The Matter of an All-Loving God... and EVIL
In the last argument I published, I ended with this quote worth repeating: "The argument for atheism from evil is also strong because it is based on a strong premise, on universally acknowledged data which is open to immediate daily experience - namely, the fact that there is evil. The reality of evil seems logically incompatible with the reality of an all-good, all-powerful God." (1)
Speaking of experience, my experiences with talking with other people and thinking about such a problem has led me to dissect it in a way. The "problem of pain" as it is so-called can be so attractive because of the strong and genuine emotions wrapped up in a human's soul. But of course atheists who argue their side from the existence of evil don't rest their case on feelings (if they did, they would be guilty of what they can so often accuse Christians of!). So, they posit the question straight from their minds: why doesn't God stop all the emotionally heart-wrenching and physically gut-wrenching events in the world?
This had led me to create what I call the "cold, hard, intellectual response to pain." It is labeled as such, because if I have learned anything from Christian books, it's this: what mother who just lost her child is going to want a reason more than empathy? I think specifically of Randy Alcorn's If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil, Ravi Zacharias' Cries of the Heart: Bringing God Near When He Feels So Far, and Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity.
I offer that response first to neutralize the atheists objection. Then, I move into emotional aspects and results of the atheistic view. (Now I pause to add that feelings never take the place of cool logic when it comes to determining truth. Part of being human means having emotions, so they can be a motive to considering worldviews, but never fill the shoes of a follow-through conclusion untainted by non-reasoning distractions [such as feelings].)
"The man who wants to be loved does not desire the enslavement of the beloved. He is not bent on becoming the object of passion, which flows forth mechanically. He does not want to possess an automaton, and if we want to humiliate him, we need try to only persuade him that the beloved's passion is the result of a psychological determinism. The lover will then feel that both his love and his being are cheapened. ... If the beloved is transformed into an automaton, the lover finds himself alone." (2)
That is still true today. Humans brought evil into earthly creation, and so God cursed it. Furthermore, God wants those to actually choose Him; He's not going to force people to do good things and not evil, because that would essentially be an act of divine rape.
Randy Alcorn explains,"You won't find the strongest Christian churches in the world in affluent America or Europe, where the problem of evil has the most traction. In Sudan, Christians are severely persecuted... Yet many have a vibrant faith in Christ. People living in Garbage Village in Cairo make up one of the largest churches in Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of India's poor are turning to Christ. Why? Because the caste system and fatalism of Hinduism give them no answers. So they turn to a personal God who loves them and understands suffering. I have interviewed numbers of people who take comfort in knowing that this life is the closest they will ever come to Hell." (3)
Corrie ten Boom was a survivor of the holocaust and released from a concentration camp. Her father, sister, brother, and nephew all perished in a concentration camp. Her sister, Betsie, said they should thank God even for the lice and fleas in their barracks because of 1 Thessalonians 5:18. Corrie refused to until she realized that the creatures made it possible for her to teach from reading the Bible to other prisoners unbothered by guards, who could have taken her forbidden Bible away, but they refused to enter because of the vermin (4).
If people were comfortable all the time, why ever consider God? C.S. Lewis once said something like, "Some people must be knocked flat on their back if they are ever to turn their eyes to heaven." Which turns us to my final points.
Now this doesn't mean that God hasn't revealed to us anything about why He allows pain to happen. While the specifics of His plan may be hidden from us, His goal is clear: after death, He has a wonderful place called heaven waiting for all those who will come to Him. They will never again return to evil. How our view about suffering might change if we took the spotlight off of this temporary life!
