Is There Meaning in Evil & Suffering? | Richmond Hill Community Church - Ontario 2018

Dr. Craig's Toronto speaking tour in January 2018 included a presentation at Richmond Hill Christian Community Church in Ontario on the topic "Is There Meaning in Evil & Suffering?" His talk is followed by a Q&A time.

DR. CRAIG: Thank you for coming out tonight. I wonder how many here saw the dialog last night with Jordan Peterson and Rebecca Goldstein at the University of Toronto? Good! You will notice that in that dialogue Jordan Peterson raised a number of times the question that we're going to be discussing this evening, namely: Is there meaning in suffering and evil?

The problem of evil and suffering is certainly the greatest obstacle to belief in the existence of God. When I ponder both the extent and the depth of the suffering in the world, whether due to man’s own inhumanity to man or to natural disasters, then I have to admit that I find it hard to believe that God exists. No doubt many of you have felt the same way. Maybe we should all become atheists.

But that would be a pretty big step to take. How can we be sure that God does not exist? Maybe there is a reason why God permits all of the evil in the world. Maybe it somehow all fits into a grand scheme of things that we can only dimly discern, if at all. How do we know?

As a Christian theist, I’m persuaded that the problem of evil, as terrible as it is, does not in the end constitute a disproof of the existence of God. On the contrary, in fact, I think that Christian theism is man’s last best hope of solving the problem of evil.

In order to explain why I feel this way, it will be helpful to draw some distinctions to keep our thinking clear. First, we must distinguish between the intellectual problem of evil and the emotional problem of evil. The intellectual problem of evil concerns how to give a rational explanation of how God and evil can co-exist. The emotional problem of evil concerns how to dissolve people’s emotional dislike of a God who would permit suffering.

Let’s look first at the intellectual problem of evil. There are two versions of this problem: first, the logical problem of evil, and second, the probabilistic problem of evil.

According to the logical problem of evil, it is logically impossible for God and evil to co-exist. If God exists, then evil cannot exist. If evil exists, then God cannot exist. Since evil obviously exists, it follows logically that God does not exist.

The problem with this argument is that there’s just no reason to think that God and evil are logically incompatible. After all, there’s no explicit contradiction between the statements “God exists” and “evil exists.” If the atheist thinks that there’s some implicit contradiction between God and evil, then he must be assuming some hidden premises that would bring out this contradiction and make it explicit. But the problem is that no philosopher has ever been able to successfully identify what those premises are. Therefore, the logical problem of evil has failed to prove any inconsistency between God and evil.

But more than that: we can actually prove that God and evil are logically consistent. You see, the atheist presupposes that God cannot have morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evil and suffering in the world. But that assumption is just not necessarily true. So long as it is even possible that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the evil in the world, then it follows that God and evil are logically consistent. And, certainly, it seems possible that God should have such reasons. Therefore, I’m very pleased to be able to report to you this evening that it is widely agreed among contemporary philosophers that the logical problem of evil has been dissolved. The co-existence of God and evil is logically possible.

To illustrate this version of the problem and its solution, we’ve developed some animated videos at ReasonableFaith.org, and we want to show one of them now on the logical version of the problem of evil.

VIDEO: We are all well aware of the suffering and evil in the world – horrific suffering, unspeakable evil. How then can anyone believe in the existence of an all-loving, all-powerful God? And if God does exist, why would anyone want to worship him? Epicurus framed the logical problem of suffering and evil like this. If God is willing to prevent evil but not able, then he's not all-powerful. If he is able to prevent evil but not willing, he is not good. But if he is both willing and able, how can evil exist? And, if he is neither able nor willing, then why call him God? In other words, it's logically impossible for God and suffering to both exist. But we know full well that suffering exists. Therefore, God does not. Is this a good argument? Let's look at it more closely. Are these two statements [“An all-powerful, all-loving God exists” and “Suffering exists”] logically inconsistent? No. Here is an example of two logical inconsistent statements: David can't be both married and a bachelor. But there is no explicit contradiction between these two statements. So there must be hidden assumptions behind this argument that would bring out the alleged contradiction. Here they are. If God is all-powerful, he can create any world he wants. And if God is all-loving, he prefers a world without suffering. So if an all-powerful, all-loving God exists, it follows that suffering does not exist. Since suffering obviously does exist, the atheist concludes that God must not exist. But are the atheist’s two hidden assumptions necessarily true? Consider the first assumption. Can God create any world he wants? What if he wants a world populated by people who have free will? It's logically impossible for God to force someone to freely choose to do good. Forcing free choices is like making a square circle – it's not logically possible. It's not that God lacks the power to perform the task. It’s that the supposed task itself is just nonsense. So it may not be feasible to create a world populated by people who always freely choose to do what is morally good. So the first assumption is not necessarily true. Therefore, the argument fails. What about the second assumption? Is it necessarily true that God would prefer a world without suffering? How could we possibly know this? We all know of cases where we permit suffering in order to bring about a greater good. If it's even possible that God allows suffering in order to achieve a greater good then we cannot say this assumption is necessarily true. For the logical problem of suffering to succeed the atheist would have to show that it's logically impossible that free will exists and that it is logically impossible that God has good reasons for permitting suffering. This burden of proof is too heavy to bear. It's quite possible that God and suffering both exist. This is why philosophers, even atheist philosophers, have given up on the logical problem of evil. “We can concede that the problem of evil does not, after all, show that the central doctrines of theism are logically inconsistent with one another” (J. L. Mackie). “Some philosophers have contended that the existence of evil is logically inconsistent with the existence of a theistic God. No one, I think, has succeeded in establishing such an extravagant claim” (William L. Rowe). “It is now acknowledged on (almost) all sides that the logical argument is bankrupt” (William P. Alston). But this is hardly the end of the discussion. We still need to explore the probability version of the problem of evil.

