Does the Problem of Evil Make God Unlikely?

[Anderson] Evil and suffering is a big one,  and I’d be interested in your perspectives on   that. You hear people say that particularly the  Abrahamic God, who’s all-powerful and all-knowing   and all good, and you’ve just made a reference  to that yourself, the locus of all good things,

[yes] now there’s the atheistic argument from  evil. And it basically runs that if there   is such a God, and look I don’t want to sound  unsympathetic about this; it’s a big challenge   evil is a big problem, just as I described exists,  then, there’d be no evil or or suffering. But  

There is a lot of evil and suffering in the world,  therefore there can’t be a God, or certainly not   a Christian God. So where do philosophers in  general come out on that question of suffering, and where do you land? [Craig] Well historically  for centuries atheistic philosophers have defended  

The view that the existence of the suffering and  evil in the world is logically incompatible with   the existence of God. And now on the contemporary  scene, this has really changed; virtually no one   defends the logical version of the problem of  evil anymore, and the reason is that it lays upon  

The shoulders of the atheist a burden of proof  that is so heavy that no one has been able to   sustain it. The atheist would have to  prove that there is no logically possible   reason that God could have for permitting  the evil and suffering in the world,  

And no one can prove such a thing. So those who  do defend the problem of evil today have retreated   from the logical version of the problem to the  so-called probabilistic version of the problem,   where the claim is that given the evil and  suffering in the world, it’s improbable that  

God exists, if not impossible. And the difficulty  with this version of the problem is that it makes   probability judgments that are simply beyond  our ability. There is no basis for thinking   that if God has morally sufficient reasons for  permitting the evil and suffering in the world  

That these should be evident to me. For example,  every event that occurs in human history sends a   ripple effect through history, such that God’s  morally sufficient reasons for permitting it   might not emerge until centuries from now, perhaps  in another country. An illustration of this would  

Be the so-called butterfly effect in contemporary  physics. It’s been shown that the fluttering of   a butterfly’s wings on a twig in West Africa can  set in motion forces that will eventually produce   a hurricane over the Atlantic Ocean, and yet no  one watching that little butterfly on the branch  

Could possibly predict such an outcome. These  kinds of probability judgments are just beyond   our capacity. And similarly, when we see some  instance of suffering and evil in the world,   we are simply not in a position to say with any  sort of confidence God probably doesn’t have  

A morally sufficient reason for permitting that to  occur. A second point that needs to be made here   is that when one’s talking about probabilities,  then you’ve also got to consider on the other   side of the scale, what is the probability  that God does exist? And here I would offer  

A multiple considerations that I think make  it quite probable that there is in fact a   transcendent creator and designer of the universe,  despite any improbability that the suffering in   the world might throw upon the existence of  God. [Anderson] Interestingly, I’ve never  

Forgotten the story, a true story, about a young  university student in Scotland not long after well   probably I suspect during the Depression years,  things were grim, and he knocked on the door,   of a small cottage that was opened, there was  a returned serviceman from the first World War,  

And when he realized the young man wanted to  talk to him about God he said go away, he said   I was in the trenches in France and  I stopped believing in God when I saw   all that evil. And the young man said to him  I respect that that must have been terrible,  

And I certainly won’t pester you, but  can I just make the observation that   I wonder if I’d been there I might  not have stopped believing in man   rather than stop believing in God. And the old  man looked at him, tears welled up near his eyes,  

And he said you better come in; we need to talk  about this. It’s an interesting take on evil. I   sometimes think that one of our problems is we’re  not self-reflective enough. [Craig] Yes one of the   major developments in philosophy with respect to  this problem is the so-called free will defense,  

In which philosophers I think have been able to  show that it’s neither improbable nor impossible   that every world that God would create that  would involve this much good, this much moral   goodness, would also involve this much moral  evil freely perpetrated by human free agents,  

So that ultimately the blame lies  at man’s threshold and not at God’s. oh

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