built-in self contradiction that doesn't end well.

So how does Koukl try to get around this problem? Moving the goalposts, of course:

1. Attack the definition of 'good' to make it inaccessible:
This isn't just moving the goalposts. This is hiding the goalposts in an underground bunker at an undisclosed location. Good luck with that. If God's 'goodness' can entail horrible human suffering, even eternal torture for the tiniest crimes with no hope of parole, because 'God knows best, ' then how can we ever know by any objective, external standard whether God is good? Koukl rips the heart out of his own argument by hiding God's bad acts behind this curtain of 'he's too wise for us to judge.' 'Goodness' isn't even remotely objective in a construct like this. It is simply a list of demands made by an invisible would-be dictator who is totally unaccountable, who can get away with anything because, well, that's just him doing him. Do you think an idea like that could be abused much, by say abusive, narcissistic charlatans pretending to speak for such a being?

2. Accuse atheists of inconsistently believing in objective evil:
This is a bogus attempt to create a double-bind, a no-win logic puzzle the atheists supposedly can't solve. But it's really stupid. No informed atheist will accept the premise. The idea that evil and good exist as objective things in the sense of transcendent universals is clearly a *theistic* presupposition. Atheism is NOT a statement about good or evil. It is the absence of a belief in deities. Koukl is strawmanning, ie., misrepresenting atheism. If he knows he's misrepresenting us, he's lying. If he doesn't know, he must not have much contact with ordinary atheists or their arguments, which is surprising, considering his claim to expertise on the matter. .

Conclusion:
Greg, you would have a better conversation with atheists if you didn't say things about them that are patently, demonstrably false. The most essential thing about any given atheist is that no theist has yet presented to them an adequate body of evidence that a god or gods exist. The moral arguments in this video are just more of the same failed claptrap theists keep trying to prop up. Are they even really intended for atheists? Or are they more a way to keep the faithful from straying? Because for anyone willing and able to question the premises, these dogs don't hunt.