DR. CRAIG: As the video indicates, we’re not out of the woods yet. Just because the logical version of the problem of evil has been solved, we still have to deal with the probabilistic version of the problem of evil. According to this version of the problem, the co-existence of God and evil is logically possible, but nevertheless it’s highly improbable. The extent and depth of evil in the world is so great that it’s improbable that God could have morally sufficient reasons for permitting it. Therefore, given the evil in the world, it’s improbable that God exists.

Now this is a much more powerful argument, and therefore I want to spend most of our time on it this evening. In response to this version of the problem of evil, I want to make three main points.

1. We are not in a good position to say that it is improbable that God has morally sufficient reasons for permitting the suffering in the world. As finite persons, we are limited in time, space, intelligence, and insight. But the transcendent and sovereign God sees the end of history from its beginning and providentially orders history so that his purposes are ultimately achieved through human free decisions. In order to achieve his purposes, God may have to allow a great deal of suffering along the way. Suffering which appears pointless within our limited framework may be seen to have been justly permitted within God’s wider framework.

I’ll give two illustrations of this point, one from contemporary science and one from popular culture. The first illustration, in so-called Chaos Theory, scientists have discovered that certain large scale systems such as the weather, for example, or insect populations, are extraordinarily sensitive to the tiniest disturbances. A butterfly fluttering on a twig in the jungles of West Africa may set in motion forces that will eventually issue in a hurricane over the Atlantic Ocean. Yet no one looking at that little butterfly palpitating on that branch would ever, even in principle, be able to predict such an outcome. We have no way of knowing how the alteration of some seemingly insignificant event can radically alter the shape of the world. The second illustration: the movie Sliding Doors starring Gwenyth Paltrow tells the story of a young woman who is rushing down the stairs to the subway to catch a train. As she nears the train, the movie splits into two paths that her life might take. In the one path, the doors to the train slide shut just before she can board. In the other life, she makes it through the doors before they close. Based on this seemingly trivial difference, her lives begin to take two increasingly divergent paths. In the one, she is successful, prosperous, and happy. In the other life, she encounters failure, misery, and unhappiness. And all because of a split second difference in getting through those sliding doors. Moreover, that difference is due to whether a little girl playing with her dolly on the stair railing is snatched away by her father or momentarily blocks the young woman’s path as she hurries down the stairs to catch the train. We can’t help but wonder what other innumerable trivialities must have led up to that event. For example, whether the daughter and her father were delayed in leaving the house that morning because the little girl didn’t like the breakfast cereal that her mother gave her. Or perhaps the man had been inattentive to his daughter because he had been preoccupied thinking about something in the morning news, and so on. But the most interesting part of the film is the ending. In the happy, successful life, the young woman is suddenly killed in an accident while the other life turns around and the life of hardship and suffering turns out to be the truly good life after all. Now, my point is obviously not that things always turn out for the best in this earthly life. No. My point is actually much more modest. Given the dizzying complexity of life, we are simply not in a position to judge that God has no good reason for permitting some instance of suffering to afflict our lives. Every event that occurs sends a ripple effect through history such that God’s reason for permitting it might not emerge until centuries from now and perhaps in another country. Only an all-knowing God could grasp the infinite complexities of directing a world of free creatures toward his provisioned goals. Just think of the innumerable, incalculable details that would have to be planned in order to arrive at a single historical event. For example, the Allied victory at D-Day. We have no idea of what suffering might be involved in order for God to achieve some intended purpose through the freely chosen actions of human persons. Nor should we expect to discern God's reason for permitting suffering. It's hardly surprising that much suffering appears pointless and unnecessary to us because we are simply overwhelmed by such complexity. This is not to appeal to mystery, but rather to point to our inherent cognitive limitations which make it impossible for us to say when confronted with some instance of suffering that God probably has no good reason for permitting it to occur.

Unbelievers themselves recognize our limitations in other contexts. For example, one of the decisive objections to utilitarianism (this is the theory of ethics that says that you should try to do that action which will bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people) is that we have no idea of the ultimate outcome of our actions. Some short-term good might actually lead to untold misery, while some action that looks disastrous in the short term may redound to the greatest good. We don't have a clue.

Once we contemplate God's providence over the whole of human history, I think you can see how really hopeless it is for finite limited observers to speculate about the probability of God's having a good reason for permitting the suffering that we observe. We're simply not in a position to assess such probabilities with any sort of confidence.

