DEBATE: Would God Allow Evil? | Michael Jones vs Alex O'Connor

hello and welcome to capture and Christianity my name is Cameron Bertuzzi I'm exposing you to the intellectual side of Christian belief and today I'm hosting a debate a formal debate between inspiring philosophy and cosmic skeptic on the question of would God allow evil maybe a better term for that would be would God allow suffering we'll get into that in just a moment so like I mentioned this is a formal debate so it's a timed formal debate we have a 15-minute openings first rebuttals or ten minutes second rebuttals or five minutes Q&A section is going to last for about 45 minutes long and then we're gonna have closings at the very end and so the total time is going to be around two hours but that's basically the structure of today's debate if you like videos like this you like the videos that I've been putting out in particular then make sure to subscribe to my youtube channel and turn on the Bell so you get notifications when I post new videos if you're interested in apologetics at all you'll probably like the other type of content that I post on my channel so just go ahead and do that while we're about to get started here so that's the basic structure for today if you don't know who my guests are that's a shame and you here's the thing here's the reality is that you're probably here because you know about them you don't necessarily know about me but either way let me go ahead and give a brief introduction of my guests here so cosmic skeptic his real name is Alex O'Connor cosmic skeptic might actually also be a real name I don't know if if we want to qualify that at all but he has 300 in checked it just now let me actually pull it up it was three hundred and forty-three thousand subscribers on his YouTube channel his YouTube channel is linked in the description he's a famous internet atheist is is that an appropriate title for you it's a dang it looks like we just we ran into some technical difficulties I can see inspiring philosophy but it looks like Alex kind of is going in and out ya know well let me say this because he's he'll be back there he is he's back but he said just one more thing about him so he's debated Frank Turek and and actually inspiring philosophy on the moral argument for God's existence and so both of those can be found on his YouTube channel actually I'm thinking about the your debate with IP I'm not sure if that's on your channel but either way you can find it on mine so he's debated both of these guys frank Turek their videos is almost at nine hundred thousand views so I was just checking out us crazy it's really cool yeah that's what I think quarantine period or something it just more people seem to be since you're watching it now yeah I just cut out my internet's being a bit funny at the moment i hope it doesn't cause any problems for the for the debate i'm also quite annoyed because i missed what sounded like maybe the beginning of you complimenting me and my channel and I'm upset that I missed it but hopefully you said nice things well actually I was kind of waiting for you to come back because of the outage or whatever but but yeah yeah the debate with Frank sure occurs has seen a lot of popularity and I've been in talks of trying to kind of speak to him again at some point and have it have another debate now that my moral worldview has shifted significantly and slightly but it debates are something that I'm trying to do more of because a lot of people say that debates are really bad and they're kind of useless because they're just shouting matches and things but I think that's got a lot to do with the way that they're conducted if we can reinvigorate the spirit of academic debate but keep it actually serious respectful and and well informed then I'd like to see a resurgence of the platform yeah I would like to see yeah what I was gonna say is I think that formal debates like the one that we're gonna do today are not as popular at least on youtube from what I've seen and so I would like to start to see more of those as well because there's different things that can happen in a formal debate as opposed to dialogue which I think most people are interested in the dialogue portion but still some very interesting things can happen in formal debate and I think that we'll see that for sure in this one well let me introduce inspiring philosophy real quick so he has a hundred and forty six thousand subscribers so he's not necessarily all the way to level of cosmic skeptic I don't think any of us are but maybe maybe one day we'll get there and so his most viewed video series actually is his his series on Genesis I think that's what you were telling me what is it at right now how many how many views does that series have I don't know how many the series has but like for example the video in Genesis 2 is about three hundred thousand and a lot of the videos have over 100,000 which I was shocked by because what I'm doing is I'm just going through Genesis 1 to Genesis 11 then doing a commentary on each chapter and trying to explain why it doesn't necessarily teach you on earth views and what is actually in there with regards to the cultural context but it's gotten pretty popular and I was surprised at how they get God yeah there's one thing I am starting to learn about YouTube is that the videos you think you're gonna do well end up not doing very well and it's the videos that you like you're like okay this videos maybe gonna get like a thousand views and then it gets you know five hundred thousand or however many it's like it's very difficult to predict how well a video is gonna do well anyways let's get into the debate so again 15-minute openings ten minute first rebuttals five-minute second rebuttals QA for four to five minutes and then two-minute closings so we're gonna start with inspiring philosophy I hope you guys are okay with with go ahead and kicking it off here so I'm gonna pull up the screen here and I've got a timer that's gonna do 15 minutes and again the topic is would God allow evil so here it is inspiring philosophy take it away all right well thanks Cameron and again thanks for the dial up dialog Alex for the audience last time Alex and I spoke we had a great conversation on ethics and I have no doubt he'll be as respectful as before also I understand Alex has not made many the arguments I'll address in my opening but I feel it's necessary to get a well-rounded view of evil also to give a quick shout out I'd like to thank philosophers Trent Doherty and Justin Mooney for helping me write prepare for the debate tonight now the topic is a very emotional and touchy subject which is the evidential problem of evil and it's very easy for any of us to get extremely passionate about instances of evil because they emotionally affect us all but in order to derive meaning from the issue we have to look at this logically and not rely on only our emotions but I think that alone will be reveals an inherent problem with the argument because the objection is often based on emotional standards of one evil was too bad for God to allow and not on logical parameters if a lot of the objections not all but have a lot of the objections from evil appear to reduce to well that feels bad I don't think a loving God would allow that therefore God probably doesn't exist I have a hard time seeing how when we know there too much evil to say an all-loving God probably doesn't exist you know how we rating this beyond appeals to emotion now one of my biggest objections to the problem of evil is the objection is often stated with almost tunnel vision what I mean is skeptics will often attack Christianity with evil but they do so without including the whole picture of Christianity so skeptics will bring up examples like children who suffered from diseases and die young and then say from their subjective standpoint that a good God would not allow this but ignore that the child's consciousness would continue on in a heavenly experience so if we're going to use evil to attack the Christian God one must do so by looking at the whole picture of the Christian worldview so I'll present six aspects of Christianity that put evil in perspective and argue for compatibility number one is the afterlife the truth is we cannot judge Christianity without the acknowledgement of the afterlife meaning that the suffering of this life is only temporary and will pale in comparison to eternity an analogy can be drawn from your childhood as compared to your current adult life and I realize analogies are not perfect but think of a limited knowledge you had as a child in the things that used to cause you suffering I remember crying over lost toys which I've now forgotten about on a more serious note my mother suffered from serious depression when I was a young kid as a result I suffered from severe verbal and physical abuse now thankfully she got the help she needed and is healthy now and I can't say I suffer from any long-term effects however in those moments decades ago it felt like my world was ending and I would never recover most of the suffering we had as children pales in comparison to the lives we live now other than traumatic cases and again I understand analogies are not perfect but most of the suffering we experience as children had no long lasting effects even though in those moments it felt excruciating analogously the present suffering of this life will be outdone by eternity with God so the argument is simply that the suffering in the present life will be swallowed up by the joy of heaven and will have no lasting effects when compared to eternity evidence in near-death experiences seems to support this reports from people who have been revived report that the next life is more real than real this world feels more like a dream when compared to what is to come now I've had some dreams where horrible things have happened and then I wake up in the pain does not last in fact I can't even remember most of my nightmares if upon death we wake up to a more real existence which makes this life feel like a dream he can hardly be said the suffering of this life who have any real lasting damage now some might bring up the existence of hell and I cover this more extensively in my video does God send people to hell SC s Lois pointed out the doors of hell are locked from the inside and the only people in Hell are the people who want to be there so for more see that video the second problem Bill's on the first and it is to argue cannot ignore the ontological differences between humans and God is John hick and Eric reading have argued we are called to stop evil when we're able to but the circumstance has changed for an omnipotent omniscient being where if such a being would have the same requirements as us it would result in some sort of dystopian police state where there's no human dignity or freedom because God just controls everything it seems God might be obligated to allow freedom and indirectly evil to prevent a worst state of affairs also many argue it's unfair for going to allow people to die from diseases or natural disasters but from God's perspective no one died per se would you when a human kill someone they remove that person from their plan of existence for selfish or hateful reasons since God is on all planes of existence it's logically impossible for him to murder someone the way a human might instead he is just moving people from one plane of existence to another so we should think of the suffering in this life from God's perspective analogous to how this happens in a dream world in the movie Inception so when you kill someone in the dream world you're not ending their life but moving them from one plane of existence to another if someone is suffering in a dream it's not that big of a deal because you know they will wake up the pain will be a fading memory is something less than real likewise it's not necessarily immoral for God to end a life or allow suffering because our current suffering is more dreamlike than real from God's perspective it may not be as bad as we emotionally feel in the moment third one also needs to account for the fall of humanity the current state of affairs was the results of humans electing to rule themselves instead of living under God God desired for humans to live with him in an Eden setting and we elected not to and continue to elect that every day we don't love our neighbor as ourselves some have argued they were not born into this world and didn't have the same choice as Adam that or Eve did clay Jones respond to this by saying that we didn't individually vote to make Adam the head of our race doesn't matter because God knows who can best represent us also if God knew that all of us would have acted similarly he does know wrong and choosing one person to represent us so the current world was not what God wanted but he's allowing us to experience it in this dreamlike setting so that we can see the consequences of our actions and fully see were rejecting his lordship is like fourth the most popular response to the problem of evil was to note the free will of humans seems to be the biggest cause of evil humans caused the Holocaust without God humans executed The Rape of Nanking without God if people actually did what Jesus called us to do a lot of the suffering in this life would be eliminated the truth is humanity all of us together have created a world of suffering and evil some of argue God allows too much freedom and therefore too much evil but again let's remember from God's perspective the present suffering of this life will pale in comparison to eternity and this world is more dreamlike he also has more wisdom on how much suffering will and can't affect each individual as well as how to overcome these woman's an eternity also again and the basis for this seems to be an emotional standard rather than a logical one the truth is it's hard for any of us to know when the right amount of evil or where the right amount of evil is or when evil is objectively set to be too much for a loving God to exist if God is going to create free creatures but then limit how far they can go from his will then there really is no freedom because we're set in some sort of giant cosmic playpen where we don't know what life without God would really entail because God would not allow us to experience it in this life if this if that was the case we would never truly see the real consequences of our rebellion and so we'd have God is some sort of or overbearing mother who is supposed to take care of us when it is needed but doesn't really let us learn the horrendous consequences of what happened to we abandon him and choose to live in a natural world without his presence the point is unless we see the evil our what the evil in our hearts truly does to ourselves and our fellow humans we will never learn and so God's message is simply our Bell Yin must be fully realized so that hopefully we will return to him 5th suffering itself is not necessarily evil it's often logically assumed or is it's often logically assumed that suffering is entirely evil or bad but there's an epistemic gap between the two it's Richard Swinburne says pains and other sufferings are bad state of affairs but it is odd to call them evil one for example when I work out I experience suffering but we would say this is healthy and therefore instrumentally good raising my daughter I have to allow suffering so she doesn't become spoiled when I tell her no to things like when she asked if she can play on the roof true story she cried and she experienced suffering but such discipline is actually instrumentally good for her giving a homeless man a dollar might seem good but studies show it actually just enables their addictions and keeps them on the streets it's actually better for them to seek real help from a shelter which can create suffering but going through these hard processes are instrumentally good likewise allowing allowing suffering in this life might actually be useful in soul building and allowing us to mature into more enlightened individuals I also want to point out for this discussion I want to say this more for the distance for later but philosophers Justin moody and Trent Doherty have pointed out a lot of the arguments from evil and suffering presuppose a consequentialist view of good that God is obligated to bring about a result that reduces overall suffering and increased pleasure but if de ontology or virtue ethics is the correct theory of moral rightness that God may have other goals or internal obligations that must be achieved in order for him to be the good in other words it's possible it would not be right for God to remove significant human freedom even though that indirectly creates suffering as long as what is good is not defined in terms of consequences namely increasing pleasure but actions so we have to make sure we're not presupposing a consequentialist view of righting wrong as that might not be the case but we can talk more about that later in terms of examples of natural evils like earthquakes or diseases I don't think natural evil is the best way to describe these things because an earthquake on Mars is not evil smallpox being studied in the lab is not evil these things are better described as examples of chaos causing suffering which would have been absent in Eden which we projected we're experiencing a disorder of the world which has indirect horrible consequences finally any attack regarding any attack from the existence of evil cannot ignore the suffering of Christ now I know this is a bit of an emotional argument but since the sting of evil is more emotional than logical it makes sense that God's answer to evil should be to heal our emotional wounds as well so the Christian answer to a world filled with torture and murder is a God who was tortured and murdered atheist Albert Camus admitted Christ the god man suffers to evil and death can no longer be entirely imputed to him since he suffers and dies the night I'll go Gotha is so important because the divinity