Suffering: Part 2

How can the All-Powerful, Loving, and Just God allow evil and human suffering?  

The conclusion in the modern mind is that God either does not exist or if he does, he is neither all-powerful nor all-good. This results in a Theodicy, an effort to defend the existence of God (and his power and goodness) in the face of evil in the world. 

The Intellectual Problem of Evil – How do you make a rational argument for the coexistence of an all-good, all-powerful God with evil and human suffering? (This is the subject of the apologists.)  

The Intellectual Problem of Evil has vexed philosophers and theologians for centuries. It presented the main intellectual attack against Christianity. By and large this was a problem for the academics, until World War I, The Great War. So terrible and horrible was the suffering on a world-wide basis, that Western Culture was stunned that God allowed it to happen. And so began the slide of churches, universities, and indeed most institutions in Western Civilization away from Christianity in earnest. No educated or thinking person could believe that God existed after the horrors of WWI. 

However, in 1967, Dr. Alvin Plantinga published the Free Will Defense Argument. Using the classic logical arguments of secular philosophers, Plantinga convincingly proved that an all-good, all-powerful God had morally sufficient reasons for allowing evil and human suffering to exist, such as giving man  

Free Will, which necessitates the existence of evil and its resulting human suffering. (You can easily search the internet for a more thorough explanation of Plantinga’s Free Will Defense.) 

Today the Intellectual Problem of Evil is an interesting study, but thanks to Plantinga, it is no longer the main attack by academia against Christianity. All but the most ardent and narrow minded atheists have acknowledged Plantinga’s significant work. As proof of the universal, although begrudging, acceptance of the Free Will Defense and its many subsequent forms, the main attack by academia against Christianity and the existence of God is now focused on evolution vs intelligent design. Those academics on the forefront of the fight against Christianity are no longer philosophers but biologists and others in the hard sciences. 

Creators and Guests

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Host

Andrew

Producer

Tom Kjeldgaard

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