2. Relative to the full scope of the evidence, God’s existence is probable. Probabilities are always relative to background information. For example, suppose we are given the background information that Joe is a student at the University of Toronto and that 80% of the students at the University of Toronto play hockey. Now, relative to that background information, that would make it highly probable that Joe is a hockey player. But then suppose that we're given additional information that Joe is a double amputee and that 80% of the double amputee students at the University of Toronto do not play hockey. Suddenly, relative to this new information it becomes highly improbable that Joe is a hockey player. To repeat, probabilities are always relative to background information. So when the atheist says that God's existence is improbable, you should immediately ask yourself: improbable relative to what? What is the background information? The suffering in the world? Well, if that's all you consider for your background information I think it's hardly surprising that God's existence would look improbable relative to that. But that's not the really interesting question, is it? The interesting question is whether God's existence is probable relative to the full scope of the evidence. I'm persuaded that when you consider the full scope of the evidence then God's existence is on balance quite probable. At ReasonableFaith.org we've developed a number of short animated videos on the different arguments for the existence of God, and these are available on our homepage at ReasonableFaith.org. They include things like Leibniz’s contingency argument for a metaphysically necessary being, the kalam cosmological argument for an absolutely first cause of the origin the universe, the argument from the fine-tuning of the universe for a cosmic designer of the cosmos, the moral argument for a personally embodied supreme Good who is the source of moral values and duties, and the ontological argument for God's existence which shows that if God's existence is even possible then it follows logically that God exists. I don't have time to go into all of these arguments tonight, though during our Q&A I'd be happy to entertain questions about any of them. But these videos are available on the ReasonableFaith.org website for your instruction and for sharing with unbelievers that you want to talk to about the existence of God.

Let me highlight just one of the arguments, however, and that is the moral argument for God's existence. It turns out that there's actually an argument for God's existence from evil. That's right! Evil actually proves God's existence. The argument would go like this.

1. If God did not exist then objective moral values and duties would not exist.

If there is no God to serve as a transcendent anchor for moral values and duties then everything becomes relative. Moral values and duties are either just the spin-offs of biological evolution and social conditioning or else they're just expressions of personal taste. So if God does not exist, objective moral values and duties plausibly do not exist.

2. Evil exists.

That's the premise furnished by the atheist.

3. Therefore, objective moral values and duties do exist, namely some things are evil.

From which it follows,

4. Therefore, God exists.

So, paradoxically, even though evil at a superficial level calls into question God's existence, at a deeper, more philosophical level evil actually serves to demonstrate God's existence because in the absence of God good and evil as such would not exist.

These are only part of the evidence that God exists. The prominent philosopher Alvin Plantinga has expounded two dozen or so arguments for God's existence. I believe that the cumulative force of these arguments makes it probable that God exists even given any improbability that evil might be thought to throw upon the existence of God.

3. The Christian faith entails doctrines that increase the probability of the co-existence of God and evil. In so doing, these doctrines decrease any improbability that evil might be thought to throw upon God’s existence. What are some of these doctrines? Let me mention four:

a. The purpose of life is not happiness, but rather the knowledge of God. One reason that the problem of evil seems so intractable is that we tend to think that if God exists, then His goal for human life is happiness in this life. God’s role is to provide a comfortable environment for His human pets. But on the Christian view this is false. We are not God’s pets, and the purpose of life is not happiness in this world, but rather the knowledge of God, which will in the end bring about true and everlasting human fulfillment. Many evils occur in life which may be utterly pointless with respect to the goal of producing human happiness, but they may not be pointless with respect to producing a deeper knowledge of God. Innocent human suffering provides an occasion for deeper dependency and trust in God, either on the part of the sufferer or those around him. Whether God's purpose is achieved through what we suffer all depends on how we respond. Do we respond with anger and bitterness toward God, or do we turn to Him in faith for strength to endure?

b. Mankind is in a state of rebellion against God and His purpose. Rather than submit to and worship God, people rebel against God and go their own way and so find themselves alienated from God, morally guilty before Him, and groping in spiritual darkness, pursuing false gods of their own making. The terrible human evils in the world are testimony to man’s depravity in this state of moral and spiritual alienation from God. Thus, the Christian is not surprised at the terrible human evil in the world; on the contrary, he expects it. The Bible says that God has given mankind over to the sin it has chosen; He does not interfere to stop it. He lets human depravity run its course. This only serves to heighten mankind’s moral responsibility before God, as well as our wickedness and our need of forgiveness and moral cleansing.

c. The knowledge of God spills over into eternal life. In the Christian view, this life is not all there is. Jesus promised eternal life to all who place their trust in him as their Savior and Lord. In the afterlife God will reward those who have borne their suffering in courage and trust with an eternal life of unspeakable joy. The apostle Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, lived a life of incredible suffering when you think about it. Yet he wrote these words, “We do not lose heart. For this slight, momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (II Cor. 4:16-18). Paul imagines here, as it were, a scale on which all the sufferings and rottenness and pain of this life are placed on one side, while placed on the other side is the glory that God will bestow on his children in heaven. He says the weight of glory is so great that the sufferings of this life are not even worth comparing to it. Moreover, think about this. The longer we spend in eternity the more the sufferings of this life shrink by comparison to an infinitesimal moment. That’s why Paul could refer to them as “a slight and momentary affliction”—they were simply overwhelmed by the ocean of divine eternity and joy which God lavishes on those who trust Him.