ostensibly abandon his traditional privilege and lived through to the end despair included in the agony of death Jesus has also United to the present suffering of his people but when he appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus he didn't say why are you persecuting my people he said why are you persecuting me Jesus said in Matthew 25 and we feed and clothe the helpless we're doing it to him and if we reject these people were rejecting him 1st corinthians 6 says were united to the Lord in one spirit the implication from the Bible is when we suffer God experiences the suffering as well he doesn't have to but he's plunged himself into our reality and feels the pain that we do as Timothy Keller pointed out since God got off his throne and plunged himself into evil and suffering with us the reason he allows suffering cannot be because it doesn't love us so given Keller's point we have evidence that God is good despite the evil in this world so in summary Christianity answers evil by reminding us of the act of the afterlife will turn all our misfortunes in the joy God is ontologically different than us and therefore as different obligations there were as a fall the humanity elected most of the evil in this life comes from human freedom suffering can be allowed for instrumental good in soul building or creating more virtuous individuals suffering is not our good is not necessarily defined in terms of consequences or outcomes and God has chosen to allow evil to affect him as well now finally even if I'm wrong the existence of evil cannot debunk the Christian daughter Christian theism all can really do is show a world where moral realism is true meaning objective moral values and duties exist and Christianity is true cannot both cannot both be true since evil is a separate issue in the evidence for Christianity if my argument from me if the argument from evil was successful it would just show Christianity could still be true on its own evidence and that there's no objective standard of good and evil what I mean is sometimes I encounter Christians who believe right and wrong is just arbitrarily set by God and they tell me if God made it so that it was okay to murder and steal then it would be in reality they are Christians and moral relatives moral relativists who believe that morality is just arbitrarily set by God and is no objective basis I don't personally believe this but this entails Christianity and moral subjectivism technically compatible now I've always thought it odd that many non theists who attack Christianity from evil are themselves moral subjectivist meaning the meaning they don't think there is an objective standard of right and wrong so the Christian theist could always get out get out of the argument evil the argument from evil by just denying the existence of objective right and wrong some Christians are in fact amoral subjectivist advocating relativistic forms of divine command theory and notice the more the Atheist pressures such Christians about the object the object object if 'ti of moral value the more pressure there is on the atheists to explain where objective morality comes from this my quote this might prove quite counterproductive for the atheists in the long run so the argument from evil is really unsuccessful in its ultimate goal now there's a lot more I want to say on this but I don't have the time in my opening statement including something I'm theorizing I'm calling the law of triumph which would act like a natural law I said act not he is a natural but would act like a natural law and would be imbued in reality and what always guarantee evil would be outshine by good or is always defeated when it arises but I can talk more about that later I'd also like to say I really glad to be having this conversation with Alex because I feel like he's not here to score points but actually have a dialogue and I feel like he's one of the best debate deponents for this conversation to have with so I appreciate the conversation and I look forward to hearing what alex has to say all right so it looks like we've got about 40 seconds left so let's pass over to to Alex and I'm gonna start my timer here another 15 minutes for your opening statement and whenever you're ready I'll go ahead and start the timer she'll think yeah whenever good let's do it I think it's worth noting that I'm making an opening statement here so I'm not gonna directly respond to everything that Michael has just said although some of them some of those things will come up and we'll see how it goes essentially I wanna be the case that you know that I used to think that the problem of evil was a bad argument on logical grounds because of the fact that there's always logical space for there to be morally sufficient reason for God to allow suffering you can always say that there it's it can't be logically ruled out that there's some reason why God would allow the suffering in the world I've since changed my mind on this view and and become more attracted to the evidential problem than the logical problem of evil as people grow up as myself as I've grown I become personally acquainted with levels and kinds of suffering that seem to demand a fuller explanation than well it's not logically impossible that God would allow this right in that capacity I'm not so much arguing that the presence of suffering should give us reason to think that a loving God cannot exist I'm arguing that there's I'm not arguing that there's no possible world in which God exists and also evil exists I prefer to make an evidential case but the sheer level and depth of suffering that exists in the actual world should at least give us major pause I can't argue that it's impossible that God should allow such suffering but I can suggest that it appears extremely unlikely if somebody murdered a close friend of mine in cold blood and stole his wallet right in front of me I couldn't logically rule out the possibility that my friend was some undercover political saboteur whose assassination prevented him from committing a war crime against the United Kingdom and there was national security secrets in its wallet and so the assassin actually did a good thing sure that's not logically impossible I can't rule that out but not only would it be difficult to entertain this hypothesis as I watch my friend bleeding out on the floor I'd also be somewhat troubled by anyone who tried to argue that it might be a good thing that my friend was murdered because of this reason and that if I want to mourn his sadness if I want to mourn him in sadness if I want to say that's a bad thing then I'd better be able to demonstrate that his death is logically incompatible with a theory of a benevolent assassin I don't think that that would be my burden situation but do bear in mind that I'm using this as an analogy to describe why I bring up a work why when you bring up the problem of evil it's not necessarily a claim of logical inconsistency but simply to observe that we have some reason to doubt the intentions or existence of an ostensibly loving God right I'm not particularly as interested in these cases of seeming moral evil that is evil the results from human action although this does require a level of discussion and it's probably going to be the focal point of our discussion but the reason why I'm more interested in skux discussing the problem of suffering rather than the profit problem of evil per se is that as Michael points out many people think it's problematic for an atheist to talk about evil we can also say that if evil requires evil intention and we can't know the intentions of someone like God it becomes difficult to use terms like evil however both Christians and atheists can both agree that suffering definitely exists and if suffering does exist the point is this any religion which purports the existence of a loving God must demonstrate why the suffering in the world is justified and the problem is most difficult I believe not on the subject of moral evil but so-called natural evil that is evil not caused by free human choice but rather by earthly events generally refer to quite unfortunately perhaps for Michael as acts of God earthquakes tsunamis natural diseases these kinds of things the difficulty for the Christian in cases of such evil is not so much to say that it's justified but as Michael kind of implied to say that this isn't evil at all because it results from the natural order which God controls not human action and therefore must be justifiably inflicted making it not a demonstration of evil at all but instead a demonstration of justice or of necessity this is what I'd really like to hear from Michael not an explanation as to how freewill is necessary and there's a result of this humans inflict Holocaust but that when a mother is ripped from her child by a tsunami this is not something to be thought of as bad there's something to be worth celebrating as an act of justice or a kind of suffering without which God could not conduct his plans properly still it's worth considering the logical problem of evil and the issue of moral evil you need to note that in order to hold that suffering is compatible with God with a God who is morally perf you must hold the belief that their suffering is somehow necessary to obtain the optimal end right most commonly this viewers put forward by talking about human free will if humans are to be what they're supposed to be free agents capable of freely choosing whether or not they love God then they must be granted freewill this is a case that Michael makes in his hour-long video on the problem of evil in order to do what's good a person must have the capacity to do what's bad the capability to do what's bad and elect to do the opposite if they're incapable of committing evil they're essentially compelled to commit good and committing a good action because you have no other choice to is not really committing a good action at all but a robotic gesture of compulsion this is a logical point the absence of moral evil is incompatible with free will and to answer this point I have a question which is which I've raised in a video before is there free will in heaven heaven is a place devoid of suffering where nobody's killing anyone no one's torturing anyone no Holocaust saw wars are taking place yet presumably unless heaven is the kind of robotic compelled nature condemned by Michael there must also be free will if this is the case then here we have an example of humans existing with freewill and yet there being no evil Michael may wish to respond to this by saying that those in heaven still have a capacity for evil but the very reason they're in heaven is because they're the kind of person who refuses to act upon it but in order to hold this view some things must be assumed firstly that it's possible that evil can exist in heaven and can be committed in heaven that is though in practice nobody commits it there is no there's nothing logically preventing a Holocaust from taking place in heaven and they may just bite the bullet on this point and say yeah it's no problem because it's not going to happen in practice but this is difficult for me to believe that there's nothing logically preventing a Nazi Holocaust reoccurring in heaven a possible escape to this might be to suggest that the people in heaven are so good and the reason they're in heaven is because they're so good that it's psychologically impossible for them essentially to commit evil there are two problems with this first if it's really impossible for them to commit evil then on Michaels own account it also impossible for them to be good since to be good requires the capacity to be evil if this is denied and it's asserted that it can be psychologically impossible for some people to commit evil and yet then still being a free being in the relevant sense then what we have essentially is proof is yeah we have proof that God is capable of producing humans who somehow have free will and yet are still incapable of committing evil even if just as a matter of psychological impossibility if that can obtain logically in heaven it can obtain logically on earth - if the reason being given for the necessity of evil is that human free will requires it but God is capable of producing human beings with free will who are yet incapable of committing evil the freewill defense collapses of course there are many other arguments of the necessity of evil that are put forward one one of the most popular I always hear is the higher Goods argument and Michael actually made this argument in his opening statement talking about an instrumental good like going to the gym you know if you go to the gym sure you suffer but it's instrumentally good because there's a higher good of health or something like that which can be obtained by that suffering in other words the existence of some goods worth having necessitate the existence of some evils for example we can't have bravery without the existence of fear in order for a soldier to demonstrate bravery by jumping on a grenade to save his comrades a grenade needs to be thrown right if no such evils are ever committed no such higher-order goods can ever exist and where would we be without things like bravery but I submit the following bravery is only good in the first place by virtue of our need to overcome something bad I'd rather have no fear and no need for bravery if a soldier jumps on a grenade we can congratulate him for his bravery but we would be out of our minds to thank the person who threw the grenade and be grateful that it blew him up since without that Renee the bravery would never have manifested and yet a Christian who uses this defense is thankful to God for throwing the grenade of suffering into the world because it allows us to develop means of overcoming that suffering such as bravery the logic is the same as being thankful for the exist since of cancer because it allows us to develop these wonderful medical advancements like chemotherapy and radiotherapy without the suffering we wouldn't have these wonderful medical advancements but if the medical treatment is only good in virtue of it being needed to overcome cancer we'd rather have no cancer and no chemotherapy and if bravery is only useful or admirable insofar as it allows us to overcome fear then we should rather have no fear and no bravery a higher order good only justifies the lower order evil if the higher order good isn't only good because of the existence of the evil to use Michaels own example nobody would go to the gym and experience the pain of working out unless it was actually needed to achieve their health and their dream body right the higher order goods if they could be obtained without needing to go through the suffering that would be chosen and so we should have reason to believe that God would choose the same for us but also the Christian must contend with the idea that if evil is somehow necessary whichever account of necessity you give we must have exactly the right amount of evil in the world this is something Michael seems to have implied in his opening statement this is the most difficult thing for me to accept that if a loving God may need to allow suffering for reasons of free will higher order Goods or personal development or whatever it may be this God would still not allow gratuitous suffering it wouldn't allow more suffering than is necessary because then that suffering wouldn't be necessary for good to prevail and therefore would be unjustified but it must also be accepted that therefore God couldn't have allowed any less suffering to exist because this would imply that not all of the evil in the world is in fact necessary and that therefore God does allow specifically unnecessary suffering which is incompatible incompatible with an omnipotent loving God we have to believe in something of a best of all possible worlds approach that exactly the correct amount of evil exists in the world anymore and God would be allowing unnecessary suffering any less and God would be unable to procure whatever goodness is necessitated by that suffering Michael in his video of on problem of evil that I've already mentioned considers this problem asking why for example when the Nazis rounded up Jews to be shot why couldn't God just have made the guns Jam right the Nazis could still freely pull the trigger but the Jews didn't need to now Michael responds to this by quoting CS Lewis who argues that in a world in which God always intervenes to stop every instance of moral evil this wouldn't be a world of free will because it would make bad actions impossible to perform if every time someone tried to commit evil God intervened it would simply render people incapable of being evil which means that they don't actually have free will but this completes two questions when I watch this video this is what I thought Michael makes a case as to why God can't intervene in every case of moral evil but the question was actually why doesn't God or why won't God intervene in this case of moral evil of course if God jammed the done if God jammed the guns the Nazis would stop shooting right they wouldn't be able to commit the evil of act of pulling the trigger because they know that it wouldn't achieve the end that they desire but that wouldn't stop God preventing one case of moral evil such as that the Nazis such that the Knights he still had the proper still had the the freedom to pull the trigger and giving them no reason to think that they'll always be prevented they'd still feel and have the freedom to pull the trigger and commit that evil act but the the people still could have been spared now an obvious response to this is how do we know that this isn't already the case yeah how do we know that God has not already prevented the maximal number of cases of moral evil that he can this is what Michael last in the opening statement you know like how are we going to know where to draw the line perhaps when Viktor Frankl was filing into Auschwitz and the SS soldier pointed to the right instead