"One of Corrie ten Boom's favorite analogies was that God is weaving together a beautiful tapestry. While he sees from above the magnificence of his creation, we see the knots and tangles on the underside. But one day we will be with God and see the topside of the tapestry. This is an analogy for God decreeing, not only permitting, for a master weaver doesn't merely permit threads, he carefully chooses and weaves them. Corrie ten Boom never denied evil or suffering in the concentration camp, and neither should we. But God can weave the tapestry despite evil and suffering, and can even use them to create a finished work of startling beauty. One day we will behold it." (5)
World's leading Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias explains: "God can allow such events to happen, for He alone can restore life through those tragedies and reveal the destructiveness of sin through tragedies, being perfect in His decisions, pure in His reason, and able to give strength to those who seek His comfort. We cannot claim such absoluteness. Our characters are not pure. Our decisions can easily be based on wrong information and wrong motives. Is this not the reason the law exists and powers are established in the land, so that each individual does not have the right to avenge every wrong? Even so, we see how states and governments can err with all the measures the law takes to protect the innocent." (6)
The key point to the "cold, hard, intellectual answer to pain" is this: combine reasons for God to allow suffering along with examples of how humans are able to believe in Him when faced with suffering, you can neutralize the atheistic "problem of pain" argument. There is not nearly a shortage of stories about how God has used suffering to lead others to Him and cause good.
In a philosophy journal article, Nielsen expands on the "basis" for making a moral claim, seemingly contradicting himself: "We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons should not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn't decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me. ... Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality." (8)
(Here I pause to say that I am not attempting to paint atheists in a bad light. While atheists in my experience usually are very moral like all other people, my point is only that unfortunately for them, denying God leaves no grounds for objective morality.)
The thing is, morality is an ought not and an ought to. Ought to's are things that should happen to make things the way they are supposed to be, and ought not's are things that should not happen and make things the way they are not supposed to be (this may sound like preschool logic but it is important I spell this out).
The thing is, with no Mind behind the universe, there can be no way things are supposed to be. Things just happened the way they did, and humans came about by an amoral process. It is at the very end of the the creation and formation of the universe and its inhabitants that certain ideas about how things should be start to appear, and they cannot go back in time and make things so.
Famous Oxford zoologist atheist Richard Dawkins put it quite nicely: "In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music." (9)
Things just happened that way, and there was no underlying plan. Just pure, mindless, emotionless chance doing pointless stuff. But in Christianity, you begin with a God with a will and a nature. That nature is love, and His will has grounded logic as beyond human opinion. Thus, you start out with a Being who creates with an intent AND has an unchanging definition of how things should be based on the nature of the source of all existence, namely Him.
As late famous Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer posited: "There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values. If there is no absolute beyond man's idea, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict." (10)
There is completely no lack of this view in highly credible atheistic circles. Leading sociobiologist Micheal Ruse wrote: "Morality is a biological adaption no less than are hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction ... and any deeper meaning is illusory." (11)
William Provine of Cornell University said in a debate: "Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear. ... There are no gods, no purposes. ... There is no life after death. ... There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans." (12)
A man named Loyal D. Rue gave an address to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in 1991 titled“The Saving Grace of Noble Lies.” A Noble lie is one that “deceives us, tricks us, compels us beyond self-interest, beyond ego, beyond family, nation [and] race.” It is a lie because it tells us that the universe is infused with value (which is a great fiction), because it makes a claim to a universal truth (when there is none), and because it tells me not to live for self-interest (which is evidently false). “But without such lies, we cannot live.” (13)
A postscript to a satirical poem reads like this:
10. Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, L'Abri 50th Anniversary Edition (1976; Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 145. Cited in Rice Broocks, God's Not Dead (Thomas Nelson: Nashville, TN. 2013), 40.
11. Michael Ruse, "Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics," in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), 262-269. Cited in Paul Copan and Ronald K. Tacelli, Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and Gerd Ludemann (InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL. 2000), 204; Corey Miller, Lynn K. Wilder, VInce Eccles, and Latayne C. Scott, Leaving Mormonism: Why Four Scholars Changed Their Minds (Kregel: Grand Rapids, MI. 2017), 283.
12. William Provine (transcript of a debate with Phillip E. Johnson, Stanford university, Palo Alto, CA, April 30, 1994). Cited in Randy Alcorn, If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil (Eternal Perspective Ministries: 2009), 111; cf. Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2004), 16-17.
Speaking of experience, my experiences with talking with other people and thinking about such a problem has led me to dissect it in a way. The "problem of pain" as it is so-called can be so attractive because of the strong and genuine emotions wrapped up in a human's soul. But of course atheists who argue their side from the existence of evil don't rest their case on feelings (if they did, they would be guilty of what they can so often accuse Christians of!). So, they posit the question straight from their minds: why doesn't God stop all the emotionally heart-wrenching and physically gut-wrenching events in the world?
