Tag Archives: God

Evil, Pain, and Suffering, General Apologetics

The Problem of Evil

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Post Author:  Darrell

One common atheist argument against Christianity is known as The Problem of Evil. It can be stated as follows.

1)  God is said to be omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2)  If God is omnipotent, He has the power to defeat evil.
3)  If God is omniscient, He knows when and where evil exists.
4)  If God is morally perfect, He wants to destroy evil.
5)  Yet evil exists.
6)  Therefore, God does not exist.

There are several responses open to the classical theist in response to this objection. I am fond of one of Dr. Norman Geisler’s responses.  He says the atheist has overlooked an important factor, and as a result, the argument can be restated with a different conclusion.

1)  God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.
2)  Being omnipotent, He has the power to defeat evil.
3)  Being omniscient, He knows when and where evil exists.
4)  Being morally perfect, He wants to defeat evil.
5)  “Therefore, evil will yet be defeated. It is a fact that an all-good, all-powerful God assures us that this will happen. In short, since God is both all-good and all-powerful, evil will be defeated” (Geisler, Systematic Theology Volume 2, 161).

I discovered another response to this argument in a recent Seminary class of mine.  It states that the atheist’s fourth premise is faulty as God is not morally perfect.  In fact, to say that God is morally perfect is to hold that there is a principle to which God must adhere, i.e., there is something which transcends God.  However, if there is a principle which transcends God, then God cannot truly be said to be God.  Instead, the principle to which God is held is God. 

Traditional Christianity teaches that God transcends all, i.e., there is nothing which is greater than Him.  He created all things, and there is nothing that is outside of His power or dominion.  Since God is the greatest of all, there is nothing by which He can be measured.  As a result, God cannot be said to be morally perfect; instead He is Good.  More appropriately, He is Good Itself.  God does not have a standard to live up to because He is The Standard by which all else is judged.  Consequently, the atheist’s argument has a faulty premise, makes incorrect assumptions about God, and is inappropriate and inapplicable to God.

Darrell

Philosophy, Theology, Top Ten Posts of 2009

Can God Make a Rock So Big He Can’t Lift It? – #1 Post of 2009

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

This is a common question that is asked by those who misunderstand the nature of God’s omnipotence.  Another humorous way of asking this question is: Can God make a sandwich so big he can’t eat it?  (I owe that jewel to my friend Greg).

When Christians claim that God is omnipotent (all-powerful), they do not mean that he can do anything.  We mean that God can do anything that is actually possible.  God’s omnipotence exists in concert with all of his other attributes, not as a stand-alone attribute.  Therefore, when we don’t understand the other attributes of God, we get stumped by questions like this.   Here is a brief list of some things God cannot do, based on his other attributes:

  1. cease to exist – a being whose very nature is being cannot cease to be; that’s impossible
  2. love evil – a being who is all-good cannot love evil; that’s impossible
  3. make a copy of himself – God is infinite, and two infinite beings cannot exist; that’s impossible
  4. change his nature – an unchanging (immutable) being cannot change; that’s impossible

So why can’t he make a rock so big he can’t lift it?  Simple.  God is infinite, and there can only be one infinite being (see number 3 above).  If there were two infinite beings, then neither would really be infinite because they would each be limited by the other.  But an infinite being has no limits, so they can’t both be infinite.

If a rock is created that cannot be moved by an infinite being, then that rock must be infinite.  But if we have an infinite being and an infinite rock, we have two infinite beings.  That is, as we said a moment ago, a logical impossibility.

Once we understand what infinity means (without limit) and once we understand that God cannot violate the laws of logic (which are based on his own nature), then we can easily understand how God cannot make a rock so big he can’t lift it.  It’s like asking one infinite being to create another infinite being.  Not possible!!

Love, Morality

What Does a Loving Person Look Like?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

This post is a little bit off the beat and path for Tough Questions Answered, but here goes anyway!

A couple nights ago, famed author and speaker Gary Chapman spoke at our church about his recent research and book project.  The subject was how to live a loving life.  Chapman interviewed people and asked them who the most loving people were that they knew.  He then asked them what it was about those people that made them loving.  He found that he could group their answers into 7 categories.

The first category is kindness.  Kindness is doing or saying something that is beneficial to others.

The second category is patience.  Patience is accepting the imperfections of others.

The third category is forgiveness .  Forgiveness is the ability to release someone who has wronged you to the justice of God, and not continue to hold on to the pain they caused you.

The fourth category is courtesy.  Courtesy is good manners and polite behavior.  Chapman listed several examples of courtesy, such as saying “thank you,” asking others if they need help, or looking people in the eye when you talk to them.  He stressed that the best way to be courteous is to think of every person you encounter as your friend.  We don’t treat friends badly, but we often are discourteous to strangers.

The fifth category is humility.  According to Chapman, humility is “stepping down so others can step up.”  Put others’ interests before your own.  Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.

The sixth category is generosity.  Generosity is the giving of your time, abilities, and money to help others.

The seventh category is honesty.  Honesty is, quite simply, telling the truth, even when you know it might hurt the person you’re speaking to.