of the left saving him from an immediate gassing that was God's doing but had he jammed one more gun or caused one more gas chamber to malfunction that would have been too much right but this is the implication when Wilfred Owen describes the Blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs of his fellow soldier drowning in a sea of green gas and when Viktor Frankl describes the popularity of running into electric gates of concentration camps as a suicide method common enough to be colloquially known simply as running into the wire the best of all possible worlds approach asks us to accept that had that specific friend of Owens soldier been spared his fate on show of choking on poisoned air and had his death been even remotely less painful less torturous less prolonged that the world would be a worse place for it somehow exactly that amount of suffering is necessitated in order for the general good to obtain for free will to exist for heaven to be an option for higher order goods for personal development this must be the maximal state of affairs 1.3 1 million Jews were killed during the first three months of the Holocaust are we expected to believe that this is the perfect number 1.3 two million Jews would have been an unjustifiable evil because this was more than strictly necessary 1.2 nine million wouldn't have been quite enough and the world would be a worse place if those 30,000 extra people were saved no allowing 1.3 2 million Jews exactly to die is the goldilocks number that is necessitated for good to obtain if the fact that this is moral evil that I'm talking about not natural evil is a problem to you then just ask a different question is it really the case that if a mother had five extra seconds with her child before that child was ripped away from her by that tsunami the world would be a worse place for it it would somehow not be able to obtain as much good if such a ludicrous in my view position even requires a response as if it requires such a response I think this can best be answered somewhat in a literary sense by referring to what Voltaire has one of his characters saying Candide quite famously that if this is all the profit if this is the best of all possible worlds and what on earth must the others be like now I don't have in ten seconds the time to also bring up the problem of animal suffering and not just the suffering that we inflict upon them but the suffering they that falls on them in the world but that's something I'd also like to talk about in a future section coming up but there's a lot on the table and I'm looking forward to engaging on this on this on these topics okay thank you for that Alex we're gonna go back to inspiring philosophy let me go ahead and get my ten minute countdown here so we just did 15-minute openings we have ten minute first rebuttals and Michael whenever you're ready I'll go ahead and start the countdown all right all right thank you for that Alex I appreciate a lot of the criticisms there in the feedback I want to start by talking about heaven really quick and then moving on to the more general conversation yes I do believe there is free will in heaven and I do think there is suffering in heaven the Bible says there was a war in heaven we know anything about wars that are horrible it creates a map immense amount of suffering so yes I fully do agree that can be suffering in wars in heaven second of all Christian heaven is not just going to a place beyond this earth it's about life after life after death it's about a return to this earth in the resurrection where will be reigning who are you me reigning over well if you read some of the scriptures I would say based on passages like Roman eight it's all the animals so I do think there can be continual suffering in there and this can be our job to sort of make the universe into something far better so no I don't think that really creates issues and I do want to get to animal suffering so hopefully you can come back around to that and I'll bring up some work by Trent Doherty in GRS music so I want to talk about one of the things you said regarding I'd rather have no bravery than fear I think it's a very interesting point to bring up and it seems to be you could correct me if I'm wrong but you're sort of saying like it would be far better to not even have these elements of suffering versus the good that sort of comes from them and this is what I would like to talk about something I've been working on I'm calling a law of triumph which I'll basically define as if or when suffering arises it can always ultimately be overcome by good they'll be intrinsically more valuable in worthwhile than the intrinsic bad badness of the initial suffering in other words God has created a world where if suffering happens it can always be outweighed by good now I don't want people to think this is a trivial point if it's because it might sound trivial at first but think of the lord of the rings' for example let's just say that in that world i rooby-roo le batard didn't create any suffering this may sound trivial but would anyone want to read that book I think the answer is no it would sound quite boring and I think the reason for that is we I recognize there is some sort of intrinsic goodness in the triumph of that story of people overcoming the badness that the triumph basically outshines any sort of suffering and puts it in a far better perspective that creates far better virtuous creatures than if it was a world just to void of any sort of suffering so you would also say that God has put in place something like a law of nature which causes virtuous good to emerge any from evil that can't occur another way of thinking about it is that God when creating this world issues a bunch of conditional decrees to the effect that if such-and-such evil happens such as such greater good will result or an ultimately outshine it in that sense st. Agustin said it like this since God is the highest good he wouldn't allow any evil to exist in his works unless his omnipotence and goodness were such to bring about bring good even out of the evil so the basic point is that I want to also circle back around to God's obligations I think you and I might disagree on this point but I would think it would be better if a world exists where there are virtuous people and suffering versus a world of no virtuous people in their shapur pleasure or no suffering and I think that I think the reason is is because I think we acknowledge the existence of the fact that this world of lacking of pleasure or this world that only has pleasure and doesn't have suffering is far less intrinsically good than a world that does employ suffering to create far better entry far better interesting far better acts of triumph invert in creating virtuous creatures in that sense so Trent Dougherty talked about this in his book on animal suffering at the point of what God is doing here is to build souls and he includes animals in this as well that animals are also soul building things and so what you basically points out is that God is basically saying I'm not going to intervene in the suffering terrible though as it is because I know you can make it through it and I want you to have experience with knowledge of this fact as well so no I don't think God is directly causing the suffering I think God is sort of created the universe to create more mature soul building things and he has sort of imbued this sort of law of triumph in it that if suffering and does arise it can be eaten defeated and it will ultimately turn out to be more instrumentally good in creating more more virtuous Souls better souls in the long run so the essence of the soul buildings and so that's the Odyssey is that we find the kind of evil and suffering in the world that it's precisely the kind of evil and suffering that will lead to souls of great character or multi-dimensional persons great virtue so in response to this idea about natural evil I don't think God is like creating these natural evils to sort of like get the right amount of suffering in there I don't think that's necessary I'm not even sure if there is a best possible world and I would challenge that kind of idea so if I'm just gonna let me just quote John hick here suppose contrary to the fact that this world were a paradise from which all possibility of pain and suffering were excluded the consequences would be very far-reaching for example no one could ever injure anyone else the murderers knife would turn to paper or his bullets of thin air the bank's safe the robbed robbed of millions of dollars when miraculously become filled with another million dollars without this without dis device or however on large-scale providing inflationary problems so again no one would ever be injured by accident the mountain-climber were playing or a playing child fall from a height would float unarmed to the ground the reckless driver would never mean its disaster there'd be no need to work since no harm would come from avoiding work there'll be no need to call to call there would be no need to call to be concerned for others and times in the a danger for such a world there could be no real needs or dangers to make possible this continual series of enable individual adjustments nature would have to work by special Providence's instead of running a court to general laws that men must learn to respect on penalty of pain or death the laws of nature would have to be extremely flexible sometimes gravity would operate sometimes not sometimes an object would be hard or solid sometimes salt there can be no real sciences so there would be no enduring world structure to investigate in eliminating the problems and hardships of an image of an objective environment with its own laws life would become like a dream in which a delightfulness but aimlessly would float in drifts at ease one could at least begin to imagine such a world it is evident that our present ethical concepts would have no meaning in it if for example the notion of harming someone is an essential element in the concept of a wrong act action in our hedonistic paradise there could be no wrong actions nor any right actions and distinctions from wrong courage and courage would have no point in an environment in which there is by definition no danger or difficulty generosity or kindness or the agape aspect of love prudence unselfishness and other ethical notions which presuppose life in an objective environment could not even be formed consequently such a world however well in I promote pleasure would be very ill adapt for the development of moral qualities of human personalities in relation to this purpose it might be the worst of all possible worlds so as basically point is it if you're going to have this kind of world you're not developing virtuous individuals now I'm not saying that God is causing the suffering to get there I think building on Josh Rasmussen that God has created a world with two things randomness and free creatures now God being omnipotent I think this is a far more better way to build souls because he's not directly determining certain things he's allowing souls to develop through a random a universe in view with randomness have their own freedom to guide their own paths that kids gonna create far more interesting souls in the long run including animals souls as well with that and said I also would say that God has imbued this idea of a lot of triumph in there so if they encounter suffering that suffering can ultimately over dumb and ultimately destroyed in the long run I again go back to my own childhood I suffered immense suffering as a young child it was horrible but I honestly can't say it does affect me in any serious way the other reason I thought about it was I was thinking of good analogies and that came into my head most of the time I might simply forget about it because I think the good of life outweighs the suffering that we can experience and let me give another analogy I think you and I would both agree we ought to save and preserve the rainforest we don't we should not want the rainforest to go away but the rain for there's immense animal suffering in the rainforest why should we not want to end the rainforest for the extent that it would prevent it would prevent millions of generations from suffering of those animals why not just clear it all establish a bunch of farming to feed a growing vegan population well I think we recognize the life of the rainforest the aesthetic beauty of the rainforest it's far more intrinsically better than the suffering and part of that and so I don't think suffering will ever outshine the good the intrinsic goodness of life and I think God has imbued a laws within his reality that can use suffering for good now I don't think necessarily all the suffering has to be used for good I'm not going to deny I'm gonna build on so when I Kirk McGregor Trent or neither we don't have to say all suffering is useful or it has to be there so God can Souls we simply are pointing out that if there is suffering it can be overcome that it is part of God's reality in sort of like helping to build souls but it's not it we're not saying that it is um we're not saying that it has that it always has to be useful in that sense and that got us to sort the term and everything in that sort of direction only that if God is going to create a universe which free creatures were going to experience soul building and they would have to have freedom in order to do it to sort of build virtuous qualities and in that sense that no matter what comes up the good will always outshine over always Oh outweigh it it also has to do with God's obligations is his obligations of creative world of pleasure or is this obligations to create a virtuous creatures and I think given the data I think given what is more intrinsically better I think triumph with suffering is far more intrinsically better than a world without suffering and just pleasure all right let's pass it over back to to Alex here and let me set my timer for ten minutes and just as a reminder we have Alex's first rebuttal it's ten minutes long we're gonna do a second round of rebuttals those will those are five minutes long and then we're gonna do some Q&A so I noticed that a few people have already sent in some super chats and we're gonna get to those and if you can we're not going to do every super chat because I think some of them were just comments but if you have a question for either the debater then make sure to address who who the question is addressed to and then if you ask it a super chat then that's a very easy way for me to go back and be able to pull it up and we'll make sure that we get to those so here you go Alex you got ten minutes for your first rebuttal and whenever you're you're ready I'll go ahead and start the timer amazing Thanks there's a lot to respond to there of course lots of individual points being brought up and I'll try to just go through as many as I can I tried to kind of just make a note of the general points so maybe on this receptor it's represent some here hopefully not I'm trying to choose which ones are best to go through with the time remaining maybe I'll take some in Reverse so that they're fresher in the memory of the audience some of the arguments I found quite bizarre for instance the argue about the rainforest you say you know we'd rather keep the rainforest quite the fact that it's harmful to life on earth because of something like its aesthetic beauty I would absolutely reject that out of hand the reason why I think it's worth keeping the rainforest is because if we get rid of the rainforest it will cause ecological disaster that will cause more animals to suffer than if we kept it if that weren't the case if it were really the case that if we just got if we just tore down the rainforest it wouldn't produce more evil wouldn't produce more suffering more ecological disaster but the only downside was that we wouldn't have to something like the aesthetic beauty of the forest then I would be on the first plane over there chopping it down with an axe I wouldn't allow the rainforest to stay up because of its aesthetic beauty if it meant that billions of human beings were dying and suffering as a result and so I'm certainly not going to allow a rainforest to stay up just for the sake of its aesthetic beauty because a bunch of animals are dying as a result I absolutely don't think that it has any intrinsic worth outside of the effect that it has on suffering except maybe a minimal worth with things like aesthetic beauty which are nowhere near as important as the suffering that it's inflicting and besides I've never seen the rainforest in person and so kind of I'd out how much the aesthetic beauty of the rainforest or something like that actually should play into a consideration like that you asked about my concept of kind of preferring no bravery and no fear and you brought up an example from Lord of the Rings now as an oxonium it's quite embarrassing to admit that I've never read nor seen the Lord of the Rings but it was similar to another example that was that was brought up by Vince Vitara on an episode of unbelievable which is one of my favorite radio shows to listen to there was a debate about the problem of evil and Vince fatale brought up a really interesting point that that stumps me for a minute he said think of all of your inspirations think of the heroes of your time so you're thinking of the the Martin Luther King's of the world and you think take whichever hero you know you personally admire now remove the suffering from their life take that suffering away and what are they left with they're not they're no longer a hero you know if Martin Luther King never suffered then he wouldn't have overcome that suffering he wouldn't have become the forefront of the civil rights movement he wouldn't have been a hero and so the very thing that made him admirable is the fact that he's suffering and this is kind of the point that I it seems you were you were implicitly making that it's worth having