d. The knowledge of God is an incommensurable good. To know God, the source of infinite goodness and love, is an incomparable good, the fulfillment of human existence. It is what we were made for. The sufferings of this life cannot even be compared to the infinite good of knowing God. Thus, the person who knows God, no matter what he suffers, no matter how awful his pain, can still truly say, “God is good to me,” simply by virtue of the fact that he knows God, an incommensurable good.

These four Christian doctrines, if true, greatly reduce any improbability which evil would seem to throw upon the existence of God.

In summary then, if these three pieces of evidence are correct then evil does not render improbable the existence of the Christian God; on the contrary, when you consider the full scope of the evidence, God’s existence is quite probable. Thus, I think the intellectual problem of evil fails to overthrow God’s existence.

But that takes us to the emotional problem of evil. I think, frankly, that most people who reject God because of the evil and suffering in the world don’t really do so because of intellectual difficulties; rather it’s an emotional problem. They just don’t like a God who would permit them or others to suffer terribly and therefore they want nothing to do with Him. Theirs is simply an atheism of rejection. Does the Christian faith have something to say to these people?

Yes, it certainly does! For it tells us that God is not a distant Creator or impersonal ground of being, but a loving heavenly Father who shares our sufferings and who hurts with us. Professor Plantinga has written,

As the Christian sees things, God does not stand idly by, coolly observing the suffering of His creatures. He enters into and shares our suffering. He endures the anguish of seeing his son, the second person of the Trinity, consigned to the bitterly cruel and shameful death of the cross. . . . Christ was prepared to endure the agonies of hell itself . . . in order to overcome sin, and death, and the evils that afflict our world, and to confer on us a life more glorious that we can imagine. . . . He was prepared to suffer on our behalf, to accept suffering of which we can form no conception.^[1]

You see, Jesus endured a suffering beyond all comprehension: He bore the punishment for the sins of the whole world. None of us can comprehend that suffering. Even though He was innocent, He voluntarily took upon himself the punishment that we deserved. And why? Because He loves you so much. How can we reject Him who was willing to give up everything for us?

When we comprehend His sacrifice and His love for us, this puts the problem of evil in an entirely different perspective. For now we see clearly that the true problem of evil is the problem of our evil. Filled with sin and morally guilty before God, the question we face is not how God can justify Himself to us, but rather how we can be justified before Him.

To illustrate this probability version of the problem of evil, I want you to look at this second video that we’ve developed.

VIDEO: In part 1, we looked at the logical version of the problem of suffering and evil. This argument attempts to show that since suffering and evil exists, it is logically impossible for God to exist. And we explained why even atheist philosophers admit that this argument fails. But wait! It may still be argued that while it's logically possible that God and suffering both exists, it is far from likely. There's just so much pointless suffering, it seems improbable that God could have good reasons for permitting it. This is the probability version of the problem. Suffering provides empirical evidence that God's existence is not impossible, just highly unlikely. Is this a good argument? Consider three points. First, we are not in a position to say with any confidence that God probably lacks reasons for allowing the suffering in the world. The problem is that we're limited in space and time and in intelligence and insight. God on the other hand sees every detail of history from beginning to end and orders it through people's free decisions and actions. In order to achieve his purposes, God may have to allow a great deal of suffering along the way. Suffering which appears pointless within our limited scope of understanding may be seen to have been justly permitted by God within his wider framework. Sometimes what we experience makes no sense until we gain a wider perspective and see the big picture designed by the Creator. Here's the second point. Relative to the full scope of the evidence, God's existence may well be probable. You see, probabilities are always relative to background information. For example, if we consider only how much this man weighs we would say it is highly improbable that he's a world-class athlete. But when we're willing to consider new information (that he's a professional sumo wrestler and a world champion) we quickly revise our view. In the same way, when the atheist claims that God's existence is improbable, we should ask: Improbable relative to what background information? If we consider only the suffering in the world then God's existence may very well appear to be improbable. But if we're willing to look at the full scope of background information to take into account the powerful arguments for God's existence, we may come to a very different conclusion. The third point is: Christianity entails doctrines that increase the probability of the coexistence of God and suffering. Consider four of these. First, the chief purpose of life is not happiness. People often assume that if God exists then his role is to create a comfortable environment for his human pets. They think the ultimate goal of our lives on Earth is happiness, and therefore God is obligated to keep us happy. However, Christianity presents a radically different view – that the purpose of life is to know God. This alone brings true lasting fulfillment. Suffering can bring about a deeper, more intimate knowledge of God even on the part of the one who is suffering or those around him. The whole point of human history is that God, having given us free will, is drawing as many people as he can into his unending Kingdom. Suffering is one of the ways God can draw people freely to himself. In fact, countries that have endured the most hardship often show the highest growth rates for Christianity. “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world” (C. S. Lewis). Second: mankind is in a state of rebellion against God and his purpose. Terrible human evils are testimony to man's depravity, a consequence of his alienation from God. The Christian isn't surprised that moral evil is in the world. On the contrary, he expects it. The third doctrine states that God's purpose is not restricted to this life but spills over beyond the grave into eternal life. This world is just the beginning – the entry way to an unimaginable, never-ending life beyond death's door. Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, underwent afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, hunger. Yet, he wrote, “We do not lose heart. For this slight, momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (II Cor. 4:16-18). Paul understood that life on Earth and whatever suffering it holds for each of us is temporary. Our pain will not endure forever, but our lives with God will. Paul was not belittling the plight of those who suffer horribly in this life. Indeed, he was one of them. But he saw that those suffering will be overwhelmed forever by the ocean of joy that God will give to those who will freely receive it. The fourth doctrine is this: The knowledge of God is an incomparable good. Knowing God is the ultimate fulfillment of human existence – an infinite good. Thus, the person who knows God, no matter how much he has suffered, can still say “God is good to me.” So if Christianity is true, it is not at all improbable that suffering and evil should exist. In summary, for all these reasons the probability version of the problem of evil is no more successful than the logical version. As a purely intellectual problem then, the problem of evil does not disprove God's existence. But even if those intellectual arguments fail, the emotional problem of suffering and evil remains very powerful. If you have suffered deeply or if you've watched someone you love go through intense pain, you may be thinking, “So what if God exists? Why would I want to respond to him or worship him? I feel cold and empty. I want nothing to do with him.” You're not alone. God knows your name. He knows who you are and what you're going through. God promises to be with you through your suffering. He can give you the strength to endure. Jesus Christ also suffered. Although he was innocent, he was tortured and sentenced to death. His suffering had a purpose – to provide you and me with a life-giving connection to God. Not only does God exist, but he loves you. He seeks after you. He offers you hope. And in time he will make all things new. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

