Earthquakes, cancers, parasites: The work of a ‘cosmic prankster’? Sharon Dirckx vs Stephen Woodford

if this uh conscious being of the devil um is what evil is when he acts in order to bring say cancer on a human or to erupt a volcano or when he does something that under your view would count as natural um is it in all cases he is deliberately doing this so like does he deliberately go out there and go that community in the third world I particularly don't like the third world so I'm going to have more disasters happen there I would actually say at that naturalism on an intellectual level does a good job of solving the problem of of natural evil one of the reasons not the only reason that I still feel more persuaded by the Christian view is actually because it doesn't make sense of my emotional response when we call something a disaster uh or when we say we want to fight cancer or battle mental health we're actually saying that there's something wrong with the world that response to natural evil can't be accounted for under naturalism hello and welcome to the unbelievable podcast where we bring together Christians atheists agnostics and everyone in between to discuss the topics that matter most to all of us I'm your host Vince vital and today we're going to be discussing what is sometimes referred to as natural evil for example earthquakes famines and Cancers evil that appears to be baked into the the fundamental nature of our world a world that sometimes seems like it's falling apart around us these are heavy and difficult topics to consider especially in light of the fact that many around the world including some of us and some of our loved ones may have suffered from these types of evils to all of you listening we appreciate you being with us here with me toight on the show is Sharon durik a speaker author and Christian apologist who spends much of her time responding to people's questions about faith originally from a scientific background Sharon has a PHD in brain Imaging from the University of Cambridge and she's the author of multiple books including her most recent which is titled broken planet and combines real life stories with intellectual arguments in response to the question if God exists then why are there natural disasters and diseases Sharon wonderful to have you back on the show that's great to be here Vince thanks for having me also join joing us today is stepen Woodford a well-known and influential YouTuber with over 41 million views uh his channel rationality rules is dedicated to dismantling religious and Supernatural beliefs in a recent video released in January Stephen challenged Sharon's claims about natural evil setting the stage for today's debate Stephen great to have you with us Vince it's a pleasure thank you for having me and Sharon it's amazing to be able to have this conversation with you thank you both yeah likewise excellent all right well let's dive in and let's start by making sure we all understand the challenge at hand sometimes referred to as the problem of natural evil or the problem of chological evil Stephen could you start us off by summarizing what that challenge is for the person who believes in God of course um I'm going to take us back slightly so that we can start with the problem of evil per se and then introduce the naturalistic elements so the problem of evil simply stated it's a philosophical and Theological dilemma that questions how an all powerful all knowing and all loving God can coexist with the existence of evil and suffering in the world it's something that's been contested since the time of at least epicurus it's something that has challenged many people's faith and it's something that's probably going to continue to be um a topic of great discussion the the essence of it is that if God is omnipotent he has the power to prevent evil and if he's omniscient then he knows when and where evil exists and of course if he's Omni benevolent so all loving he should want to prevent all suffering yet evil and suffering persist which poses a challenge to the traditional understanding of a perfectly good and powerful deity so that's the problem of evil in a nutshell and what it implies is when we look at evil states in the world it cannot simply be what's known as gratuitous that is to say it cannot be something that is straight up evil rather it has to serve a greater good and the reason for this is that it naturally just follows because God is all powerful and he's all loving he would necessarily create the best of all possible worlds and actually it's a limitation on our understanding of the world as to why we can't get around why how we can understand that it's not actually gratuitous evil but actually is for the greater good in the end now applying this to Nature and to theological aspects in general tileology meaning like design it's designed this way what we have is and I will just get my notes up so what we have with gratuitous evil is God is responsible for creating all species he's responsible for creating the entire universe and the world and what this means is that whether he used Evolution or creation depending on what your stance is he has made it so that we need to for instance eat flesh in order to in order to survive that's something that Predators have humans are omnivores technically can get away with not doing that but there are plenty of animals where that's not the case God has designed the world so that volcanoes uh go off and these volcanoes can cause incredible disruption and damage to ecosystems of not only humans but of course animals you have forest fires like what we saw in Australia in recent years where which has torched entire neighborhoods ruined entire ecosystems and these these things have been going on for billions of years I guess if you're a young Earth creationist you may contest this but then you're going to fall into other problems with bumping your head up against science and and what the various scientific Fields have to say about the age of the Earth and how long species have existed but in any case you have this vast amount of suffering that at least on the surface much of it seems to be completely gratuitous a good example or at least an example that resonates with me is the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago we had to the best of our knowledge a comet come down an asteroid and it hit the earth caused a Bree to go into the sky it caused volcanoes it caused a blacking out of the sun this would have affected billions of innocent creatures billions and if they were sentient if they were able to feel pain if they're able to to empathize and have emotions much like we believe other animals can do right now then this is a very serious problem why did that occur and the challenge