If you want to be a loving person, and every Christian should, then these are the areas for you to work on.  I know I need to work on them, and I thought maybe I would share them with you, so that you, too, could become a more loving person.  With Christ’s help, it’s possible!

Religion

Can All Religions Be True?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If you actually know anything substantive about major world religions, you know the answer to this question is an emphatic “no.”

The only people claiming that all religions are the same or that all religions are equally true are those people who know little to nothing about world religions, or who are unable to do a little bit of critical thinking.

The major religions of the world profess profoundly different views of the nature of God, the nature of man, the afterlife, the source of evil, and a host of other weighty topics.  It is true that the ethical teachings contained in major religions have some commonality, but ethics are but one portion of what constitutes a religion’s core beliefs.

If you are a Christian, then you believe that Jesus is the third person of the Triune God.  No other major world religion recognizes Jesus as God in this sense, so clearly somebody is wrong!  We can’t all be right because Jesus can’t both be God and not God at the same time and in the same sense.

If  Christians are right about Jesus being God, then other religions who deny this fact are wrong about who God is.  They get God wrong, in other words.  I would say that is a serious error which dramatically undermines the claim that all religions are true.

Atheism, Philosophy, Religion

Can Science Answer the Most Important Questions of Life?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Have you ever noticed that the most important questions in life cannot be conclusively answered by the scientific method of empirical observation and experimentation?

We can use science to study the weather, to create wireless communication, to study the respiratory systems of whales, to better see the stars, to learn about soil erosion, to build skyscrapers, and to fly aircraft.

All of these subjects yield themselves to scientific investigation such that mankind can eventually come to know these areas in extraordinary detail and precision.  We just continue collecting data, analyzing data, and testing hypotheses – over and over again until we finally understand.

These subjects are all wonderful, in and of themselves, but they aren’t what’s truly important.  What about God, love, friendship, morality, heaven and hell, human consciousness, the meaning of life, the origin of the universe?  These are the questions that strike us in the middle of the night when a loved one is in the ICU at the hospital, or when we witness the birth of a child, or when we suffer financial ruin, or when we contemplate marrying the person we love, or when we just have some peace and quiet and can immerse ourselves in deep thought.

None of these questions ultimately lend themselves to the scientific method, but they are the most important questions.

My family loves the silly movie Nacho Libre.  In the movie, one of the characters is asked if he believes in God, and he answers, “I don’t believe in God.  I believe in science.”

It is fitting that the movie is a comedy because this response is truly comical.  The person who believes in only science is fundamentally punting on all the major questions of life.  They are saying, in effect, “We are going to limit ourselves to the lesser things of life, the things we can know with a high degree of scientific certainty.”

It’s comical, but it’s also sad.  What impoverished existence – cutting off oneself from the only things that ultimately matter.

Atheism, Free Will, Pantheism, Philosophy, Predestination, Theology

Does God Know What I Will Freely Do? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Yesterday, I posted on the issue of free will and God’s knowledge of of human free acts in the future.  This is an area the church has grappled with for centuries.  But how do other major worldviews deal with this issue?

Most atheists think they can avoid the issue by denying that God (or divine fate) exists.  Unfortunately, once you banish an ultimate mind as the source of the universe, you are only left with impersonal physical laws operating on matter and energy.

So free will, for the atheist, is just an illusion that our highly evolved brain gives us.  Fundamentally, we are completely determined in our actions and choices by chemistry and physics, by the mechanistic movement of atomic particles .  Free will, under atheism, does not exist.  So the atheist does not really solve the problem of fate and free will.  He just rids us of both, thus denying that the problem is real.

Monistic Pantheists argue that all of earthly life is just an illusion, that we are actually part of one ultimate, impersonal being.  When we realize that we are part of this one ultimate being, the illusion of our individual lives ends as we merge with the ultimate being.

In this sense, our individual free will is also an illusion because we, ourselves, are an illusion.  The only thing that really exists is this ultimate, impersonal being.  Their solution to the problem is to affirm divine fate at the complete expense of human free will or even true human existence.

Oddly enough, even though the theistic God seems to cause problems with the existence of human free will, without a personal God, free will cannot exist!

The Christian concept of God allows for mind to precede and transcend matter, which allows human free will to exist, in opposition to atheism (who only believe matter exists).

Christians also recognize that individual people exist apart from God, in opposition to pantheism.  The concept of human free will cannot exist without individual humans truly existing.  This the Pantheists deny.

Even though we Christians struggle with this doctrine, as do other theistic religions, at the end of the day a personal God is the best ground and source for free will.  Get rid of God, and free will quickly vanishes.

Free Will, Philosophy, Predestination, Theology

Does God Know What I Will Freely Do? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Some people get hung up on the idea that God can know, for sure, what I will freely do in the future.  Their argument goes something like this:  if whatever God knows will certainly occur (as virtually all Christians agree), then either I am not free to act or God does not know what free acts I will perform in the future.

Some Christians take one horn of the dilemma and claim that humans are not really free because human free will would spell the end of God’s infallible knowledge and sovereignty over all creation.  They severely throttle back the meaning of free will to the point that most people would not recognize it any more.  These folks understand humans to be far more similar to animals, operating on instincts, impulses, and desires – all properties that God exercises direct control over.