My thought processing has resulted in distinguishing the pro-atheist argument into two different aspects: the emotional problem of feeling unloved and the intellectual problem of why a loving God would allow people to experience pain.
This had led me to create what I call the "cold, hard, intellectual response to pain." It is labeled as such, because if I have learned anything from Christian books, it's this: what mother who just lost her child is going to want a reason more than empathy? I think specifically of Randy Alcorn's If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil, Ravi Zacharias' Cries of the Heart: Bringing God Near When He Feels So Far, and Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity.
I offer that response first to neutralize the atheists objection. Then, I move into emotional aspects and results of the atheistic view. (Now I pause to add that feelings never take the place of cool logic when it comes to determining truth. Part of being human means having emotions, so they can be a motive to considering worldviews, but never fill the shoes of a follow-through conclusion untainted by non-reasoning distractions [such as feelings].)
The "Cold, Hard, Intellectual Response to Pain"
Free Will & the Nature of Love
What makes love so attractive is that someone decided to take the option that is beneficial for someone else, rather than a different option. This is what happened in the garden of Eden: God made two people and said, "You are free." He walked with His two greatest creations in a perfect place, but then they decided to do wrong. Had God made them unable to freely choose, they wouldn't really love Him: they would just be a robot, basically. Atheist Jean-Paul Satre put it quite nicely:"The man who wants to be loved does not desire the enslavement of the beloved. He is not bent on becoming the object of passion, which flows forth mechanically. He does not want to possess an automaton, and if we want to humiliate him, we need try to only persuade him that the beloved's passion is the result of a psychological determinism. The lover will then feel that both his love and his being are cheapened. ... If the beloved is transformed into an automaton, the lover finds himself alone." (2)
That is still true today. Humans brought evil into earthly creation, and so God cursed it. Furthermore, God wants those to actually choose Him; He's not going to force people to do good things and not evil, because that would essentially be an act of divine rape.
Look Up
Furthermore, since evil -- sin -- has entered the world, God needs to cause others to look toward Him so they can be freed from the evil in them and that they cause.Randy Alcorn explains,"You won't find the strongest Christian churches in the world in affluent America or Europe, where the problem of evil has the most traction. In Sudan, Christians are severely persecuted... Yet many have a vibrant faith in Christ. People living in Garbage Village in Cairo make up one of the largest churches in Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of India's poor are turning to Christ. Why? Because the caste system and fatalism of Hinduism give them no answers. So they turn to a personal God who loves them and understands suffering. I have interviewed numbers of people who take comfort in knowing that this life is the closest they will ever come to Hell." (3)
Corrie ten Boom was a survivor of the holocaust and released from a concentration camp. Her father, sister, brother, and nephew all perished in a concentration camp. Her sister, Betsie, said they should thank God even for the lice and fleas in their barracks because of 1 Thessalonians 5:18. Corrie refused to until she realized that the creatures made it possible for her to teach from reading the Bible to other prisoners unbothered by guards, who could have taken her forbidden Bible away, but they refused to enter because of the vermin (4).
If people were comfortable all the time, why ever consider God? C.S. Lewis once said something like, "Some people must be knocked flat on their back if they are ever to turn their eyes to heaven." Which turns us to my final points.
Limited Understanding & Eternity
Maybe you've heard this before: God is God, and we are not. What it means is that God may have some goals, some knowledge, that we don't, and we don't need to, know. This can definitely appear to be a weak, superficial unsatisfactory answer, and I believe by itself it would be. If this was the only reason I received to believe in God despite suffering, I wouldn't buy it. But the reality is that God is God and we are not, as has always been the case, and always will be the case.Now this doesn't mean that God hasn't revealed to us anything about why He allows pain to happen. While the specifics of His plan may be hidden from us, His goal is clear: after death, He has a wonderful place called heaven waiting for all those who will come to Him. They will never again return to evil. How our view about suffering might change if we took the spotlight off of this temporary life!
