William Lane Craig on "The Problem of Evil" 

Do you agree that evil is the strongest argument against God's existence? Why?

People are going to hate me for this quote but they'd be offended by The Truth and not by me. "If God's all good but alows suffering. Then maybe suffering in a way is good." C.S Lewis

This was Interesting, going to watch the full episode!

3:52 WLC "no logical contradiction" 6:15 consequentialist

He’s the best in the business. Never heard a better argument on this issue.

Holykoolaid youtube channel presents 3 objections to a perfect God: 1. Problem of evil and suffering 2. Imperfect communication: a) internal contradictions, b) historical and scientific errors, c) false prophecies from 'religious people', d) No clear appearance of God 3. Appeal to the supernatural. I still believe 3 is possible and 2 is problematic, but I struggle with 1 (Bishop Barron also said that 'there is no clear answer to question 1).

Great work Dr. Craig doing all those mental gymnastics to get around the question

Right on time. Does Aquinas talk about natural disasters anywhere? I know the quick answer of a fallen world (I guess) but I want a more thorough analysis.

On Australia, the country always goes up inflames . The seeds of Aussie trees need fires to germinate. The reason they were so bad was due to enviromental policies, ie no back burning allowed This huge fires released particles, that eventually landed in the ocean. Short version, this has caused the great barrier reef to explode in growth,which had been shrinking. ( blamed on climate change and pesticides). It had been shrinking due to australia stopping bush fires and back burning. You are right!

'Evil' both as a moral (relational) and a metaphysical (actual) reality involves some kind of harm (the basic meaning of our word, evil). It is the 'harm' bit that irritates us so much, as with calamity, suffering, death for rational physical material beings aka 'us' (basically). So no, it is not the strongest argument but it is the most compelling argument .. for us .. against the Christian concept of 'God'. The basic problem for modern man, unlike other generations, is that we do not readily admit the all too obvious reality of 'sin' i.e. wrong done, wrongdoing, shortfall or missing the mark, et al. If God exists - as Christians believe, then, Aquinas rightly argues against himself, evil cannot exist, logically - nor indeed morally, for He would be little more than a powerful if petty, capricious tyrant .. not Love, Truth, Being, per se, etc. So, to cut to the quick answer, problems, evils, shortfalls rebellions, injustices, errors, or what have you, exist, in so far as they do, metaphysically, because God really is God, as Christians believe, and we creatures - in and of ourselves - are not God; for if we were God we could not be 'us', so for us to 'be' at all we must be less than God .. and not merely lesser than gods (or angels); hence the great harm = evil done by Satan against himself and all creation, in the fall of Lucifer, was to introduce that horrifying negative of being, a freely chosen separation from God through revolution. God permitted that separation and the limitation on which it rests because He willed that we should be (us). So, no matter where that onion is sliced it will still involve us in being something other than God, with the reality of some type of shortcoming - howsoever otherwise perfect that kind of being may well be. So the problem is really this : why did He want us to be, at all, at all, whatever shortfall there would be between His perfection and our own lesser perfections cf St Michael, Adam and Eve pre-fall and then afterward, Enoch, Melchizedek, the BVM, you .. and .. erm .. even me ... (Yeah!) ;o)

From where in Summa Theologiae is this question and answer? @Matt Fradd ? Anybody?

Hi all. Looking for some help. Anyone know the name of the agnostic philosopher WLC often cites to make the argument that God may have reasons for allowing evil for a greater good that we may not be aware of? The name escapes me. Thanks in advanced

That's brilliant! Craig arguably the greatest christian philosopher of this generation

Yes but what does that tell us about God if he can logically permit suffering for any good reason? Is collateral damage, by an all powerful being, not immoral and detestible in any imaginable universe? That is the problem.... what kind of god is this? And then add to that: if he is omnipotent and omniscient then surely he could have thought of another way out of the edenic problem without resorting to the allowance of suffering

All this stuff is way over my head 😂

When an earthquake strikes, God questions us in the silence of our heart to act and do good to our fellow men whose lives have been destroyed. Indeed God can get good even out of "impersonal" tragedies, and it's up to us to use that free will given by Him to come in aid or walk away from our responsibilities to our brethren in need. As for the hammer on the finger or beam landing on my toe, I think we can see that as a test of our patience? Of our strength and will not to curse like sailors, take His name in vain and, if we fail, to ask forgiveness for our weakness.