this kind of suffering so that a world of virtue can exist but I think we're conflating two topics here and I don't know how well I'll be able to tease these apart but what were they're talking about when it comes to the problem of evil is why it's kind of the existence of suffering versus the existence of pleasure not the existence of virtue I mean if you say something like without evil virtuous lives who wouldn't exist okay fine but that's not strictly a problem for the argument that I'm making because I'm trying to argue a case that there could be a world in which people are you know experiencing less suffering experiencing more pleasure that is sure there might be no virtue but that's not a problem if it still results in more pleasure the only way to kind of make it relevant is to say that virtue is a good in and of itself that to me is obviously false virtue a virtue like Martin Luther King overcoming racism is only good insofar as we have the evil of racism to be overcome without the evil of racism why is it that Martin Luther King wouldn't be a virtuous hero because his actions would have been meaningless like it virtue is the virtue of what he did isn't good of its own accord it's only good by virtue of an evil so yeah I think I really would prefer that there was no racism even if that meant that Martin Luther King would no longer be a hero of mine even if that meant that he was no longer able to demonstrate virtue I'd rather a world in which he didn't have to demonstrate virtue in order to overcome the evils of racism and I hope that makes sense you have to talk about science you kind of gave that as a more detached kind of less morally wrapped up example because you know talking about Martin Luther King and racism especially right now goodness I didn't even think might be as you say emotionally distracting we take the issue of science you say look science wouldn't exist in in a perfect world in which kind of there was no ignorant but again the same point can be made that science is only good or useful insofar as we are ignorant right the argument it's kind of the without ignorance we have the good of science so we it's justifiable that we have the badness of of ignorance because it allows this higher-order good of science to exist but what is the goal of science the goal of science is to remove ignorant that's what science tries to do on a daily basis now why would it be the case that the goal of science is to undermine the very reason for its existence why would it be that the goal of science is to remove ignorance if it's known that science the good of science only exists because of ignorance because we recognize that we'd rather have no ignorant and no science okay the goal of science is to no longer need science in the same way that some political philosophy is like something like Marxism would likely say that the goal of Marxism is for Marxism to no longer be necessary right the reason I choose that example is because it kind of has an end goal in mind as opposed to like a cap sauce ideology but you see what I'm saying like somebody in the same way that I'm a vegan advocate and the goal of veganism is for veganism to no longer be a thing right like yeah sure I've got this this good thing that I can do advocating for veganism but I'd rather a world in which I didn't have that good I didn't have that virtue right the whole thing that I'm aiming for is a world in which the very reason for me being a vegan activist doesn't exist I don't think that the evil of the animal agricultural industry is worth the virtue of somebody fighting against it I'd rather have neither the virtue is only good by virtue of the evil existing and so yeah I really would rather have neither and I think that kind of making a point about how but we wouldn't have virtue we wouldn't have triumph in a world without evil it's like intuitively we want to think yeah and then that sounds bad you know it would be bad to have a world without triumphant and virtue but if you if you think about it for a moment and recognize that the only reason virtue and triumph are good is because there's evil if you remove that evil triumphant virtue are no longer good and therefore no longer desirable so it's not a problem that we don't have them either also there was a reference you made to Augustine I'm kind of picking these out of thin air cuz I had to kind of make notes I'm less used to the formal environment the the reference you made to Augustine and the point that kind of preceded it that God in His omnipotence nominally valence wouldn't allow evil unless it was justified and to me this came across as an appeal to mystery maybe I misunderstood what you were saying but it seemed like you were essentially saying well look if God is all-powerful and if God is all loving then we can trust that he wouldn't allow evil unless it was justified so if there's evil there must be a justification for it which is to me kind of like throwing up a hand and saying well look I want to keep my belief in God and I know there's evil so there's got to be some reason for it I don't know what that reason is but there's got to be a reason that to me is like me standing over the floor of my murdered dead friend and somebody else kind of saying yeah there's probably a reason for it you know I I have this belief that you know the person who killed him is an intrinsically good person you know the person who killed your friend is a friend of mine and I think he's a really good person so like I'm sure there must be some explanation as to why he murdered him and stole his wallet I would think look it's it's gonna need more than that you know and I don't think although technically I guess philosophically you could say that the burden of proof would be on me to say that there's no way that there could be a justifiable reason that my friend is now dead on the floor sure if I was making that claim but if I'm just making an evidential claim that it's probably quite unlikely that there's a good reason for my friend who have been murdered I think the burden would be on the other person to show me why there was a good reason not for me to show why there can't be such a good reason analogously I don't think I should have to show why there can't be some good reason that may exist as Augustine refers to to allow evil it should rather be on Augustine or yourself to show what that reason is turn the defense into a theodicy in other words one minute 15 seconds can we talk about the suffering of Christ sure again I just first something I said earlier you said and I think this is a direct quote the answer to a world of torture and murder is a God who was tortured and murdered again another solution is to not have the suffering and the murder in the first place saying we can't understand suffering without Jesus which is how you open that segment you said we can't understand this problem of evil without Jesus would be kind of like me saying we can't understand cancer without chemotherapy right the answer to a world of cancer is a world of chemotherapy or the answer to a world of cancer is a world without cancer that seems to me preferable you can see that all of the points that I'm making here in rebuttal and the reason that it's all coming back to the same point is I think that's the same underlying assumption but actually yes it does make sense to say that if there's some great good justified by by some great or lesser evil let's say but the only reason why that great good is good is by virtue of overcoming the evil then I do think it makes sense to say we'd rather have neither they can still be good without there necessarily being virtues they can still be good without there necessarily being evils that have to be overcome and sure we'll miss out on some of the goods that we would have had if evil that existed like virtue that exists like virtue but I think we can do without them okay let's turn to inspiring philosophies second rebuttal and this one is gonna be five minutes long so let me just set my clock here and whenever you're ready Michael I'll go ahead and start the timer okay so first I just want to clarify on the rainforest example I'm not saying it's all just about Beauty what I'm talking more about is the intrinsic goodness of life itself you know you could say the in the aesthetic beauty is an aspect of that but what I'm saying is we ultimately believe that preserving the life itself because of its intrinsic goodness is better than letting it go even though it will continue on in the intense suffering and so I also want to hit on this one point is I think there is an underlying assumption I think you're right about this I think we're not defining good the same way and this is what I talked about a little bit of my opening statement if good is just pleasure if good is just that and suffering is just bad then I don't think we're going to agree because I don't I'm not a utilitarian I would define good more in terms of virtue ethics today ontology us will define good more in terms of actions so if goodness is about virtues then we and not about pleasure and pain or pleasure and suffering then those are in a sense kind of site issues in the main goal I'm not saying that they're not included in this I definitely don't want people to think that but the main goal is to build virtuous creatures now we're also assuming pleasure is the best possible world bill in that I I would not at all agree I think a world with virtuous people and suffering is far better than a world without virtuous people and just pleasure I feel like that is a far less robust world this might not be the right term but a far less interesting world a far less complex multi-dimensional nuance well in that sense it doesn't really create what I think God's aim is to which is to create virtuous individuals for relationships examples so I think the problem is and you could correct me if I'm wrong with this but I think the world you're setting up is a world of the Stepford Wives where everyone doesn't have to worry about problems or pain everyone it just sort of goes along they're happy they never have to experience suffering they just go along with their daily tasks and that to me sounds like a dystopian horror I mean that's what it is it's just hope in horror film in that sense and we ultimately think that we would reject that type of world even though it's filled with pleasure no one has to worry about any dangers or anything with regards to that and I think you can't even hinted to this because you said you know the goal of scientists or remove ignorance but doesn't that imply we're trying to achieve something other than just pleasure we're trying to become intelligent individuals as well as virtuous individuals it's not just about pleasure I mean you could say it'd be far better to be like a Stepford wife not have to worry about science not have to worry about growing in knowledge just go along our daily tasks and just accept that this is wonderful and not worry about anything else I think that such a world is far worse and this is something clay Jones brings up extensively in this book on the problem of evil is that he highlights examples in science fiction that we taught they they set up these worlds where everyone is happy there's pleasure it's wonderful come join us there's but there's no freedom you don't have to think and everyone would check that we recognize intrinsically those worlds are horrible so I don't think abroad just filled with pleasure would be a best possible world I think it's kind of ironic to see us losing the Great Divorce defines that as hell in the great town in hell everyone can just think whatever they want to existence and they're absolutely miserable whereas in heaven there are virtuous people who are trying to call to the people how they come up because they there's a far better existence but there is suffering and that's why the people in Hell never come up because they don't want to go through the suffering to get to heaven so I think it really depends on what we mean by good I don't think pleasure is necessarily the best possible world I think that is an aspect of it but I think it's secondary to the main goal which is to create virtuous good people in that sense so I think that's going to be a fundamental disagreement there so but I also think there's create a overall a problem for the argument from evil because you have to assume it seems objective right and wrong except the more realism and it seems you have to assume some sort of utilitarian or more generally a consequentialist type view in that sense so it seems like it's so much contingent on these underlying assumptions that it doesn't really have the full force of what people think it does because it really depends on what obligations are what is actually good and what actually is evil with that I don't think there's really much else to address again I would say that I do think suffering can be used for instrumental goodness I don't think but I'm also want to say I don't think that it has to be I'm not going to argue that all suffering has to be put in the universe for there to be good I can think of the Lord of the Rings but you've not read but at one point Frodo gets attacked by a giant spider the story could have been just fine without that it was not necessarily had to be part of it but that foot was put in there I think as an example maybe you could say if Cotuit is suffering so but ultimately though when we look at that story it's the triumph itself that is what is the intrinsic goodness of that the suffering itself is never out signed by the overall goodness and when we take our world he could put it in comparison to Eternity there is nothing that could really fathom he might of suffering I just go back to my analogy with childhood suffering versus your adult life now we don't remember at all same with our dreams we don't remember it because the goodness always pale pale in comparison all right let's turn it back over to Alex let me pull up my countdown here so five minutes for your second rebuttal Alex and once I've got it up on the screen here yeah whenever you're ready I'll go ahead and start the timer okay let's see what we can do time is running short on the rainforest point maybe I misunderstood exactly what you were saying but I think the point still holds but we can discuss that later perhaps but if I did kind of miss understand your point then I want people to know that that's the case and to go back and listen to what you said rather than trust my analysis of it on the point of the kind of utilitarianism I think that most of what I've said doesn't rely on the proposition that bad is suffering but that suffering is bad so bad is not by definition suffering they're not definitionally the same thing but that suffering is an example of a bad thing there's essentially the argument that GE Moore makes in principio Ithaca as a criticism of utilitarianism he says look I essentially agree that everything that is bad is suffering and everything that is suffering is bad but they're just they're not definitionally the same thing so I'm not making that utilitarian claim that something that is bad is by definition just what is suffering I'm saying that suffering has the property of badness whatever badness may be I'd also like to respond to the point you make about soul building especially because earlier you applied it to animals or at least quoted someone who did you said in your words it was something like you know God allows this to happen because he knows you'll get through it and you'll be better for it I'd like to know as pertains to animals when a when a pig is put into a gas chamber how the pig is better off for it especially if a pig doesn't have the kind of same capacities for for insolvent as we do and isn't going to kind of achieve the same heavenly existence as we do unless you believe in some kind of pig heaven or something like that I I'm not sure it sounds like a fatuous point but that's only because of how fat you asleep eople treat animal ethics rather than it actually being a silly idea to have something like pig heaven but you know of course that's moral evil but if a deer gets its leg caught under a under a falling tree and starves to death in the forest in agony and confusion who's that benefiting it's not bad offending any human soul it's not benefiting any God as far as I can see and it's certainly not benefiting the deer I really don't see what explanation that could possibly be to this and bear in mind the people listening I mean that every argument that seems to be put forward about you know free world and loving God and about higher order Goods and about personal development and responsibility none of these seem to apply to animals none of them which leads people like Descartes to say that animals can't feel pain which leads people like suet CS Lewis to entertain the idea that animals can't feel pain or at the very least feel it in a different way to we do because there's just no other way to explain the fact that these animals experience so much suffering because as CS Lewis notes in the problem of pain in his chapter on animal suffering it's like I don't know what else we can do here the traditional responses don't seem to hold we've got to come up with something better or we just have to entertain the idea that maybe animals don't feel suffering or their suffering isn't somehow different qualitatively to ours the issue of animal suffering is probably more troubling and more important an argument than the issue of humor and suffering although of course human suffering is a derivative of animal suffering and yet it never gets a mention it doesn't get a mention in in the video that you made Michael except me I think there was one like passing mention to it but not even kind of directly addressing it just use as an example in any debate that I've watched in any essay I read or book I read except for maybe something like the problem of pain it doesn't get a mention and why should it because it poses