"One of Corrie ten Boom's favorite analogies was that God is weaving together a beautiful tapestry. While he sees from above the magnificence of his creation, we see the knots and tangles on the underside. But one day we will be with God and see the topside of the tapestry. This is an analogy for God decreeing, not only permitting, for a master weaver doesn't merely permit threads, he carefully chooses and weaves them. Corrie ten Boom never denied evil or suffering in the concentration camp, and neither should we. But God can weave the tapestry despite evil and suffering, and can even use them to create a finished work of startling beauty. One day we will behold it." (5)
World's leading Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias explains: "God can allow such events to happen, for He alone can restore life through those tragedies and reveal the destructiveness of sin through tragedies, being perfect in His decisions, pure in His reason, and able to give strength to those who seek His comfort. We cannot claim such absoluteness. Our characters are not pure. Our decisions can easily be based on wrong information and wrong motives. Is this not the reason the law exists and powers are established in the land, so that each individual does not have the right to avenge every wrong? Even so, we see how states and governments can err with all the measures the law takes to protect the innocent." (6)
The key point to the "cold, hard, intellectual answer to pain" is this: combine reasons for God to allow suffering along with examples of how humans are able to believe in Him when faced with suffering, you can neutralize the atheistic "problem of pain" argument. There is not nearly a shortage of stories about how God has used suffering to lead others to Him and cause good.
The Emotional Aspect between Evil and God
There are some things which we just know are wrong, right? For instance, leading atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen used a popular example in his debate against J.P. Moreland, "It's wrong, God or no God, to torture little children for the fun of it. What basis we have for making that confident moral claim is another thing, but we know, if we know anything, if we have any moral understanding at all, that that is wrong." (7)
My point is this. Emotions tend to flare when something we believe is evil happens to someone we love, don't they? That's why it can be easy to point fingers at God and say He's not real: these things that shouldn't happen and He supposedly condemns are happening to the human race on a daily basis. However, my discoveries have led to an awkward predicament for such a view. Real, objective morality cannot be defined -- just cannot be -- apart from God.
My point is this. Emotions tend to flare when something we believe is evil happens to someone we love, don't they? That's why it can be easy to point fingers at God and say He's not real: these things that shouldn't happen and He supposedly condemns are happening to the human race on a daily basis. However, my discoveries have led to an awkward predicament for such a view. Real, objective morality cannot be defined -- just cannot be -- apart from God.
In a philosophy journal article, Nielsen expands on the "basis" for making a moral claim, seemingly contradicting himself: "We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons should not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn't decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me. ... Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality." (8)
(Here I pause to say that I am not attempting to paint atheists in a bad light. While atheists in my experience usually are very moral like all other people, my point is only that unfortunately for them, denying God leaves no grounds for objective morality.)
The thing is, morality is an ought not and an ought to. Ought to's are things that should happen to make things the way they are supposed to be, and ought not's are things that should not happen and make things the way they are not supposed to be (this may sound like preschool logic but it is important I spell this out).
The thing is, with no Mind behind the universe, there can be no way things are supposed to be. Things just happened the way they did, and humans came about by an amoral process. It is at the very end of the the creation and formation of the universe and its inhabitants that certain ideas about how things should be start to appear, and they cannot go back in time and make things so.
Famous Oxford zoologist atheist Richard Dawkins put it quite nicely: "In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no other good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music." (9)
Things just happened that way, and there was no underlying plan. Just pure, mindless, emotionless chance doing pointless stuff. But in Christianity, you begin with a God with a will and a nature. That nature is love, and His will has grounded logic as beyond human opinion. Thus, you start out with a Being who creates with an intent AND has an unchanging definition of how things should be based on the nature of the source of all existence, namely Him.
As late famous Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer posited: "There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values. If there is no absolute beyond man's idea, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict." (10)
There is completely no lack of this view in highly credible atheistic circles. Leading sociobiologist Micheal Ruse wrote: "Morality is a biological adaption no less than are hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction ... and any deeper meaning is illusory." (11)
William Provine of Cornell University said in a debate: "Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear. ... There are no gods, no purposes. ... There is no life after death. ... There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans." (12)
A man named Loyal D. Rue gave an address to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in 1991 titled“The Saving Grace of Noble Lies.” A Noble lie is one that “deceives us, tricks us, compels us beyond self-interest, beyond ego, beyond family, nation [and] race.” It is a lie because it tells us that the universe is infused with value (which is a great fiction), because it makes a claim to a universal truth (when there is none), and because it tells me not to live for self-interest (which is evidently false). “But without such lies, we cannot live.” (13)
A postscript to a satirical poem reads like this:
If chance be
the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky,
and when you hear
State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
Bombs Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man,
worshiping his maker. (14)
Yikes! Is to deny God and admit this really the best answer to all the horrors of the world?