DR. CRAIG: What a wonderful hope! So paradoxically, although the problem of evil is the greatest obstacle to the existence of God, at the end of the day God is truly the only answer to the problem of evil. If God does not exist, then we are lost without hope in a world filled with gratuitous and unredeemed suffering. God is the final answer to the problem of evil, for He redeems us from evil and takes us into the everlasting joy of an incommensurable good, which is fellowship with Himself.

We now have a good half hour for discussion. So if you've thought of any questions that you would like to ask on what I've shared this evening, I'll be ready to entertain those questions.

MODERATOR 1: Thank you so much, Dr. Craig. That was wonderful. I'm going to introduce Peter who's going to take the questions and answers, but I just wanted to say one thing. One of the things that you said that powerfully affected me is that life isn't about being happy. I'm a therapist and physician, and I think that's such an important thing. It takes the pressure off to some extent. There's so many things that you talked about, but that hits home because of course every day I have very unhappy people who are depressed. To know that that isn't what God wants or even the world is supposed to be for, that takes the pressure off. I'm going to introduce Peter. Peter is going to take your questions and Dr. Craig will answer.

MODERATOR 2: The way we want to do this is let you use the papers that you have in the pews. If anybody doesn't have one, look around and our ushers will bring you another paper. Then we'll collect those. While we're collecting your paper questions, I have an introductory question for you, Dr. Craig. By the way, thank you for taking what, when we came in, to be a very small canvas and enlarging it for us tonight. It's been really helpful for me to see a much bigger scope of this problem. So thank you for that. As an introductory question for all of us, you pointed tonight towards the issue of emotional versus the intellectual problem of suffering and noted that there's more preponderance of our conclusion for missing the existence of God because of the emotional side. What recommendations might you have for us that would again widen the canvas to include being led by the Spirit and asking good questions and prayer. What kind of ideas or suggestions in managing a conversation because we all meet people who might be angry with the pain in their life and blocking or not being able to see God. So what do you recommend?

DR. CRAIG: Obviously an implication of what I've said about the emotional problem of evil is that less important will be what you say as opposed to how you interact with your unbelieving friend or family member. They probably need a good listener – someone who isn't too quick to speak but will just listen to them as they unload the pain and the burdens that they bear. If you can be a good listener and show to them that you really do care about them and that you will do what you can to help them get through it, that kind of personal love and solidarity and friendship will mean more than, I think, the words that you speak. So this does underline the importance of forming those kinds of personal relationships with the folks that we meet that are going through really hard times.

MODERATOR 2: Thank you. We appreciate that. If Mike and Ingmar and Steve could bring us some of those paper questions. We'll do a few of those, and then we'll field a few live questions on top of that as well. Here's the first one. How has your own personal experience with suffering influenced your theology in a personal way?