the hardest problem because any any argument you can put forward to how people have benefited by pain there's just no way that I can see and no argument that I've heard I should say more importantly this says that those justifications can apply it to that deer in that forest that no one ever knows even existed on the point of dystopia it's worth learning there are two responses to this really quickly firstly something like a totalitarian dictatorship is only bad if the totalitarian dictator is not perfectly moral of course that's the reason why totalitarianism is bad because yeah sure it sounds like a good idea to have somebody in control who knows what's best for you in a Latin and make sure that everything that happens it's best for you the reason why we think that a latarian ism is grotesque is because people are corruptible and if you put them in a position of power they're gonna become corrupt and they're going to make life worse for you that's the point of all Wells Animal Farm however if you put God in that position you wouldn't have that problem the actual critique at the basis of our response to totalitarianism would disappear but even if this topia is bad if god's at the top of it even if totalitarianism is bad if god's at the top of it this would make it a kind of evil right this would make it a kind of badness so by saying that God allows evil to prevent something like totalitarianism God is not allowing evil but still minimizing it because he's minimizing the risk of the evil of totalitarianism he's not allowing evil despite the totalitarianism he's recognizing that lowering that evil would raise the evil of totalitarianism and so what's the overall evil to be less that's how I respond to those points as for the Frodo and the spider it may be good for the sake of the story being entertaining so it's better that that part was in the book it may be better because was entertaining for the reader but was it better for Frodo probably not and if the only reason that it was good to include that in the story was for the benefit of the reader the implication would be that the only reason it's good to allow suffering on you know analogously would be for the entertainment of God which i think is a pretty grotesque implication that I don't think you were trying to make but those are my reflections okay let's move to some Q&A so I just wanted to say that I've really enjoyed the back-and-forth we don't normally do these types of like formal debates on the channel so it's been interesting to see that the different dynamic that's happening but I really enjoyed both of your openings I enjoyed the the back-and-forth there so let's get into a question this one it looks like might be a question this was I think before I said to make sure you're addressing who you're asking your question to but this one looks like is a question for Alex from Sarah Rainey thank you for your super chat she says is it possible that beings who can make choices and experience morality like being kind could yield deeper relationships than beings who couldn't yes I'm sure I'm sure it does like I'm sure that the people are bound by experiences of suffering one of the greatest ways to bind two people it's for them to experience suffering together and together it's a is a kind of drawing out of this traditional idea that the best way for two people to bond is to put them both setting up some furniture from Ikea right because you know by by overcoming that struggle together they're bonded that same psychological principle applies to great suffering and great horrors where people are totally bound by it now again what this would be an example of would be suffering as an instrumental good so yes something really bad has happened but it's allowed people to be bound by by by that suffering right I think we have to be careful about how we respond to this right because if somebody says something like to survivors of the Holocaust maybe really well bonded and have a really rich relationship that they wouldn't have otherwise have had and I read a paper recently where someone uses the example of Viktor Frankl and basically says that he implies in man's search for meaning that he was better because of the Holocaust right I don't think anyone in their right mind could say that because the richness of human bonding and relationship that came out of the Holocaust somehow the Holocaust was good right now the reason why people don't want to say this or why it's tricky to say this to use a more trivial example I sometimes say that I wish I went to a different college at university there are various colleges and sometimes I think man I would have had more fun at this college and my friends always say to me sure yeah I mean like maybe this college does kind of suck in this way or that way but if you hadn't gone to that college you'd never have met us yeah and we wouldn't have our great relationship and I have to kind of put on my philosophical cap and say well yeah um but I wouldn't be troubled by that because I never would have met you and I would have other friends who'd be saying the same thing about me if I said that I'd rather have gone to the college I actually did in other words because we're in the situation where something bad has happened that a great result has come out like a like a strong relationship and friendship we might be tempted to think damn I'm I'm glad it happened because I wouldn't have this relationship but if the suffering didn't happen and the relationship didn't happen other good things would have happened that didn't happen in the real world and it's it's just not worth the amount of suffering that is in the world there's something like you know a particular friendship to develop in my view so we did yeah we didn't determine this beforehand but I was gonna see if you guys wanted to to allow some back-and-forth in this section I think this question is trying to hit to the point of what I'm getting at is that what are we defining as good and evil I mean if if the let's just say in a hypothetical that the the best of all put the best of all the highest goods was deeper relationships and not so much pleasure then ultimately the obligation would be to aim for this and that would be and then you can see that the e the the evil or the suffering in that could be far more instrumentally good then its intrinsic badness in that sense so we need to be very careful on what we're defining here is good and evil sure other good things could have happened but would it have been the sort of goodness that maybe God truly is trying to aim for with like example like deeper relationships so I think this is trying to the heart of what we mean if we're going to talk about evil and the problem of evil we first have to be clear on what is good we just can't assume that it is definitely gonna be pleasure in the suffering it's necessarily going to be always bad yeah I would I would just say that in my view if something like the development of a relationship is good it's good insofar as it brings people pleasure right this is kind of a it's a very basic psychologically utilitarian point to make but I think it roughly holds which is that it doesn't make much sense to talk about intrinsic goodness of something like a relationship I think what we mean to say is that we derive goods from having that relationship right my relationship with my friends my relationship with my family the reason I value those things is because of all the things that flow from them because of the conversations that flow from them the pleasure I get from that from there from the feeling of safety and the feeling of friendship that I that I feel the pleasure of that but not that the the thing itself the act in isolation of just two people entering into a social contract by which they say they both like each other intrinsically doesn't have any moral component to me it's just a descriptive fact from which moral goods can be can be taken but as you say this is just kind of a disagreement on matter ethics and I think that what the audience needs to kind of consider is whatever their view of ethics is whatever they think is good and whatever they think is bad even if they think there are different kinds of goods and different kinds of good bands that are being talked about whatever kind of bad you think exists in the world right and whatever kind of good you think exists in the world and if they're on different levels that they're of different kinds does one justify the other would you given the option to create a new world that it had exactly the same status of evil and pleasure as this actual world did would you allow the same level of suffering just because you knew the same level of pleasure would come out would you think you know what I don't think this is worth it I don't think I would give a child cancer so that their family can be better off afterwards if that's our answer then I think you have to think about this quite deeply wrote real quick just to respond to that I think we have tons of examples in human history that no-one would actually create that world because the books we write or constantly filled with suffering the same of the movies because we have recognized the triumph is far more intrinsically better than any of the suffering in that and again in our world we have to put in the factor the idea of soul building and eternity yes there is stuff but it will be outweighed by the in total fullness of eternity and turn all that suffering into Joy's in that sense so yeah there is suffering but at the same time it's also that God's obligations to build virtuous people for that eternity okay let's move on to another question from David LaRussa thank you for your stupid chat he says as a former solipsistic splain my own suffering is it possible that only in a world of free will and so few suffused with evil supererogatory acts the experience of unconditional love exists and thus a paradigm God I think this is another question for Alex potentially I'm struggling to understand exactly what the question is here every time I hear solipsistic just think of that episode of the his experience room at the same thing is it possible that only in a world of free will so fused with evil supererogatory acts I I think maybe the question is is kind of asking something has already been asking in other words that only in a world with free will that is therefore suffused with evil things like supererogatory acts could exist so things things like virtuous behavior I might be misinterpreting that it almost sounds like he's it almost sounds like he's asking if whether whether or not God is an explanation of evil yeah well that's my interpretation that's something that people ask a lot that's that's the case that Frank Sharik made since we discussed him earlier when he kind of says well oh yeah yeah in order to even talk about that the nature of evil in order to talk about the brunt of evil you need some kind of God to make sense of the concept of evil I think the implication in this question is that only in a world of free will and suffused with evil is that the question that arises is whether free will really does require evil really does require the level of evil and how that can kind of be how that can be justified right Michael earlier made a point about how we can't understand this concept of free will and human evil and without considering the fall of Adam which in the video that's that the the video that you made Michael the hour-long one this was a big point was kind of the point of human depravity it's like we are just totally we are totally depraved because because of the fall of Adam and therefore you know we live in a world suffused with evil because of that really well necessitated it I wouldn't worry like that I wouldn't say it's just because of Adam you were okay my understanding was that you said it was kind of an intrinsic part of human nature at the very least that we are just evil beings we are we are we are the prey so I quoted seus Louis on this I pointed out that the moment give herself was a possibility to put that self before you so just being yourself just necessitates the possibility and just the openness that there will it'll be evil in that sense so in that sense we have sort of turned ourselves into these evil beings by being selves just by the very nature of it so if by the very nature of our being we are evil that seems to imply that by necessity we are evil how can it make sense to talk about the possibility of these beings doing good if we are kind of by necessity evil or I should frame it like this if we are by necessity evil because of our nature then how can we be held responsible for that evil if it is just a a point of fact that our nature requires that we have this is evil tendency how can we be held responsible for that evil tendency I don't think we are I would not take the Augustinian view that all men are born guilty I would agree with Greek Orthodox Church that all men are born just with a nature but you're only guilty for your own sin but even in that no one is really condemned to hell for their sin people were condemned to hell because they want to be there in that full sense and so I I dive more into that in this thing my video in hell is not about the ontology of Hell my video tells more about the psychology of Hell anyone sort of going on there so I don't think in the Christian worldview no one is is actually condemned for their sin because you know John chapter 3 says John it please me it's too but John the Baptist says the Lamb of God has come to take away the sin in the world so the sin has already been taken away if God is responsible for our nature then he has taken it upon himself and done away with it the only people in hell are the people who want to be there as Dallas Willard said God will let anyone into heaven who can stomach it animals included do you mind if we move on to another question yeah certainly I feared we may have misunderstood what the question was supposed to be perhaps if david send me an email something and let me know if we got it right I just I feel bad if someone's kind of sent money to ask a question and we haven't sufficiently answered it so feel free to just email me afterwards that's a great option yeah okay so from gurgly naggy he says maybe true and this one I think it's either one but let's let's give it to to Michael I don't know why I just forgot your name he says may be true that the evil makes God a hypothesis extremely unlikely but don't you think we have additional arguments which make the hypothesis more likely Oh exactly that's what I talked about in my opening statement is that there is evidence for Christian theism independent of people and the argument of evil seems to be dependent upon a meta ethical view of moral realism and a normative ethical view open utilitarianism for it to even work so I mean this is what I said my opening statement even if the argument from evil is successful and you could just become an analyst in that sense because I know Christians that are moral nihilist surprisingly and just say well that evil and good suffering this is all arbitrary it doesn't really would affect the octal on school or the metaphysical nature of God in its sense so is I think I got the question answered but I'm wrong he's correct i I would like to perhaps point out that when I hear the phrase the evil god hypothesis oh no sorry makes god hypothesis yeah Bible makes guy I read the evil god hypothesis although I that might be an interesting thing to talk about in our back and forth but I worry it's a slightly different question about kind of there could be a God exists that is evil the way that I would see it as being relevant to the kind of present discussion is that one of the ways in which people like to say that we know that God can be good and exist as a good God is because although there's evil there seems to be all this good that's necessitated by the evil one can exist without the other this is the discussion we've kind of been having is that well we know that God can be good because the good in the world and assess States the evil they come as a package so we can still say God is good but that seems to be able to be turned on its head and I could say well how do we know that God isn't evil and of course you know definitionally people will say God isn't maximally moral being but there are at least theories of morality could be say a Christian moral nihilist who thinks that God is maximally evil and the argument would be something like well no that company decays to there's so much good in the world right if God was if God was evil he would make things maximally evil there'd be so much evil in the world and there's not enough evil to make that the case but the exact reverse argument could be made that without some pleasures there can't be some evils right without the knowledge of pleasures in the world we wouldn't be able to fully experience the evils that we experience without com we wouldn't know what the experience of chaos was this kind of thing so it feels like the argument that we're making to defend a good god hypothesis can be completely turned on the head and made in the reverse for an evil God and the best way I've ever put seen this put is by Stephen law in his debate with William Lane Craig years and years ago he makes this point really well I think if people are interested but I'm not sure how relevant it is to the present discussion yeah I'm gonna let Michael decide whether or not he wants to respond to that or whether you'd like to move to another question just see my video on the evil God challenge which I did about a year ago all right this one is from a friend of mine his name is Ollie he says to inspiring philosophy explain the distinction between being unjustified and allowing evil and allowing gratuitous evil and the distinct roles they play in the discussion explain that it's things between being unjustified and allowing evil and allowing gratuitous evil and the distinction rules play