So what are we as humans supposed to do about evil?
If you've been paying close attention to my arguments, maybe you've noticed a lack of real offense. Sure, saying atheism makes evil not exist sounds like an attack, but how do we know evil does exist? As far as I know, there is no direct way to prove objective morality is real. It's not like truth, which must be used to deny itself. Moral statements aren't self-verifying. Really, atheism's inability to satisfy the human intuitive knowledge and strong desire for things to be right or wrong really can just serve as a strong motive to find an excuse to abandon (or not ever enter) atheism.
I do not have the slightest idea -- as I hope I never will and fortunately probably won't -- of experiencing evil Holocaust level, like Corrie ten Boom. But as a thinker, I go by what I do know, not what I don't. I live a life that is very spoiled compared to the lives of those low on the caste system in India and the like. Part of that life is being able to receive an education, both through public schooling and personal reading. Thus, if I receive intellectual reasons to believe in the power and sovereignty of God, this can enable me to believe that He is caring for those currently suffering this very moment, and knows what He's doing by allowing evil to happen.
Randy Alcorn said in the conclusion of his book If God is Good: "If you're considering whether you should believe in God, the problem of evil and suffering is only one issue -- don't overlook the others." (15)
I do not have the slightest idea -- as I hope I never will and fortunately probably won't -- of experiencing evil Holocaust level, like Corrie ten Boom. But as a thinker, I go by what I do know, not what I don't. I live a life that is very spoiled compared to the lives of those low on the caste system in India and the like. Part of that life is being able to receive an education, both through public schooling and personal reading. Thus, if I receive intellectual reasons to believe in the power and sovereignty of God, this can enable me to believe that He is caring for those currently suffering this very moment, and knows what He's doing by allowing evil to happen.
Randy Alcorn said in the conclusion of his book If God is Good: "If you're considering whether you should believe in God, the problem of evil and suffering is only one issue -- don't overlook the others." (15)
There is the cosmological argument from the universe's beginning, the transcendental argument from reason as presented in my last post, and the design argument from scientific evidence such as physics and biology, which all are used to support God's existence. But most importantly, as I have summarized on a google doc seen here, there is the creation of the Christian church: the resurrection of Jesus.
Dr. E Stanley Jones, a famed and noted missionary to India who was admired even by Mahatma Gandhi, used to tell the story of a devout Hindu government official to whom he was trying to explain Jesus's death and resurrection. But the man kept saying that he couldn't understand. One fateful day, he had an affair, and it tormented his conscious so much he had to tell his wife. She was deeply hurt, but managed to confess to him not only her gaping emotional wound (how much better it would have been to be physical!) but also her undying commitment and love. And suddenly, these words slipped out of his mouth: "Now I know what it means to see love crucified by sin." (16)
The point is this: Jesus is God, and He experienced an excruciatingly painful and elongated death (excruciating literally means "out of the cross"). Since Jesus is God, He also is love, and He also is perfect. Therefore, no amount of deaths of anyone else can ever match the intensity of the evil of His crucifixion. This is because all other humans are imperfect, with sins that are repugnant to the nature that defines good and evil. And if God can bring good out of the worst evil -- specifically raising Jesus back to life in a eternal glorified body which was raised to heaven and will never suffer -- then He also can bring good out of every other evil. The power of the Christian Gospel is why Randy Alcorn titled a chapter of his book "Jesus: The Only Answer Bigger Than the Questions." (17)
Which shows us how we need to look at the fact that there is evil in the world. We may not know what the answer to suffering is, but we do know what it is not: it is not because God does not love the human race. We need to hold fast to the truth that God is in control and will secure our place in eternity if we just believe in Jesus, and that He will work all things for our good (Romans 8:28). We need to believe that there is a meaning and purpose behind our suffering. As Jesus put it:
Which shows us how we need to look at the fact that there is evil in the world. We may not know what the answer to suffering is, but we do know what it is not: it is not because God does not love the human race. We need to hold fast to the truth that God is in control and will secure our place in eternity if we just believe in Jesus, and that He will work all things for our good (Romans 8:28). We need to believe that there is a meaning and purpose behind our suffering. As Jesus put it:
John 16:33 "I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
I now return to the scenario I mentioned at the beginning of this post. In an interview with Ph.D Peter John Kreeft, former atheist turned Christian (because of historical evidence) Lee Strobel asked him about how we should treat someone like a woman who lost her child due to something as simple as a lack of rain. He responded, not with an argument, but with -- well, just see for yourself:
I now return to the scenario I mentioned at the beginning of this post. In an interview with Ph.D Peter John Kreeft, former atheist turned Christian (because of historical evidence) Lee Strobel asked him about how we should treat someone like a woman who lost her child due to something as simple as a lack of rain. He responded, not with an argument, but with -- well, just see for yourself:
"We would want to be Jesus to her, to minister to her, to love her, to comfort her, to embrace her, to weep with her. Our love -- a reflection of God's love -- should spur us to help her and others who are hurting." (18)
Randy Alcorn was right. Jesus is the only answer bigger than the questions.
Citations:
1. J.P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist? The Debate Between Theists and Atheists (Prometheus Books:1993), 25.
2. Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Pocket Books, 1984), 478. Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message (Thomas Nelson: Nashvhile, TN. 2000), 118.
3. Randy Alcorn, If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil (Eternal Perspective Ministries: 2009), 102-103.
4. Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place (Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen Books, 2006), 210, 220.
5. Randy Alcorn, If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil (Eternal Perspective Ministries: 2009), 286.
6. Ravi Zacharias, Cries of the Heart: Bringing God Near When He Feels so Far (Thomas Nelson: Nashville, Tennessee. 2002), 215.
7. J.P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist? The Debate Between Theists and Atheists (Prometheus Books:1993), 99.
8. Kai Nielsen, "Why Should I Be Moral?" American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984): 90. Cited in Randy Alcorn, If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil (Eternal Perspective Ministries: 2009), 115.
9. Richard Dawkins, Out of Eden (Basic Books: New York 1992), 133. Cited in Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods, 114. 10. Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, L'Abri 50th Anniversary Edition (1976; Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 145. Cited in Rice Broocks, God's Not Dead (Thomas Nelson: Nashville, TN. 2013), 40.
11. Michael Ruse, "Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics," in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), 262-269. Cited in Paul Copan and Ronald K. Tacelli, Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and Gerd Ludemann (InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL. 2000), 204; Corey Miller, Lynn K. Wilder, VInce Eccles, and Latayne C. Scott, Leaving Mormonism: Why Four Scholars Changed Their Minds (Kregel: Grand Rapids, MI. 2017), 283.
12. William Provine (transcript of a debate with Phillip E. Johnson, Stanford university, Palo Alto, CA, April 30, 1994). Cited in Randy Alcorn, If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil (Eternal Perspective Ministries: 2009), 111; cf. Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2004), 16-17.
13. Loyal D. Rue, "The Saving Grace of Noble Lies," address to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, 1991. Cited in Copan and Tacelli, Jesus' Resurrection, 205; cf. Alcorn, If God is Good, 118.
14. Steve Turner, "Chance." Up to Date (London: Hodder & Stoughton). Cited in Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God? (Thomas Nelson: Nashville, TN. 1994), 214.
14. Steve Turner, "Chance." Up to Date (London: Hodder & Stoughton). Cited in Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God? (Thomas Nelson: Nashville, TN. 1994), 214.
15. Randy Alcorn, If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil (Eternal Perspective Ministries: 2009), 486.
16. Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God? (Thomas Nelson: Nashville, TN. 1994), 111.
17. Randy Alcorn, If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil (Eternal Perspective Ministries: 2009), 206.
18. Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI. 2000), 52.
16. Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God? (Thomas Nelson: Nashville, TN. 1994), 111.
17. Randy Alcorn, If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil (Eternal Perspective Ministries: 2009), 206.
18. Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI. 2000), 52.
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