DR. CRAIG: Gosh. I don't think that it has. I, myself, bear a genetic neuromuscular disease that I inherited, my brother as well, called Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome which causes progressive atrophy of the extremities – the knees to the ankles, the elbows to the hands. This has deeply shaped my life over the years because it meant that I couldn't participate in athletics like the other boys when I was young. It caused me to go into academics because that was an area where I could succeed and make something of myself. God has tremendously used this disease in my life to shape me into the tool that he wanted me to be. So it has deeply impacted my life psychologically and in terms of the ministry, but I can't think that it's affected my theology per se. My theology is drawn from the Scriptures, and the Scriptures teach us that God's strength is made perfect in weakness. Paul had a thorn in the flesh that he asked God three times to remove, and God said, “No, my grace is sufficient for you.” And Paul said, “I will all the more therefore boast of my weaknesses that the power of God may rest upon me.” In my neurological muscular condition I have taken inspiration from those words of Paul to allow the power and the grace of God to work through the physical weakness that I experience. I suppose that would be the best I could do in terms of reflecting theologically.

MODERATOR 2: That's excellent. Thank you for being transparent that way. Here's one. Could you shed some light on why suffering brings some people closer to God and some turn away from God because of suffering?

DR. CRAIG: It's that point that I made earlier. It all depends on how we react. Are you going to be bitter and angry with God for permitting you to go through this? If so, you will not learn the lessons that God has in mind for you. You will close yourself off to self-improvement and to becoming a better person. But if you can release the anger and the bitterness and submit yourself to God and to his will, this will allow the healing power of God to flow through you and to make you into a better person and to draw you into a deeper relationship with himself. Perhaps the key to the difference between those two is whether or not you have a sense of entitlement. I have the feeling that those who grow bitter or angry toward God have a sense of entitlement – that I deserve a happy, prosperous, flourishing life. This is mine. I deserve it. This message is reinforced in advertising all the time – buy this automobile, you deserve it, don't you? And yet, I think the person who truly understands that we deserve nothing of what we have, that it's all grace, it's all a gift from God. Paul said to the Corinthians, “What do you have that you did not receive?” It's all from God's grace. That will diminish that sense of entitlement that leads to the bitterness and resentment and will help to produce that attitude of submission and openness to God's working in your life through the suffering.

MODERATOR 2: OK. Here's one with a strong punch right in the gut. Rape. Why does God allow that? What does the Bible have to say about rape?

DR. CRAIG: Oh boy. The Bible actually has a lot to say about rape. It's surprising how candid the Bible is. And it would say that this is a terrible evil and that those who perpetrate such an atrocity will be held morally responsible. That's the great thing about living in a theistic world – ultimately evil does not go unpunished. The scales of God's righteous justice will be balanced. But it will mean that God had a morally sufficient reason for allowing this atrocity to occur, and that the person who's the victim of this, if that person will submit to God and turn to God for strength to get through, and perhaps can even learn the grace of forgiveness, can experience emotional release from her abuser, can go on to be used of the Lord in great ways in this life. So even these horrible things that God allows to occur in our lives can work together in God's overall plan for human history to bring about his purposes and his goods.

MODERATOR 2: If you were to ask God one question, what would it be?

DR. CRAIG: Oh, I don't know. I’ll have to pass on that one.

MODERATOR 2: Here's maybe a more serious one. Being a student in funeral services, what advice would you encourage to give for being an effective witness in that context.

DR. CRAIG: I assume that this person is working in the funerary business or studying for it. Is that right? I know nothing about that business. But I would hope that they would be with a funeral home that would give them the freedom to share the message of eternal life and forgiveness of sins through Christ. The Christian hope of resurrection from the dead, that life does not end at the grave, that this is just a cramped and narrow foyer leading into the Great Hall of God's eternity is the greatest hope in the face of death that I can imagine. So I would hope that he would have the freedom to share that openly and not be inhibited by his superiors from sharing that hope.

MODERATOR 2: The question is: Do you think ending one's life by choice is acceptable in Christian standards?

DR. CRAIG: This is controversial, and I don't frankly have a real firm opinion on it. My inclination is to say it is not acceptable because it would be a form of homicide. Scripture says that we should not kill, we shouldn't murder, and this would be a sort of self-murder. But I could understand the argument that what the Ten Commandments are talking about is murdering someone else. That's probably the context and the intention of it. One could imagine a situation in which one is in such unremitting pain that you could imagine that this would be morally permissible. But I haven't frankly made a decision about this. I am not a normative ethicist. That's not my area of philosophy, and so I am open to argument and open to be convinced one way or the other. But in the meantime, I think the default position is on the side of life because this could lead to abuses where the elderly and the unwanted are expected to end their life rather than be a burden on their relatives, and that would be terribly manipulative and dangerous. So I think to err on the side of caution here is the wise course of action.

MODERATOR 2: Excellent. OK. Dr. Craig, what helps you to set your mind on things above as Colossians 3:2 says.

DR. CRAIG: I suppose it would be the study of Scripture. I like to begin each weekday by reading Scripture and praying. I've, over the years, committed a great deal of Scripture to memory. I find that you can memorize whole books of the Bible and fill your mind with Scripture in that way. That will help you then to set your mind on things that are above and not just on things that are on Earth. So I would encourage folks to absorb Scripture and to permeate their minds with Scripture as a way of putting your minds on these higher things.