in it so I think I probably need more clarification to really get at what this thing now as I said earlier I didn't I'm not saying that Cotuit is evil does not exist so I would need to know what he how these different phrases are defined so we wanted thinking between being unjustified and allowing evil and allowing gratuitous evil and the distinction and the distinct roles they play in the discussion so I'll try to hit this as best I can but I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding it I think yeah to me and I wish I could provide more clarity too but it looks like the B's to me look very similar like these two things he's pointing out so yeah I mean like I would not I'm not saying I was gonna wrote down some notes to in reply to Alex's last rebuttal period is it I'm not saying that suffering is intrinsically good I'm saying it can be instrumentally good I'm not saying that it's suffering happens the person is necessarily better off I would build on Josh Rasmussen and by the way Alex you did mention you didn't think anyone's ever really addressed the column of animal pain I could recommend two things really easy there's a book by Trent Doherty called the problem of animals yeah and there is a paper by Josh Rasmussen called a randomness based composite to the Odyssey for evolutionary evil so I could send those both to you're interested but I don't myself and the authors are not saying that we think they're better off in that sense we're not saying that gratuitous he hole does not exist we're saying that the suffering can be used for instant or goodness but doesn't even necessarily need to be what we're saying is that God has sort of created a universe where though when those things arise they will ultimately always be defeated if the free creature you know allows them to be by going through a process with God we're not saying that they're better to go through that suffering I don't think a lot of the suffering with you as a child means oh I needed to go through that to become the person I am I'm not saying that at all we're saying that these are examples of chaos these are examples of a universe where there are free creatures and ultimately though the universe has this law of triumph imbued in it that will always show outshine the evil in that sense it can always be overcome with that every individual so I'm not saying it's justified but I'm also not saying it was a it was determined by God or it has to be used by God I'm saying God in soul building there's going to be randomness there's going to be chaos if it's going to be built by three creatures themselves and not by God in termina never ething so I I don't and then it also goes back to what we mean by the ultimate aim or the ultimate end of God is it a utilitarian view or is it like a damn ecology viewers and is it a virtue ethicist view in that sense so there's a lot more to be said on there but I don't I don't know if I'm getting the whole question right here well this is actually I've got another question here queued up and this one is is on virtue ethics it's addressed to you from shad SPARC thank you for your super chat he says how does virtue ethics justify which virtues are good and how does that not reduce virtue ethics down to consequentialism great point so yeah I would grant Daugherty that it's not entirely opposed to consequentialism virtue ethics I mean really all the fields of Essex could do blur into one mother let's be honest it's not like they're so distinct that you know I mean even a Dale intelligence will stalk about we have to do good actions because ultimately that will create less suffering in the long run even though their ultimate aim is not to reduce suffering give it to have good actions so in terms of what virtues we justify is good this is a difficult question and as any virtue ethicist will say ethics is quite messy it's not always gonna have clear-cut definitive ways in order to define these things circumstances are always going to play a role in that type of thing on how to be virtuous so in some sense it does kind of come down to a little bit on intuition on understanding moral progress understanding what has what sort of consequences are being created because again virtue ethics is not entirely opposed to consequentialism in that sense so there so the best way to sort of look at it is sort of to take those consequences into a into consideration look at them and sort of say what is this helping us be more virtuous in the long run but I mean ultimately the goal is to create virtuous people not then you could say that is a consequence in that sense but it's not about the ultimate goal would not be defined in terms of pleasure or pain but more in terms of bringing about certain ethical values and how to act in that so again it's a very messy situation and it'd be very hard to put it down in different circumstances I would I would just yeah I'm kind of just itching to say that like it's only difficult and messy if we're if we if we're clinging on to this idea that virtue ethics isn't reducible to consequentialism as you say virtue ethics isn't at odds with consequentialism and it's clearly kind of the reason why we adopt certain virtues not others is because they lead to a better outcome not necessarily pleasure and pain but like it seems to me that what we're kind of implicitly accepting here is that we determine which virtues are in fact virtuous and by the consequences that they lead to to me this is like obviously true of virtue ethics which I've thought a lot about and spend a lot of time trying to find ways around but I can only see a rationale for justifying virtue ethics that ultimately collapse consequentialism I would kind of be wary if the the augmentation that you were using there Michael because it seemed to me like you were almost kind of accepting almost just agreeing with the point that the true ethics does in some sense at least to collapse into a consequentialism unless you can provide a rationale for saying that virtues can be good in and of themselves completely regardless of the consequences that they bring about which it sounds like you weren't doing maybe I'm just completely misunderstanding what you're saying but it sounded like so many times you were saying that actually that you are good as a result of the ends that they bring about well we could think of for example the fat man and Charlie example we would say we not be virtuous to act in that way to push the fat man over the bridge to prevent the fighbird more suffering in that sense so you can think of different hypotheticals along the way where it hurts use themself are sort of themselves their own goal in the end surely so the important question there is why not why is it not virtuous to push the fat man and so obviously that example is given as compared to pulling the lever and kind of saying well why is one virtuous and one not we that the question we're interested in here the question is kind of being asked by shad spark is what is our kind of determination for why pushing the fat man is not virtuous and to me the reason why it's not virtuous to push the fat man is because even though a base level analysis of consequentialism would say if you push the fat man less people die for any listeners who don't know you're pushing the fat man to stop the trolley hitting five people and all people are innocent right seems to be that well consequentialism would say that if you push the fat man less people die so the consequences are better and yet it's not virtuous to push the fat man but no the consequence of pushing the fat man is living in an ethical world where we've agreed that it's okay to take people on the street and push them over a bridge if it's going to result in in people being saved and that would be a bad end that would be a bad world to live in in other words it's not virtuous because the consequence of of instilling that as part of our virtue ethics would be a worse world right it is bad by virtue of its Konrad's right but also I mean building on even can't you know how to screw them a lot of things we could say that it's just good in of itself the same the categorical imperative is just simply Goodin of itself I'm a caught would say it's wrong to murder just because it's wrong to Myrtle that's just it isn't refer to the consequences but if we lived in a world where we knew that if we did push fat man just to prevent more suffering than it would lead to more pleasure ultimately we would still recognize that it was still not virtuous to do such a thing in and of itself regardless of the consequences in that action even though if it created more pleasure so yeah I'm not denying consequentialism doesn't play it all into my end of my and my role in understanding virtue ethics I think there is as I said the beginning there also they're quite blurry it's quite messy ethics is quite messy it way you know it sounds like you're making it more a sweet messy than it needs to be you know there seem to be simpler explanations with these things as long as we're willing to stop clinging on to ideas of virtue ethics that that are just kind of for some reason just strictly opposed to accepting that there's consequentialism at the basis of their motivation it's like just do that and I'm sure that we'll be a lot happier and we'll be able to clear up the mess quite quickly all right yeah yeah let's let's move on to another question here and this one's for Alex from Gina M thank you for your super chat she says how would you respond to an argument that a world without virtue would create a world of evil for example in a world that would not permit the growth of forgiveness people would become so selfish as to be prone to evil well bear mine the argument that I was making was that it's not worth having evil in the world for the sake of virtue reason being that you know I'd rather have no evil and no virtue and the question is being asked but what if it were the case that by allowing a world without virtue more evil would be produced well look bear in mind what I'm trying to do here is minimize evil and the first step in my argument is to say to minimize evil in the first instance means to get rid of the virtue right so in order to achieve this end of minimizing evil I'm going to disallow virtue that all these particular virtues from existing because we're going to disallow the evils which they which need to be there in order for the virtue to exist then you ask but what if that leads to more evil well if that were the case then it wouldn't be a minimization of evil right so we would allow the virtues because then it would actually be worth it right so the point that some like Michael will make is virtues are worth the kind of evil that that that comes about in order to produce them this would be the case in a world wherein if we could show that without virtue there would be more evil then yeah it would be worth it what I'm saying is that in the actual world that we live in I don't think that is the case I don't think it is the case that if we got rid of cancer and got rid of chemotherapy that would be overall bad because it would lead to some kind of badness I don't think that if we got rid of fear and we got rid of bravery that I would leave to lead to some kind of evil potentially it would and if there's an argument for it I'd love to hear it but just bear in mind that like my position is very simple and it's very open to being changed if you can show me that a different course of action would actually lead to a minimization of suffering then I'll take it right that that's as simple as it gets like people often ask what would change your mind in any kind of debate and for me it on a moral discussion like this if you can show to me that actually yeah getting rid of this particular virtue would lead to more evil then I'd say okay don't get rid of the evil I don't get rid of the virtue it would just be as simple as that for me I would highly recommend the best way to change our on that is to have children you'll learn very quickly that what some reality allows some suffering to make their lives far better in the long run and you says I'd rather have no evil and no virtue and also I keep thinking of this hypothetical world where God is like just forcing pleasure on like you just all these free creatures are create but they're always just in pleasure and I just think it just takes me right back to Stepford Wives that sounds like a horrible world where we don't really become mature growing individuals were just these children in these pleasure machines and that's me sounds like some sort of dystopian type world it may sound good on the surface it may feel emotionally good to us but ultimately though from ever since I had my daughter it just seems farm better for her in the long run to sort of allow some suffering I mean I'm not I don't want you know horrible something obviously to happen there but it allows some suffering in order to her to become a far better mature virtuous individual and in terms of consequentialism we would say the consequences of that or go are far better in a long run and so then we can actually save it it'd be hard to deny that suffering does not have instrumental goodness in that set um so Alex I have a peak to to David Bennett oh I was gonna say he might kind of change your mind since but I just have to say this is really important to me you said about your own child you know you say that it's worth having some suffering and then you kind of say as an offside of course I wouldn't want my child to have like immense suffering like because because but here's the thing that's implicitly implicitly being said here you've just constructed a case that says that it's justifiable in the world for God to allow children to get cancer or something like this but at the same time you're kind of saying well if I were in the position of God you know I understand why he would allow some suffering but I wouldn't allow a lot of suffering it's like why would you construct a case where by analogy if you were at the helm you wouldn't allow your child to have a lot of suffering but you're okay we've got allowing someone else's child to have a lot of suffering I'm not omniscient and I'm far more oh I'm very emotionally invested in I'm not fully knowledgeable in the case now once again this goes back to my opening statement in terms of eternity the dreamlike nature of this world God's moral obligations and fully understand how to heal the wounds an attorney I'm just saying me as a parent I would never put enough suffering onto my child that I know she could not overcome and I would say God would do the exact same thing with his knowledge and his circumstance oh I've got another question for you Alex that's cued up and it's on the same it's it's in the same ballpark okay if I bring it up I I would just be I find to answer it but I I'm really interested in just pressing this point which is you said Michael that you wouldn't inflict more suffering on your child than you know they could overcome what if like I could show to you like by some time-traveling device that if you gave your child a horrible horrible disease that they were gonna manage to overcome it and they got lots of good things out of it they became like a strong character would you be okay with me injecting that disease into them I think not even if you were in a position of omniscience to know that once that they were capable of getting through it and that once they've gone through it they develop certain virtues I think you'd still rather say no I'd rather not have my child go through that even do even with the results that are gonna come out but this is what we're saying when we say that God can justify suffering because it leads to certain virtues which we say that he knows that this person is going to suffer in the way that your child would suffer but he has no quarrel with that he says that's fine I think it's worth it and you said that you didn't have omniscience when I asked you about that you said well I'm not in a position of omnipotence and omniscience and I'm giving you that I'm giving you that opportunity I'm saying here's an example where as a time traveler you can have that on this sense and know that your child will overcome it and will be a better person for it but you still say that you wouldn't inflict it upon them and you go to ask yourself why not because a difference between when something happens and part of like a random chaos like universe's versus the actual action of inflicting the pain I don't think God is necessarily the one giving people cancer I'm simply saying that we are part of a strange soul building universe and he is allowing us to be able to overcome it maybe that was a clumsy wording and so let's say that instead I am about to inject this disease and your child and you have the opportunity to stop me right because this is the situation that God would be and as you rightly point out I was wrong it would be more analogous to say that you have the opportunity to prevent your child from having a horrible disease I'd imagine that you'd still do that you'd still knock the needle out of my hand even if I was a time traveler who said no no no no listen to me I'm doing this for her you know his or her own sake you probably still want to knock that needle out of my hand and if you would then you've got a basket it's not good enough for your child and why is it good enough or anybody else's well of course I would I'm emotionally invested I'm not omniscient and I can't fully understand the situation I mean I'm not gonna deny my own subjective I mean I opened by pointing out there is an emotional sting of evil and I'm gonna do everything I can to fight that but again it goes back to my point of quoting Eric Wheaton in my opening statement okay let's move on to another question from Anthony buck and this one is to Alex why would you assume to be able to understand God's reasoning could you explain hand sanitizer to your skin cells seems you're assuming the human