The most common argument
people offer to "object" to God is to complain about evil and
suffering. They contend, if God were
real, being All Loving, He would not permit evil or suffering. Since suffering exists, God cannot exist.
The formal argument
goes:
- If God an all loving and all powerful God existed, He would not permit evil and suffering
- Evil and suffering exists
- Therefore, an all Loving and all Powerful God does not exist.
What kind of world should God have created?
Much of the evil and
suffering in the world appears pointless and meaningless to us for sure. From our vantage point we have limited
ability to fully measure the reasons for why things happen. Clearly terrible evil exists.
God is all knowing and knew
before it happened that evil would enter the world.
So the question is, why does
permit evil to exist?
Thought Experiment
Let's create a hypothetical world were there is no suffering and no evil.
What would this world look like? All potential emotional suffering and pain would need to be removed.
With no emotional harm or
sadness
- No dating or romantic relationships would be allowed since that can result in rejection and disappointment
- No exclusive groups or even friendships would be allowed since some people would be excluded, feelings of disenfranchisement. And there is the risk of a broken relationship causing sorrow and anger.
- No social arrangements based on trust can be allowed. Breaking a trust or violating an agreement, even by accident, could cause emotional distress.
- No contract negotiations or sales agreements could exist since one or both parties may feel they were cheated or somehow treated unfairly.
- Absolutely no competitions or rankings or admissions criteria or minimum qualifications for joining a group, obtaining a job, or enjoying sporting events or any other sort of competitive activity would be allowed. Necessarily there would be winners and losers, and possible arguments over the rules, or judgments by referees or charges of perceived or actual bias or discrimination that would cause emotional distress.
- No families could exist. Families are fraught with conflict, trust issues, irritations and competition.
- No opposing opinions or dissenting thoughts will be allowed. This could lead to arguments and resentment that your ideas are not accepted by all.
- No death, injury, sickness, loss of property, failure to achieve a life goal or dream or anything else that affects your blissful happiness can exist.
With no possible way to be hurt, disappointed, experience failure or regret a decision you made, you lose the ability to:
- Have your own free will to make decisions or have your own preferences
- Try anything you may fail at
- Have (or lack!) any talent, skill, possession or be in any situation that might be considered "unfair" by you or someone else since this causes emotional distress.
- Do anything that might harm you or cause you regret in the future
- Have any contrary opinions or ever express doubt, disagreement, or even think negative thoughts since they can cause you emotional distress.
- Ever have the opportunity to love and be loved
- Ever have the opportunity to experience reality with consequences of cause and effect
- Ever make choices that might negatively impact anyone anywhere ever.
This would be a unique kind of hell. It would be better to never have existed than to be trapped in this reality. Practically speaking you would have to be living in some form of pod with amniotic fluid, floating in a comatose state with happy thoughts broadcast into your brain so you would only experience hallucinatory bliss.
God's Answer to the Dilemma of Free Will and Suffering
The dilemma - how does God maximize our free will to give us the freedom to love and enjoy life while working to minimize evil and suffering?…
Looking at the unbeliever's
argument again:
- If God an all loving and all powerful God existed, He would not permit evil and suffering
- Evil and suffering exists
- Therefore, an all Loving and all Powerful God does not exist.
Let's examine the hidden
assumptions:
1) Assumption 1 - An all-loving God would necessarily prefer a world without suffering or
evil
What is the chief aim of
life? To have enjoyment? To know God.
What helps us know and depend on God more - pleasure or troubles? What if God permits trouble to bring people
to the saving knowledge of Christ?
Maybe
we will not be able to fully appreciate the depth of the riches of heaven
without some amount of suffering in this life? And what if God's purposes are
not focused on this life but the other eternal life? Would a tradeoff of temporary suffering for
eternal glory and joy be more or less loving? One assurance we have as Christians is this life full of trials and suffering will not last forever -- this is a temporary situation.
2) Assumption 2 - An all powerful God would necessarily be able to create a world with free
will but without any suffering or evil.
God certainly wants all to come to Him and be saved to live in eternity with Him.
1
Tim 2:3-4
This is good, and it pleases God our Savior, who wants everyone to
be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth NKJV
Psalm 145:19 He fulfills the desires of those who fear Him; He hears their cry for help and saves them. NKJV
Yet, how do you
"force" someone to "willingly" make only the right
choices? This is a logical
contradiction and is not a limitation on God's omnipotence. Evil is not a force or a thing - it is the
absence of Goodness. It is the
corruption of Good - like a hole in a window or a rot on fruit, or a lack of something like blindness.