❤❤❤❤❤

For me, evil implies an act of will which deliberately goes against the moral good or intended right purpose. Nothing in God's creation is inherently evil.

The scriptures teach "that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." Romans 8:28 ... Evil did not originate with God yet God will continue to be good inspire of evil. He will work it out for the good!

He's right. Atheists can't logically disprove God can bring good out of suffering. But it's logically out of the hands of Christians that God will bring good out of needless suffering. It's ultimately a matter of faith. But certain needless suffering to me is not redeemable.

First of all, one has to define what 'evil' is. But to do that one has to know what goodness is first. Since God is the source of goodness then anything that does not meet God's standard of goodness must be, by default, defined as evil. It also follows that when someone complains about evil in the world, it only because of God's standard of goodness that evil can be identified. It is like calling the sun good and the resultant shadows as bad and caused by the sun when in fact it is the absence of sunlight, or goodness, that creates the shadow or evil. Then the next step is the question why God would allow evil to exist. The premise to that question is that an omnipotent and just God could arbitraily remove evil. If that were true then justice would demand punishment for each and every act that is not good. The problem is that the questioner usually assumes that the evil under consideration is done somewhere else by somenone else and is usually on an extrordinary scale. What they don't consider is that if God is going to judge and punish someone over there, then he is going to judge and punish the questioner over here equally as harshly, which they are usually unwilling to consider. The reason they usually don't want to consider it is because they know themselves well enough to know that they are 'evil' as well and just as deserving of punishment. Next the questioner has to realize that it is because of his or her own choices that they have committed evil in this world and can be justly punished. Finally, the question assumes that God has not or will do anything about evil in the world or in the individual when, through his equally infinite love and grace, he sent his son to take all the punishment for all the evil in the world

God creates the suffering , and then claims the glory if they are healed.......... 20 have cancer, one is healed........... Its a miracle!!!

In making us with a free will, God took a big risk. He could have kept everyone in the Garden of Eden, but sin resulting from man's free will act entered into the Garden and He had to deal with it by forcing us to learn the lesson on evil. We may not know the evils that "allowed" for the fires in Australia until the end of time.

Allowing immorality is immoral, not moral. That's the problem.

I've listened to William Lane Craig on this subject for a bit, but he tends to only touch on the go-to defenses: free-will, good consequences etc. What I'm left wondering is could God have created free-will without any evil at all? Because if no, then he is not all-powerful. Like he should be perfectly capable of bending the laws of logic to suit his needs if he is all-powerful. Secondly, can he achieve his exact same goals without the assistance of evil? If there is an apologist that touches up on these issues I would love to hear them!

My first reaction goes to word parasitical. Evil a parasite a leech, does not give an answer to problem of evil and does God exist. Our Lord explain about the weeds that grows with the wheat. Jesus said pulling out the weeds you damage the wheat, but if you allow evil to exist you harm the wheat. Take the evil of the Holocaust which was allowed to exist in the Christian world and WWII ended that evil. Was war the only answer to end an objective evil?

The problem of evil presupposes that the world would be better without evil and suffering. The onus is on the atheist to prove this before his argument can hold water.

It seems that in gods eyes the means do justify the end. This is fact. All we can hope for is that there was good enough reason for god to allow those means (our 6000 years of suffering as victims in the prison of planet earth) that doesn't make god evil himself, because that is also a possibility.

At the end of the day, it is a matter of faith. Believers believe all the suffering that God allows will help reach a good end compared to which all the experienced suffering will be nothing. If you go in there with the mentality; "If God doesn't remove all evil right now, He is evil or He doesn't exist" then of course you can't be convinced, even a believer wouldn't. God already tried to give everyone everything they want at all time with no evil whatsoever; the garden of eden. The thing is, He also gave an exit door in the form of the tree of knowledge, knowing full well we would eat from it, because He created us free, and freedom = sin. And now we are living in a world covered in a miasma of sin and are all trying to breathe while living in a burning house.

I always heard this question as “why we are not gods our selves”. So in a sense this argument says there is no god because we are not gods. Utterly ridiculous argument

So we have two options which one sounds more reasonable: a child being raped and murdered is evil and shows there is no God which can be omnipotent and all benevolent, option 2: a child being raped and murdered might have some greater good in it which we are incapable to understand.