is is that the theist who believes in an all powerful all loving God has to have not only a possible answer but but a probable answer something that isn't just this could be the case it needs to be no here's a compelling reason for it and my contention as is the contention of many people that have left faith and also many atheists in general is that this challenge has not been met by Sharon or indeed anyone that's really helpful Stephen and Shan obviously we're going to give you a chance to respond to that challenge but before we jump to that I would love to hear from both of you why you care about this question why you think it's an important question that our listeners uh should spend time learning about so Sharon I'll start with you on that why is this question important yeah I I think um I think this is a vitally important and actually just thank you Stephen for for laying out the um the argument and actually you know what what we want to do as Christians is actually respond to the the the heart of that um that argument that you put forward and I look forward to doing that but the reason why this is so important is because um it's really vital in terms of how people are thinking about whether whether God exists or not um and not so much even whether he exists but what is he like um you know the um there was a theologian U that said you know the first thing that comes into your head when you think about God or even the god that you don't believe in is the most important thing about you and I guess at the heart of this question and the the matters that that surround it perhaps you know we have kind of mental images of the kind of God that might exist even if uh even if the world is is the way that it is and that isn't a particularly attractive God that any would want to believe in it's also a really um important question because there's just a heartfelt reality of life These are these are uh questions that come to land in a very real way for each of us um you know we uh there are so many different kinds of natural evil or natural disaster um some of them we experience from far away and some of them we experience closeup and firsthand um you know illness in our families um you know um for me you know one of our Journeys has been with um my husband having an an illness that doesn't really have a name it's not really properly understood and and you know what what's that all about and how do we navigate that um and and of course some people have had experiences that have caused them to decide that that God doesn't exist and or if he does isn't worth following and so have walked away from Faith um and so this is a really important question to address and I guess at the outset I would want to say that even though there's a lot that we don't understand and and we're not going to get to the bottom of this question today or even ever um um and I'm not here to try and give trite or kind of boxed answers um but it is still possible to believe in a God who actually does love people and the created world uh even in the face of um all kinds of evil and and suffering that are embedded into the natural world thanks Shar and and Stephen you know does that to some extent capture why you see this question as important or are there other things that you would add well I one of the things I share with Christians you know obviously who I don't share the same worldview with is a deep interest in Theology and indeed philosophy um because a lot of a lot of especially people that want to defend their faith they will get into philosophy and so we have this shared interest and I've always from a very young age I've wanted to know why are we here what's our purpose what's going on and that has never ceased and it will never cease and I'd be very sad if it did I'm always going to be asking these questions and pursuing them as earnestly and honestly as I as I can and that is why I care about this topic and it's why I relish the opportunity to be able to speak with people especially who I disagree with because they might know something that I don't that can help me out on this on this on this journey if you will but one of the things what perhaps the best argument for there not being this God this this God of the Bible this capital G God the omn max God all loving all powerful and all knowing can be encapsulated with a quote from Darwin which I'll quickly read now and this is a launching pad from where I really come into this specific dialectic so he wrote this in a letter to ASA gray in 1860 and he said I cannot persuade myself that a benefic that a beneficient and omnipotent God would have designed uh the wasp and specifically he mentions a specific wasp but it's not needed here where what the WASP must do is feed within the living bodies of caterpillars or that a cat should play with a mouse and what he was indicating here is theological evil that is evil that God if he exists has designed into the species itself there are plenty of examples of this in nature in nature but of course this this one comes up with the WASP but that that's what Springs me into this into this conversation it's it's just an important one what could be more important than if there's a God and Sharon looking forward to your responses uh to that but one more fundamental sort of question as we kind of just get our bearings here I'm wondering do you feel you need an answer to this question about natural evil or disasters in order for your belief in God to be rational uh in other words you you know why can't as a Believer why can't you just say well God's ways are higher than my ways I don't know why he allow ows these terrible things to occur uh but I had some other reasons for believing in God such that I still think the overall you know case points to his existence do you think that that is a a sort of response that a Believer can take or or actually is there a deeper need to have an explanation for some of the things that Stephen is bringing to the four I think so I think if something is true then it it ought to make sense intellectually uh at a mind level but also uh be able to um kind of help us make sense of the the gritty reality of life you know um you know we talk about um where we were when the the Boxing Day tsunami kind of hit you know the shores of um the Pacific ring and and Indonesia and and you know the the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives were impacted by that you know every human being matters and so you know if if God is real if God actually exists then there ought to be some things that we can say that help us make sense at an intellectual level but also um can be grounded in reality and help us walk out the daily uh what it means to live in a life that involves suffering and the suffering