In fact, even perfect
creatures (such as Lucifer) who are free to love God, are also free to reject
Him. A perfect creature with free will can
do evil.
Why Does God Allow Evil and Suffering to Exist?
So the real question is why does
God allow evil to persist? This is no longer a proof against God, but a claim against God's motives and purposes. And the skeptic must also explain their assumptions. Whose standard is being used to define something as good or evil? The skeptic
attempting to argue God cannot exist because there is evil, needs the
very standard of good and evil that God provides.
Instead of proving God cannot exist because suffering and evil exists, the skeptic now reveals a proof for God's existence. This is the Moral (Axiological) Argument.
1
- If God does not exist, then no objective moral values or duties exist
2
- Objective moral values and duties do exist
3
- God must exist
Atheistic
approaches to morals are arbitrary and based on preference or “the Golden Rule” -- Everybody acts as if there are
moral laws – especially if they believe they are treated “unfairly”. “Anything that hurts me is evil.” Can you live without moral absolutes?
The logical fallacy of Moral Relativism
Everyone wants absolute rules when it comes to them
personally. Everyone wants to be judged
based on their intentions, not necessarily their actions. I want credit for the thought or the effort!!
But how does a purely morally relativistic world work practically?
How can you ever trust a morally
relativistic person? Would they keep a
promise? Would they always tell the
truth? Would they steal your
money? Would they ever risk anything
including their safety to help you? Could you ever really "depend" on that person?
Everyone knows inside they are accountable to a
real, permanent, unchanging, fair set of rules, and we reflexively appeal to
this set of rules when we perceive injustice, cruelty or evil.
Christianity is only to be feared in that man's sins are revealed and
compared to a standard of perfection man cannot attain. Therefore, the harm of Christianity is that
it makes people feel shame. ~John Lennox
What would it take to have true justice?
- An afterlife would be necessary to serve justice from this life - reward and punish deeds not 'handled' during a person's lifetime.
- A holy and righteous judge who perfectly and fairly weighs and balances the intentions and thoughts and actions of every person for this lifetime.
- An omniscient Being who knows all the facts perfectly in rendering judgments.
- An omnipotent Being who can enforce judgement and quarantine evil forever.
Atheists cannot defend Justice because
that is restoration of good from evil.
No atheist can insist something is good or evil, only that they have a
preference for or against something. All
they can offer is their opinion. ~John Lennox
God's law is perfect
Psalm 119:89, 105, 106 Forever, O LORD, Your Word is settled in heaven.
Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
I have sworn and I will confirm it, that I will keep Your righteous ordinances. NKJV
Leviticus 26:3-4 If
you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments so as to carry them out, then
I shall give you rains in their season, so that the land will yield its produce
and the trees of the field will bear their fruit. NKJV
Psalm 103:15-17 As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he
flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place
remembers it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to
everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children's
children. NKJV
For the Greater Good...
In a fallen world, God allows us to mature in faith:
- To have opinions
- To build character in suffering
- To learn from our mistakes
- To overcome challenges
- To experience true love
God seeks us with eternity in view. All suffering we experience in this life will
fade into infinitesimal smallness over time in heaven, and the
"weight" of the glory we will experience with Christ far outweighs
our present miseries.
2 Cor 4:7-10 Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so
that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. We are pressured
in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; we are
persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed. We always
carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be
revealed in our body. NKJV
2 Cor 4:16-18 Therefore we do
not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person
is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing
for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus
on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what
is unseen is eternal. NKJV
Final thoughts on Euthyphro's Dilemma
Does God say that things are moral because they are
by nature moral, or do they become moral because God declares them to be?
The Euthyphro dilemma is
actually a false dichotomy. That is, it proposes only two options when
another is possible. The third option is that good is based on God’s
nature. God appeals to nothing other than his own character for the
standard of what is good and then reveals what is good to us. It is wrong
to lie because God cannot lie (Titus 1:2)--not because God had to
discover lying was wrong or that he arbitrarily declared it to be wrong. This means
that God does not arbitrarily declare something to be good (ignoring his own
nature) or say that something is good by nature (recognizing a standard outside
of himself)[1]
For more articles related to Christian Apologetics, see:
[1] Matt
Slick, http://carm.org/euthyphro-dilemma
_____________________
Scripture citations are from: New King James Version®. (NKJV) Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson
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