MODERATOR 2: Here's more of a philosophical question. The asker writes: You talked about God's permitting evil and suffering, but how about creating? Did God create evil if he is the creator of everything?

DR. CRAIG: I would say that God did not create evil because evil is not a thing. Evil is not a positive thing that actually exists. Rather, it's a privation. It is the privation or the absence of right order in the creaturely will. The creaturely will should be oriented toward God as the Supreme Good, but when creatures freely turn their wills toward lesser goods rather than toward the Supreme Good, that privation of right order in the creaturely will is evil. So it originates through creaturely freedom. To give you an illustration of a privation. I want you to think about cold in physics. In physics, cold has no positive reality. It is the privation of heat. Heat has positive reality. Cold is just the privation of heat. Now, that obviously does not imply that cold is somehow illusory or unreal. It's a real privation. But it's not itself a positive thing that needs to be created. In exactly the same way, God has created every thing and every thing that God has created is good, but evil is a privation of right order in the creaturely will.

MODERATOR 2: How is it fair that people have uneven opportunity to learn about God and his message of his Kingdom?

DR. CRAIG: Because God, according to Scripture, is not willing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance. The Bible says that God desires all persons to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. Therefore he gives sufficient grace for salvation to every person that he creates. Indeed, some of those who are eventually lost because they reject God's grace may actually receive greater gifts of grace and greater opportunity than many of the saved. There is no requirement that everyone have the same opportunity. Some may have more abundant opportunities, and they may reject it. But everyone has sufficient grace for salvation no matter where they're created in the world or what historical epic.

MODERATOR 2: If God uses us to suffer to achieve his purposes, are we not mere puppets and then therefore God is not good?

DR. CRAIG: No, because we are free to respond to God's purposes or not. We are not like marionettes where God pulls the strings and we jerk our limbs about in response to those tugs. Rather, God places us in various circumstances that may include things like disease, accidents, illness, and other sorts of things, and then we are free in those circumstances to respond in ways that are either godly or, as I say, with bitterness and anger toward God. He gives us the freedom to respond and react within the circumstances that we're in. It's not as though we're puppets. Not at all. Quite the contrary, we are free moral agents who are making our way through this world which is filled with pitfalls and with suffering, and we need God's strength to endure and make good choices.

MODERATOR 2: We will take a few verbal questions, but please make them very concise like we have on paper. There is a couple of microphones available if you want to make your way. First, I'll take these three, but you can wait in line if you like. The question is: What is going to happen to those who suffer a quick death in medical or accidents but not yet have a chance to know God?

DR. CRAIG: If what I've said is correct – that sufficient grace for salvation is given to every person God creates – then there are no such people as you just imagined. Everyone during the course of his lifetime will have sufficient grace to respond in a salvific way to God. Now, for some people that will involve placing their faith in Christ, believing in the Gospel. But there are people obviously born in the world at times and places in history where they never get to hear the Gospel, but God will judge them on the basis of how they respond to the light that they do have. So it will be based upon how we respond to the light that we have and the grace that God has given to every person in those circumstances. For very tiny children or infants, I would say that they haven't reached an age of moral accountability and therefore the grace of God would be extended to them if they die in infancy before they reach an age at which they can be held morally responsible for their choices.

MODERATOR 2: If God is using our free choices to serve as means to fulfilling his purpose, does this suggest that our choices are predetermined and therefore not so free.

DR. CRAIG: No, not at all. Here I would commend to you the school of thought called Molinism. You can read about this on our website at ReasonableFaith.org, or in my book The Only Wise God, chapter thirteen on middle knowledge. The idea of this theology is that God, prior to creating the world, knew how any free creature would freely choose in any set of circumstances God might place him. So, for example, he knew how you would choose if you had been the governor of Judea at the time of Christ and Christ was brought before you to judgment. He knew how you would behave if you had been in Peter’s shoes in the garden – whether you would have denied Christ three times. So by placing people in circumstances in the world, God can sovereignly direct the course of human history but without determining the choices of the people themselves. The people in the circumstances in which they are placed are entirely free to do as they want, but God knows how they would freely choose in those circumstances. So he's never caught off guard or by surprise. His plans are achieved through the free decisions of human beings, but he doesn't determine what those choices are.

MODERATOR 2: We're going to take a live question right here. By the way, we do have some refreshments right after this, and there's a book table that you can make your way to the lobby and enjoy making some friends. Please make your question concise and to the point.

QUESTION: Dr. Craig, my question is about the moral argument in the first premise. In regards to a Platonic Good, could you just respond to why a Platonic Good is not a possible explanation?