6:29 he voices the ripple effect Forrest fires and holocaust have as a reason God may have allowed those things (not that they're good) but then argues against his own consequentialist view he just voiced as a reason! I am no philosopher but I tore him a new one with the last few comments I made. I know there are responses but those theodicies are too weak as responses

I have to take issue with the ad-hoc character of Dr. Craig's argumentation when he supposes that the future effects of disasters like the current Australian forest fires would somehow justify the suffering they cause at present. In order to make that argument even slightly relevant, he should be able to point to some consistent good or benefit from disasters in the past. Please note that I am not saying that eventual good consequences make the disasters good. I am saying that there is no or scant evidence for the argument in the first place. Perhaps the best Biblical example is the flood in the days of Noah. God decides to kill all people because they have turned to evil, only to find that within Noah's lifetime, his descendants turn again to idolatry and various other abominations like the hubris to want to build a tower that reaches to heaven.

There is petroleum, isn't it

A lot of waffle and the real message is that William Craig doesn't know the answer. 'Maybe' God has some moral reason for evil and suffering. The holocaust might have had a moral reason but nobody understamds the real reason.

(I have no idea what happened to my first paragraph but basically I disagree with this idea that evil doesn't positively exist therefore God didn't create it. My first reason is that you can't prove good positively exists any more than you can prove evil doesn't. These things are both immaterial. The only thing you can hope to demonstrate is that they're codependent. Also god does not mean good. Stop saying that.) Secondly, you *can* create darkness. If I turn off all the lights in my room, I've created darkness. Nothing's emitting "umbrons" but I have brought the absence of photons into being. Likewise an infinite singular god would create evil by withdrawing his presence. This cannot coincide with Gods infinite nature of goodness and thus an infinite god cannot exist. Cause by the way, it goes both ways. An infinite god cannot create both good and evil. If both exist, he cannot. However I still think there are arguments for the existence of divinity that do not require an infinite god. This is called polytheism and it was the default opinion for thousands of years until some Semites were inspired by an Egyptian tyrant and a couple thousand years after that some European kings decided it was more politically expedient to say they believed in this Christ dude instead of Odin. Thirdly, while we're here, WLC said that evil is "an absence of right order in the creaturely will." This implies that it was not god but instead his creation which created order. Which doesn't work for several reasons. First of all, that implies man or angels can create something which god cannot. This kind of seems to make men and angels seem more powerful than god. Secondly, it neglects the other sort of evil. That being natural evil. Setting Covid-19 aside: who creates diseases? Cancer? Famine? These things are objectively evil. They defy the natural order. So who makes them? Famine can sometimes be created by humans but sometimes its just because of crop failure. Divinity is the only answer to this unless you take the naturalist position that it's all just random accidents and that's ridiculous. Who's will is it that a child dies of bone cancer? If we assume monotheism to be true, it is God's will alone. Even if you work Satan into this somehow, it was still God's will that he allow Satan to bring his will into being. And again, if Satan can create things God cannot that means that Satan is as powerful if not more powerful than God. You see how it's really hard to maintain that God is a singularity? Like at very least there's a duality going on here with a good god and an evil god.

Must be great to be God, with people like Craig excusing One's every action. They spend so much energy running around, shielding their deity from any shed of accountability..... it's good to be the king. 😆

Why god allows suffering? It doesn’t! I don’t need 8:12 minutes to come to that conclusion

4:09 - he say the atheist would have to show there is a logical possibillity- no the atheist doesn't have to show anything. You're the one making the claim, yes positing that a god exists. YOU have to overcome the problem of natural evil and you can't because there is no answer

Isaiah 45:7 KJV clearly states: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." GOD MAKES EVIL! It's in the bible. Christians need to STOP arguing that God is GOOD. That is BLASPHEMOUS NONSENSE!

4:56 he says we're not able to answer why God allows natural evil and so he ADMITS no answer but couches it in "atheist ignorance" um, he's the ignorant one claiming a disembodied mind in another dimension exists with contradicting qualities and it's somehow OUR ignorance at fault when he's the one making huge insane claims about invisible entities existing.

It sure would be nice if God could just show up and give us clear, unambiguous explanations rather than have to rely on a bunch of philosophers fumbling around for tenuous explanations, grasping at straws and not really making any sense.

So, for god, the free will of evil doers are more importent than the free will of victims of their evil actions? Ok, doesn't sound good to me.

This is really funny, these two bozos sitting in a comfy lounge trying to defend the indefensible. LOL

Wow! This is literally 2 grown men trying to justify why their invisible friend exists. There is absolutely no way these two would believe in this garbage if their families hadn't told them over and over that this is how it is when they were young and impressionable. Sad