Others grab the second horn of the dilemma and claim that God does not really know what free creatures will do in the future.  At best, he is making educated guesses, but he cannot know, for sure, what humans will do.  The future free acts of humans are unknown, even to God, until they are actually executed.

I, and most traditional Christians, reject both of these positions.  The Bible seems to clearly teach that God does infallibly know the future, including all free acts that will be performed, and that humans possess a robust free will.  Admittedly, it is difficult to hold these two concepts without tension, but Christian theologians have always done so.

Do we know precisely how God’s infallible knowledge of future free acts coordinates with human free will?  No, I don’t think so.  We always run into the intractable problem of an infinite being interacting with finite creatures.  God knows everything we will do and we are free to do those things, but I don’t think we can ever explain exactly how it works.  There is a mystery to it, but there is no contradiction.

It isn’t just Christians that have had to deal with this issue.  Throughout history, great thinkers have struggled with the seeming paradox of fate and freedom.  If all things are decreed as part of an unchangeable fate, then how is it that we humans are free to do anything?  Rather than toss one of these notions aside, many thinkers have proposed solutions to retain both realities – that some sort of divine fate exists along with human free will.  Two viewpoints – atheism and pantheism – have found other ways around the problem.

Check back tomorrow to see if their worldviews better deal with this problem.

Will of God

What is God's Will for You?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Ronnie Jones, a commenter on our blog, recently sent me some insight from John MacArthur about discovering God’s will for our lives.  It is simple and right to the point of the matter.  You may not agree with his view, but you have to deal with it, because MacArthur is a well-respected pastor and theologian.  Here is what he said, as quoted by Mr. Jones:

The will of God is not meant to be a secret we must uncover. God wants us to understand His will far more than we want to understand it. He always makes His will clear to those who seek it with an obedient heart.

Most of the real problem areas in the question of God’s will are settled for us in Scripture. The Bible reveals that it is God’s will for all of us to be:

Saved
(1 Timothy 2:3-4; 2 Peter 3:9)

Spirit-filled
(Ephesians 5:17-18)

Sanctified
(1 Thessalonians 4:3-7)

Submissive
(1 Peter 2:13-15)

Suffering
(Philippians 1:29; 2 Timothy 3:12)

If all those things are true in your life, you may do whatever you want. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.” That means that if you are conforming to God’s will in all the five ways listed above, He will place in your heart desires that reflect His will. So do what you want to do!

Atheism, Religion, Skeptics

Is God a Crutch?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Critics of Christianity and of religion, in general, like to take a page from Sigmund Freud and accuse believers of forming their beliefs for purely psychological reasons.  Freud held that believers are projecting their need for a father figure on God.  God is merely a psychological projection of the ideal father.  God, in other words, is just a crutch for those who can’t face the difficulties of life.  Larry King once asked a Christian pastor if Christianity was a crutch, and the pastor replied, “No, I see it as more of a hospital.  We are all in serious condition and desperately need help!”

Are there psychological reasons for belief in God?  Of course there are.  There are psychological reasons for everything we do and everything we believe, but this fact has nothing to say about whether God really exists.  That, my friends, is an entirely different question.

I may very much want to believe that my wife loves me, for psychological reasons, but does the fact that I have this need prove my wife does not love me?  No.  It just doesn’t follow.  Likewise, I may yearn for a heavenly father, but does my yearning prove he doesn’t exist.  Obviously not.

Christians may have their psychological reasons for wanting God to exist, but atheists have their psychological reasons for wanting God to not exist.  According to Paul Vitz, a psychologist who has extensively studied the psychology of atheism, many atheists don’t believe in God because they have unresolved hatred for their earthly father figure.  I have seen this in my friends who are atheists.  Philosopher J. P. Moreland recounts his experience: “I have spoken on more than 200 college campuses and in more than 40 states in the last 40 years, and it has become apparent to me that atheists regularly have deep-seated, unresolved emotional conflicts with their father figures.”

Moreland continues to explain a second psychological reason for atheism.  “People want to be liberated from traditional morality so they can engage in any sexual behavior that satisfies them without guilt, shame, or condemnation.”  If you are a person who is engaged in all sorts of illicit sexual activity, it is absolutely in your interest to reject God.  A few atheists that have visited this blog have admitted that they enjoy sexual pursuits that Christians would find objectionable.  They argue that what they are doing is harmless, and that any religion which tells them the opposite cannot be true.

There are undoubtedly other reasons for denying God’s existence, but the point is that atheists, like believers, have psychological motives.  We all do.

What do we do with this information?  Well, first of all, we should all look within ourselves and reflect on what our motivations are.  Let’s face them and not deny them.

But let’s all remember that at the end of the day, all of these psychological reasons are not ultimately why we should believe or disbelieve.  Our view of God should be based on solid, rational arguments.  We should all know why we believe what we believe and we should stop accusing those who disagree with us of being completely irrational.  It gets us nowhere.

Debating psychology will never determine whether God exists or not, or whether Jesus was resurrected from the dead.  Psychology can only tell us some of the motives for our beliefs.  While that is interesting, it is not the most important question.