DR. CRAIG: Do you remember the moral argument’s first premise was that if God does not exist then objective moral values and duties do not exist. An alternative to theism as a source of objective moral values and duties would be what's called Platonism. On Platonism, these moral values exist as sort of abstract objects – kind of like numbers or sets or mathematical objects. So Justice just exists. Or Loyalty just exists. Or Love just exists as this abstraction. While that would provide a basis for objective moral values, I lay out in my book Reasonable Faith three objections to what I call atheistic moral platonism. I'll just rehearse them very rapidly here. First, I find the view unintelligible. I know what it means to say a person is just, but I draw a complete blank when I'm told that Justice just exists as a sort of abstraction. I do not understand it. Secondly, Platonism doesn't provide any basis for moral obligation. Duties arise as a result of imperatives issued by a competent authority. But on Platonism, although you've got these abstract values, you presumably got abstract vices as well like Greed, Rapacity, Hatred, and Selfishness. What obligates me to align my life with one set of these abstract objects rather than the other? I can't see that there's any basis for moral obligation. Finally, number three, because these abstract entities are causally unconnected with the world, that means that there is this incredible cosmic coincidence that just that sort of creature would have emerged from the blind evolutionary process that corresponds to this abstractly existing moral realm. And that seems utterly incredible when you think about it. It seems far more plausible to think that there is both a moral lawgiver and a giver of the natural laws so that these two mesh because they're under the hegemony or the sovereignty of a single creator and moral lawgiver.

QUESTION: I promise to keep this short. I just wanted to say first, Dr. Craig, I'm so grateful for your ministry, and it's greatly impacted my life. After my question, if I could please come up and just shake your hand, I'd really appreciate that. I just wanted to say you spoke about this briefly yesterday at your talk at U of T. It was brought up during the talk. How would you respond, if you could expound on it, to an atheist or agnostic who says, “I don't need God to find meaning in my life. I find what happens to me in the moment very fulfilling.” Or “I'm able to find that meaning.” How would you respond to somebody like that?

DR. CRAIG: What I would say is that that person is confusing psychological meaning with objective meaning. Of course you can find psychological meaning in life. You can make it your goal to hit 60 home runs in a single season, or you can make it your goal to marry a beautiful starlet or something of that. And that can be the meaning of your life. But that is purely psychological. I'm convinced that it's only by treating those psychological things as though they were real and objective that a person is able to live happily. If he really thought that his life was worthless, pointless, purposeless then these illusions wouldn't be enough to get through happily in life. It's only by treating these illusions as though they were real that he's able to manage in life.

QUESTION: You used free will to explain the origin of suffering and evil. However, I want to ask how do we explain that in the context that in the new heavens and earth God is able to create a world where our free will is intact and at the same time there is no more suffering and evil? So why didn't God just create our world like the new heavens and earth in the first place?

DR. CRAIG: OK. Excellent question. I suspect that there will not be freedom of the will to sin in heaven. I think that once the veil is removed and we no longer see through a glass darkly but see face-to-face that the beauty of Christ and the clear image of God will be so overwhelmingly attractive and beautiful that our freedom to sin will be effectively removed. So what God has done is created us, so to speak, at an arm's length during this lifetime that permits us the freedom to choose for or against him, and then that epistemic distance will be removed. We will see him face-to-face, and then our wills in effect will be sealed forever. So there's never any danger that someone in heaven might sin or fall away. Obviously, that couldn't have been done first because then there would be no freedom. You need to have that veil of decision-making that will precede this beatific vision of the essence of God as the preamble toward entering into that blessed state.

QUESTION: In the video it said that God uses pain and suffering to draw people to himself. I'm wondering what would you say to an atheist who asks, “What kind of God is the Christian God then that created the type of free human so susceptible to evil that God needs to use suffering as a main means to draw people to himself?”

DR. CRAIG: I would say it's a tremendously loving God. Incredibly loving that he would allow us to have physical pain, affliction, hardship in order to find eternal life and an incommensurable good forever. A God who wasn't willing to go to those lengths doesn't really love us very much, but God is willing to go to those sorts of lengths in order to bring us to himself. When we reach heaven, no matter what we've suffered, if we look back we'll say, “I would have gone through it a million, million, million times over in order to know this joy and this happiness.”

QUESTION: This question is actually coming from the Middle East – from Jordan. A person was able to tune in yesterday to watch the debate. She's asking this. You finished your opening statement with these words, “Therefore, it seems to me that even if the evidence for theism and atheism were absolutely equal, a rational person ought to choose theism. It seems to me positively irrational to prefer death, futility, and despair to life, meaningfulness, and happiness. Therefore, my advice is: go with God. As Pascal said, we have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.” She says, “Now, I want to know this. Can you call this a true faith? Isn't it a game of probability? Like if you're smart enough or rational, you would choose the safe side. Does God accept this kind of faith? Thank you.”

DR. CRAIG: I see nothing the matter with using your intellect to calculate probabilities or to see where your interest lies. So, yes, this is true faith. What I was suggesting is that if the scales of the evidence are absolutely equal so that you don't know whether to believe or not to believe, if the evidence is perfectly balanced it seems to me that the rational thing to do would be to believe in God because it would be positively irrational in such a condition to prefer death, futility, and despair over life, meaningfulness, and happiness. That just seems to me to be obvious. I don't see any incompatibility between that sort of calculation and genuine faith in God.

MODERATOR 2: It's been a wonderful evening. On behalf of the organizers and on behalf of Dr. Craig here and all of the guests, we want to express our appreciation to you, Dr. Craig.

DR. CRAIG: Thank you.