capacity for understanding is infinite well no I mean I'm not the one making the claim that I know why evil exists right I as an atheist I could be some kind of existentialist or denialist or absurdists who just says look I know that suffering exists I have no idea why it exists I'm just gonna have to put up with it but I'm faced with an ideology a religion a system of thought that says actually no like we know what we think that this evil is justified and I'm saying how on earth you know that like what what argument do you have and it there are kind of two ways to go about it there's one way of saying well I have separate reason to believe that a morally perfect being exists through like an ontological argument and therefore I can just assume good reason for it but what's being done here in the problem of evil is an attempt to actually justify that suffering so it would be more akin to somebody saying that they could justify hand sanitizer to my skin cells that they could do that that they could speak to my hand to my skin cells in such a way as to explain why I'm sanitizing them and I'm simply saying or rather by analogy that the skin cells would be simply saying like what what on earth is that explanation and I find it wanting I don't think we can know the mind of God but if we can't know the mind of God then I don't think we can say that evil is justified in the same respect that we can't say that it's not alright I'm gonna kind of power through some of these questions because we have a lot to get through before we hit that two-hour mark this one's from Paul Rimmer two inspiring philosophy Michael is everyone in heaven a vegan maybe everyone in heaven as a breathe area I mean in terms of the resurrection I mean we have to remember Christian heaven is the resurrection I would say heaven is going to be formal and now this is probably a little bit caricature but heaven is far more like Narnia in that kind of sense that there will be animals there it's the resurrection in that sense that we're going to come back to earth in that sense are we going to be vegan it's quite possible I'm very sympathetic to a lot of the vegan arguments out there I'm not going to deny it and so I do think that is a strong possibility I also think it's probably far more than we could fully ever imagine ultimately though what I say heaven is is the ultimate Christian goal is that it's kind of like a rebuttal to an atheist argument in that oh we're so small in this tiny universe why wouldn't in why would this anyone care about us well maybe it's we're small now but I would say heaven if we're going to be resurrected back on the 3rd this earth and we're gonna pick up where we left off in Eden it's gonna be our job to turn the whole universe into Eden in that sense so tame the Russian trash environments finish up the job on this planet and then move off to other planets turn the whole universe into eat it very possible the the nature of that will be vegan in that sense especially if we're supposed to help the soul building of other animals in that sense I'm sure that if Jesus was vegan he'd have let us know by now usually can't help themselves to tell people ok so a question so a question from Roger Marshall this one is for Alex Alex millions of pee have been subjected to unspeakable evil with or without God what hope can you offer these people without God that justice will be done or that this will that or that this evil will be addressed mmm it's an understatement millions I mean billions 100 billion people have ever lived on this planet which by the way is not far off it's just slightly over the number of non-human land animals that are killed just for food alone every single year like the numbers that we're talking about are through the roof right that's not including sea life and that's not including wild animal suffering but the amount of suffering that's going on whether we're inflicting it or not is unbelievably large unbelievably large and the question is you know what can I offer these people without God well I don't know the answer to that question I could offer them I could offer them different approaches is gonna work with different people right and it depends what you're trying to do here either I'm trying to offer them a genuine philosophical defense as to as to why they should be happy or I'm just psychologically trying to make them feel better right if it seems like we're kind of implying we're talking about the second like what can we do to these people who are obviously going to be incredibly upset incredibly hurt and it would depend on the person you know I can offer them a book I mentioned Viktor Frankl if you read man search for meaning it's one of the most touching accounts of somebody managing to find meaning in the most meaningless of situations and that might help somebody but what I have to admit and you know what I have to have the intellectual honesty to admit is that if I don't have the answer that question I don't think I do that I I simply I simply can't even pretend to have one right so my job here is to show why I think evil and suffering in the world is so bad that we have reason to think that God wouldn't allow it so if I don't even think that an omnipotent omniscient being that was the creator of the universe could justify this kind of suffering then I'm sure as hell that I couldn't either and we may just have to accept the fact that there's nothing we can offer to these people but if that's the case then sad a reality is that maybe that reality is true of me as true of you and it's true of the Christian too because until we have a sufficient explanation and I don't think God fulfills it we're all on this boat together we're all in this boat of suffering and that's kind of the principle problem of philosophy when you're not really I think the most important problem of philosophy is what do we do about suffering because life necessitates suffering which means that if there is any meaning to life there is a meaning to suffering and death and that's a difficult question to overcome I have to simply admit that I can't overcome it but that's not my job here today okay this is another question for Alex I think this is a question for Alex from maverick Christian thank you for a super chat Wade he says do you agree that without objective morality there's no objective fact of the matter whether God would adopt a standard of goodness whereby it's good for God to permit suffering and thus no objective fact whether God would allow it evil if he existed I think maybe the question is kind of asking if God does not exist and therefore perhaps they can't be objective morality can the counterfactual still be true that if God did exist he would be able to justify evil would or would allow evil I think he's actually taken them from the question I think he's taking the perspective that that Michael gave earlier where he was saying some some Christians are nihilists and so it doesn't seem to me like he's saying if they're if God does not exist he's seems to me he's asking a question about God's obligation is if objective morality was did not exist Oh see do you agree that without objective morality there's no objective fact of the matter whether God would adopt a standard of goodness whereby is good for him to permit suffering and the subjective fact whether God would allow evil if that's the case then I fear that a confusion is being made that's made often which is that the opposite of moral nihilism is moral objectivism which is not true because moral subjectivism is not a form of moral nihilism right you can think that there are subjective truths about ethics so if there were no objective morality a Christian could for instance think they could answer the you the Euthyphro dilemma in the untraditional way of saying actually or they could ask for they could also by saying that God determines what's good and evil and think that that kind of implies that God determines what's good and evil which means that it's subjective to him in other words good and evil are not subjective are not objective they're subjective dependent on what God commands but that doesn't equal moral nihilism that doesn't mean that they don't have force that doesn't mean they're not true it just means they're true with relation to a subject like God but I still feel like I'm sober like I miss understanding the question here it's just really something a semi opening statement that you you need what you need good and evil to be objective for God have any sort of bearing on forgot to stand in he's some kind of relation yeah morally to these to these states of affairs potentially but I mean look my view is that my particular views on morality are kind of not withstanding for this debate I'm I'm trying to attack the internal consistency of Michael's views so if Michael thinks that morality is objective and there are objective wrongs and that there is a God then it's his job to make them fit together and me show how they don't if Michael thinks that morality is subjective and there is a God then he needs to show how that can work together so like I I don't I don't really I don't really know I'm just kind of well I mean like somebody's worldview has to be taken together right you have to you have to you have to know everything about what someone believes in order to kind of make the links between them so just knowing what they think about morality isn't really enough so let me give you a possible response that you could give here if you even if you reject objective morality and even if you yeah we're thinking about what God's obligations would be if moral realism was false and what you're saying is that we are looking at this from a consistency standpoint so yeah on the Christian worldview God is loving and so you could still say even if objective morality is not a thing then God is still perfectly loving and it would be consistent with a perfectly loving nature to not allow suffering sure yeah so the question would kind of the implication of that would be as you say let's not talk about good and evil because if they're not objective maybe it's unhelpful but if you think that God is all loving as a separate point then the question just reformulates itself it's not just a question about like what's loving and what's not it's like we know facts about the universe we know the children get cancer and we have to be committed to the view that that is loving that it is loving to allow a child to get cancer it's the same problem as saying you have to accept that it is good or at least not evil for a child to get cancer it would just be like frames differently right whatever the person believes as you say Cameron that's prolly the best way to answer it with any argument I ever make on any debate that I do any video I make it's always an argument of consistency pretty much most of the time and that that's what I'm looking for here it's just consistency make it work okay let's try to move on we have so many super chats to get through I don't think that we're gonna be able to get to all of them today so I really apologize about that if you sent one in and we don't have time to get to it here's one from Alice Lawrence she says and this one is from Michael if God is building virtuous souls for when they wake to eternal life making the suffering a bad dream does that not imply that people will need to overcome overcome suffering eternally I think we will you do overcome this suffering we've experienced in this life I don't think everyone dies ready to go to heaven I agree with people like Gerry walls that there is some sort of like purgatory state not like Dante's comedy version but some sort of state where people are still being sanctified and made virtuous and there's a lot of evil that people are still overcoming in this life I do think that we will need to continue to overcome that and ultimately I don't think that there will be a lack of suffering in eternity I think they're still going to be challenges that we will have challenged and ply suffering although I do think that the soul building here will allow us to better deal with them in that sense and that's why this this aspect of our reality is very important in that sense okay let's get to another question for Alex this one is from roni roni roni roni question for Alex and Alex's worldview where there is no suffering wouldn't that make us suicidal because we would not know when something is good and we wouldn't we would not feel genuine happiness you know happiness and good when they were suffering there's a lot to unpack in that question but if we're considering suicide to be a bad thing which in at least some in probably most cases it is a bad thing then it wouldn't make sense to characterize a world in which people are are committing suicide all the time as a world that is kind of good or optimal because the implication is kind of like if we get your optimal worldview here like your worldview Alex if we get your optimal worldview wouldn't that lead people to kill themselves well no because the people killing themselves and then it would be the optimal world view like I've got no problem with allowing some evil and allowing some virtue maybe what I'm saying is that the problem of evil as far as I can see it as an evidential one rather than the logical one it's about that the the amount of suffering the level of suffering and the claim that we have the right amount of suffering in the world to justify the right amount of virtue as with the question earlier about evil where I just said look if if it wouldn't actually minimize evil then it then I would simply say that that's the wrong thing to do I would consider suicide as one of the evils that needs to be taken into into the calculation it's as simple as that like it's not a not so much a consequence of my worldview as as a factor in the original analysis of which world who I'd want to get in the conclusion if that makes sense yeah I I just wanted to to make a note I just feel compelled to say this if you're battling anxiety or depression you know this is gonna kind of get serious for a moment but if you're battling that thing don't like just ignore it take action like do something about it I think a lot of us in this space and apologetics and in philosophy a lot of us deal with some kind of like mental health issues issue and so take it seriously if you're battling with the anxiety or depression go see a professional expert like a psychiatrist someone who's an expert in brain chemistry see if there's something going on that you can either work out through cognitive behavioral therapy or with medication but don't just sit on it don't just like let it fester because there are options out there if you need to just call someone talk to somebody please take care of it immediately I just I felt like I needed to say that okay so and also don't don't over philosophize it at the beginning philosophers about suffering and certainly philosophizing that suicide is an incredible luxury that we have to be able to do in a position of kind of rational inquiry rather than as a matter of personal education this isn't Asif Iser yeah hey do you guys have time to go a little bit long today just to answer some more questions or what's your status should be fine by me as long as you don't keep let's just probably have a cut-off point at some point because I don't want people to just think that three more hours of super chance yeah no no no yeah so okay let's just get through a few more here and then we'll move to some closings okay this one is I'm not gonna do it so some of the super chats that are being sent in seem a little bit tangential and not related so I'm gonna I'm gonna have to skip over some of these Joshua heal or hell says if God is omnipotent is he bound to the rules of logic what implications will this have on things like free will and the need for suffering in order to derive well-being both respond please so let's start with you Michael yeah yeah so you want to see a full bigger explanation see my video the omnipotence paradox debunked one thing to realize is logic is not some sort of set up boundaries logic is descriptive it describes the way things are so logic essentially in a metaphysical sense would be it simply describes everything that is and everything that is possible so God is not bound by the rules of logic in that sense if something is outside of logic it's just non-existent yeah I I would actually I would simply tend to agree in the past I've made videos where I've tried to use the omnipotence paradox I think I used it in my first ontological argument video I would retract that I'm hoping to put out a video at some point in the future about things I've variously got wrong in in videos and that will be one of the first things my understanding of omniscience has changed such that to be omnipotent is to be able to do all things not to be able to do anything but to be able to do all things a friend of mine always puts it like he says that omnipotence is the ability to do all things and that logical contradiction simply aren't things they don't exist like the square that the squared triangle doesn't exist it's not a thing so you can do all things whilst not being able to square the circle okay so here's a question for alex from Gil cancel comas comas question for Alex how does this reasoning apply to parenthood is a parent who allows anything that their child would consider suffering vaccination school make it unlikely that they are a good parent does it lead to better adults no remember the parent isn't in a position to remove that kind of suffering if if a parent had the opportunity to make their children such that they didn't need vaccinations they do it right I made a video on the problem of evil a while ago in response to what do you mean who gave the example of Dentistry you kind of talked about a parent taking their child to the dentist and although it would cause suffering for the child and Charles would even understand this is the real part of the analogy is that you couldn't explain to the child why they need to undergo the suffering but you know that it's better for them yeah but if you're in a position where you could make it such that they didn't need to go to the dentist that they didn't have toothache in the first place you prefer that a parent isn't in that position so when a parent is in a situation where suffering is necessitated then yeah make sure you do everything your kid can do to get over that get them vaccinated get them through school all this kind of stuff but if you had the opportunity to make it such that they didn't have to go through that suffering I think any parent in their right mind would do so okay here's a question for Michael that's actually a good segue here so he says Michael what about the person who suffers their whole life but then isn't saved so I think this is a question about that point that you were making about afterlife in heaven yeah and this view everybody gets what they want in the end all that are in hell choose it not that selfish there could be no health CS lewis and basically the point is that as I said earlier God will let anyone to have any low stomach yet so he'll is just simply a freely chosen identity built on something else besides God going on forever God wants everyone in eternity with him but heaven is just being with God hell is rejecting God if you don't want to be with God you get that in the end so he warns that will not be good for you ultimately because it could lead to the destruction of your soul but if you think you know better you have every right to do that all right this one appears to be another question for Michael from Phil if omniscience is a requirement to be God and God created the world knowing all that would happen prior to creating it doesn't this disprove free will yeah this is easy to address you can also see my video on the omniscience paradox no because on missions isn't determining it doesn't imply fatalism you could think of God more as like the infallible weather barometer it doesn't cause a winner but it can always predict the weather so God our actions determine what God knows he does are his knowledge does not determine our actions in that sense an analogy be set up like this if I had a time machine I go into the future and I watch everything you do tomorrow and then I come back to today and so I know everything that's gonna happen does that mean I determine you know because knowledge doesn't determine okay so this is another very sensitive question and make sure we handle this with care Joshua Anderson asked question for Alex if a person truly has nothing to live for then can suicide be the right path well I as you say we have to be very careful here and recognize that we're talking about this in a philosophical context and I talk about the topic a lot and I write about this topic a lot I speak about it with friends and I have the liberty of just saying what I think without having to be careful I've never addressed it in public before because it's it's a bit of a responsibility I've been meaning to make a video about whether death is bad for the person who dies but I realize it's probably bad time to do that with the pandemic and everything but the philosophy as far as I'm concerned is that if you can't imagine a situation in which it's rational for someone to commit suicide then you simply aren't trying hard enough there are definitely situations in which somebody can determine that their life would be bad and not to continue and be correct about that the problem is that most people who think that are probably wrong in my view or in the estimation of most people let's say at the very least some people will try to address the problem by saying never give up there's never a reason to end your life but I think that that's not only untrue but also unhelpful because for the person who feels as though they want to win their life that can invalidate their opinion if you say by definition you have to be wrong because life is always worth living it's always worth never giving up you just immediately invalidate their position and they think well you you're not listening to me you don't understand how much pain I'm feeling whereas if we approach the problem by saying yes yeah there are situations in which it's better to kill yourselves so now let's work together and see if you're in that situation then they feel like you're listening to them and you can have an actual constructive conversation and you can lead them on a road that says actually no you're not in that situation and here's why but if you begin the conversation by just saying no it's never it's it's never a good idea to commit suicide then that person is going to shut himself off from you and you are also incorrect because there are such situations approach the issue seriously as if they're asking you a serious philosophical question which they are should I kill myself and you have to say I don't know let's work it out together and the answer is probably going to be no but it's not know by default Michael any thoughts on that yeah this is difficult because I've know I've been there before we did a depression I felt suicidal in the past the question is is what people would say do I have anything to live for and it's like well of course you have things to live for okay then you main feel like that but just take a step back and just recognize what's going on in this situation don't think irrationally from the limited knowledge you have now recognize what's sort of happening here depression is multi-dimensional there are physical aspects sometimes people just need prop they need a good night's sleep they need a good meal they need medication sometimes there are emotional things and they need that needs to be addressed I did a video on my channel last summer called the pressure on depression and I cover this pretty extensively so if you want more please please watch that because I hoped it would help but when you come as a suicide I would say that your insurance intrinsic goodness of your life is always going to be far better than whatever sort of suffering or pain you're going through and recognize that that all of that suffering well one day be turned into an ultimate joy and that just because it made you may not see the light at the end of the tunnel now that doesn't mean it will come and I do think it will come this is what we are promised in the in the Gospels and I have no reason for denying that so on the Christian worldview there will be a lady in the town and everything will come together as it is promised okay let's turn to another question from and I think this is gonna be our last one before we do some closings from motion con he says if I die and go to hell ultimate suffering God already knew this before creating me yet he went on to create me doesn't this imply that he can't be merciful knowing what he knew so yeah that's a good question I think we have to go back to what we mean by good and evil is suffering ultimately going to outshine the suffering of the individual in that sense and my argument going back on some of the earlier analogous I gave is the goodness of life is always intrinsically better than any sort of intrinsic badness there isn't suffering also I don't think hell is necessarily eternal I would call myself more of an eventual annihilation and they annihilation is and that God exiles P from his presence and then they slowly go out of existence of their own accord so I don't think that it's sort of this eternal endless horrible place people are stuck in I think although they ultimately be in terms of goodness of the life itself is always going to be better than that and ultimately I also remind people that everyone in the end will get what they want you can be in heaven if you want I don't believe that I'm also known advocate that once you're in hell there's no chance for post-mortem salvation so there's always that opportunity to turn around and get out anything - tad Alex so closing I didn't I didn't quite catch that did you say that if someone's in hell they do or they don't have the opportunity to move from Hell into heaven I do think they have the opportunity to move into heaven I think it's exceptionally rare right sure okay yeah and I would have had a point if you went if you want the other way but I'm happy to just kind of move on for the sake of time well I mean ya know yeah I haven't really got much of meaning to say on that topic okay cool let's move into so I wanted to mention to everybody so what we're doing right now with our channel is we're planning a conference and so I just wanted to let you know that in the fall of 2021 we're planning a capturing Christianity the first-ever capturing Christianity conference and the way that this is even possible is that we're looking to bring my wife who is a enix like she is the most gifted event planner in the world and I'm not just saying that she really is gifted and so we're looking to bring her on board with capturing Christianity full time as soon as possible so we just launched a campaign to make this happen and if you want to help you can go to patreon.com/crashcourse and other conferences and a lot of other really cool things that we have planned going on happen if you help support the ministry on patreon with that said let's go to some closing so with inspiring philosophy let me get my clock here down to would you just like to stick with two minutes or do you want to move it up two to three or how would you like to to do these whatever I think I'm good I'm good with two minutes I don't exactly have like a planned thing so I'm just gonna kind of fill the time with with general observations so feel free missus okay all right so whenever you're ready Michael I'll start the timer so I think Alex took the words right out of my mouth when he pointed out the argument from evil is really an attack on eternal internal consistency the only problem is then they too they they they define what is good and evil in terms of what how they would define it and not in terms of how the biblical worldview would define it so it really isn't an attack on internal consistency you have to be careful about what we mean by good and what we mean by evil we can't assume utilitarian understanding of this and then use that to attack the Christian worldview I think ultimately though a lot of the arguments for evil start tend to just sort of collapse this ideas like but look at all that suffering why would it go and allow this it sadly they just reduced these appeals to emotion and then they ignore the overall picture of the Christian worldview namely the afterlife that dreamlike nature this reality alex was pressing me on something earlier about like what I wanted my daughter to be given a horrible disease if if he was some sort of time traveler I was saying no because I'm emotionally invested obviously but let's say we were living in Inception and we were in a dream lair world and I knew this was a dream lair world and I knew that in any moment my daughter could just wake up and she'd be back in this world and be fine I that might that would entirely change the circumstances and from God's perspective that's how this world operates is that everyone sort of gets out and they have the ability to grow in an eternal setting with God in a more real fundamental reality he also brought up the Dennis example he replied to what do you mean if John McCrae and you know that's a good point but also to remember it's not about that the Dennis example is about physical pain whereas God is more focused on virtuous building and mental suffering in what and how that that can be instrumentally good in sort of building these souls in that sense and that may not be able to remove if you're going to work with free creatures unless God is sort of determining us and if you get to that sense you just goes back to my other example just takes you back into the world of the Stepford Wives where does it matter if we grow in knowledge by understanding science it doesn't matter if we grow in virtues it's all about just pleasure who cares about evil no evil no virtue Stepford Wives is a far better world and I don't think that's intrinsically true at all ok and let's move to a two-minute closing we'll pull up my countdown here and get you queued up so whenever you're ready I'll start the Turner sure well there isn't there's nothing that can be said in the final two minutes that hasn't already been said but I can just kind of I suppose this one clarification that could be made which is we haven't really talked much about this emotional rational distinction it may appear with a lot of things that I say or have said that I'm making an appeal to an emotion which is not true in the logically fallacious sense but is true in a in an important sense for example you know in the past I've discussed abortion or something and said like the the truth of the matter shouldn't be determined about how we feel about the conclusion and people have said to me that you can't say that you know don't be emotional about a subject like abortion like it's so important to take into consideration the emotions and this is the key point right the fallacious appeal to an emotion is to say that you don't like the conclusion therefore the conclusion is wrong you've got some emotional reaction to the conclusion yeah sure that's wrong well what's not wrong to do is to consider people's emotions as part of the analysis right you'd consider people's emotions as part of the consequence of the action and determine whether or not it's is right or wrong taking them into account right that's a different thing from analyzing the emotional reaction we have to the conclusion so in the problem of evil when it seems like we're talking emotionally when we when we say like there are innocent people die it may seem as though that's an appeal to emotion I'm just trying to get people to feel bad it's like no it's a philosophical point it's that these people are innocent meaning that they you know prima factor you don't have a reason that's deserving of the punishment inflicted upon them and they're gonna suffer emotionally for it to this extent and this extent and you can talk about the the emotional impact that is actually rationally relevant because the argument has to be that that emotional suffering is justified so you do have to bring up the emotions the emotional context now Michael wasn't denying that you do but I just wanted to make clear that an appeal to emotion can either mean the fallacious sense of saying that you don't like the conclusion you have a strong emotional reactions the conclusion that's fallacious but to incorporate emotions into an argument that you're making to incorporate how people will feel in determining whether or not you should commit an action is is an appeal to emotion in a different sense that's definitely not fallacious alright well thank you guys both for coming on to capturing Christianity for this debate we've been talking about this for a long time so I'm glad that we were actually able to make it happen what were your thoughts how do you think the the debate went do you have any thoughts unlike the format was did you enjoy it I just want to say I think it's this was all been an intervention to get Alex to read Lord of the Rings this is all been a ploy we know it all along and you better read it because we're very disappointed in you I for a moment I thought you were going to say some other kind of intervention was happening now and I got a bit worried I thought this I thought this was good I I the format why I prefer this format I think I've done a few debates recently where there's been a discussion period which I initially suggested for this debate but after I had those debates and the discussion period fell into just absolute chaos and I know and I'm sure the same with Michael but even even thinking about our last debate that we had on morality this field it's got more structure you can identify what the points are and you can pull them out and analyze them so I enjoyed it the only problem was that because you've got a timer ticking whereas usually if I'm making a point trying to you know respond something you said I'd have said now look I'm not saying this I'm not saying that so it may appear at times that I was being a bit um forthright let's say of the timing yeah that's the only that's the energy outside but I hope people don't interpret when I say no this is wrong and here's why there's me being rude believe me bad more time I'd probably be a bit more um I'd have a bit more decorum proper propriety let's say that that's just a result of the format but I think it was really good so as I've said I have both of these guys linked in the description of the video so if you want to check out IP inspiring philosophy or if you want to check out cosmic skeptic Alex O'Connor check out their channels linked in the description the video thank you for tuning in today and let me just talk to the audience real quick if you've been enjoying the content again patreon.com slash captioned Christianity is the way to support the ministry we have some really cool things coming up the conference is a big thing we already we just locked in as of yesterday our third sponsor so this thing is already starting to take take off it's it's amazing it's incredible if you want to help the if you want to help this project and help future projects capturing patreon.com slash capture and christianity is a way to do it so thank you guys for tuning in today and we'll see you later [Music]

Channel: CosmicSkeptic

Views: 161,972

Keywords: Alex O'Connor, cosmic, skeptic, cosmicskeptic, atheism, problem of evil, cs lewis, inspiringphilosophy, debate

Id: FB2U5JvRgL8

Length: 129min 30sec (7770 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Haxican]

The Christian dude sounds like he is getting kicked in the balls.

[u/BuriedInBullshit]

When Michael started bringing up his "law of triumph" I had to pause the video and catch my breath...