of those around us and that's actually why in my book broken Planet I took this two-pronged approach where I'm looking not just at um the arguments that the the sort of intellectual arguments that might might be helpful but also grounding it in in stories of people that actually have been caught up in all kinds of natural evil from wildfires to earthquakes to tsunamis to Locust infestations and so on who have continued to believe in God and actually their um experience of natural evil hasn't stopped them believing in God and and I want to ask why is that what is it about the God that they believe in that means they can experience this firsthand but yet still hold to belief in in a a kind loving powerful God it's a mystery as well um I'm not using that as a get out clause but I you know I'm not here to give overly simplistic answers Stephen I think this is a a deep matter and we can but what I want to say is where do the most persuasive explanations lie um you know where where where do the most persuasive answers to this question lie that provide us a framework for making sense of natural evil what about you Stephen uh you know that response of I don't know would that seem like a cop out to you or would that seem honest and perhaps the sort of response that a Believer could give if he or she felt that they had other reasons for believing in God I I found this this quote from you I I found it challenging uh you know you said you'd think that theologians and apologists would simply say fair enough this piece of evidence fits better on naturalism but no they need to make out that everything is perfectly kosher you know would it be reasonable for the theist to say actually God's ways are higher than my ways I don't know the answer to this question maybe even I'm not surprised I don't know the answer because I wouldn't expect to understand everything about why God does the things that he does given that he's infinite and I'm finite but look I think I had these other good reasons for believing in God and so I think the overall case still points to him what would be your your sort of reaction to that type of approach so on the one hand it's commendable it it is actually really quite rare especially with apologists that you'll get anything anywhere near okay this bit of data is better explained on atheism even though by my lights that should be the first step of humility which is a quality that many Christians claim they have um and many do but I don't think that's the case when it comes to apologetics it seems to be a different game in general and I'm not saying that Sharon is part of the apologetic Circle but this is what I deal with online I deal with people that are preaching on stage people that are that their goal is to win it's not necessarily to find the truth and consequently admitting any kind of okay this data does make more sense on The View that I don't hold would be viewed as weakness as a deficit whereas I actually think it's a strength so suppose for instance we were talking about the shape of the earth and we come up with a piece of data for instance that it looks flat this data is actually predicted on the spherical Earth if you make the sphere big enough and it's also predicted of course on the Flat Earth but in and of itself it is just a bit the evidence itself better fits a flat Earth so someone that believes in a spherical Earth could look at that and go fair enough and your question of can someone do this with gratuitous evil is I would answer no the reason for this is that God is all powerful which means he can do anything he's all knowing which means he knows it all and he's all loving which means he will enact the greatest of all possible worlds so there's no room for that to be anything other than the best of all possible worlds epistemically so from their own perspective they could look at it and go I don't have an answer for this but I do believe in God because I have X Y and Z and that sense in that sense yes you could be justified I think but you'd have to have a faith that frankly would Eclipse any kind of faith I could ever come to when it comes to this one topic but yeah I think that is that is certainly the most reasonable uh view by my lights in response to it that's a really helpful analogy that you gave and I appreciate this posture of even looking to learn from one another and and potentially being willing to even concede a point to someone who disagrees with you wow what a incredible thing to do in today's in today's world in particular on rine uh and no will just linger there for a second I'd be interested to know from from both of you maybe Sharon I'll throw it to you first and then back to you Stephen but you know Sharon is there is there anything about the world or any piece of evidence where you say yeah I can see how that seems to fit better with naturalism at least on first glance but but I feel my case overall still points to God and then I'd be interested you know Stephen if there's anything in the other in the other direction where you see yeah I can see how that at least on first glance seems to point in the direction of something Supernatural though actually overall I think that's not the explanation any thought on that Sharon yeah definitely so I would actually say that naturalism on an intellectual level does a good job of solving the problem of of natural evil um in fact you know the the video that we've both referred to in talks and uh YouTube videos the the interview of Steven fry that went viral um a few years back 2015 when he referred to um the worm that that causes river blindness he was actually drawing from David atra's observations and and people have you know Christians have obviously asked David aten why he doesn't believe in God when he studies and sees all these incredible things in the natural world of which there are many and maybe that needs to be a little bit in on our radar as we talk about this but but at the same time there are also you know worms that eat the eyeballs of children and seem to have no other beneficial effect and I agree with you that doesn't seem to be any other benefit to these these worms um and and so you know at an intellectual level he rationalizes that by saying look these are just natural events these are just biological events in the world and there's nothing particularly amazing or astounding about the beautiful things in nature nor is there anything um concerning or um kind of wrong with the the disturbing things in nature they simply are the way that they are and in a sense at an intellectual level I think naturalism solves that very well um and but I think the reason one of the reasons not the only reason that I still uh feel more persuaded by the Christian view is actually because it doesn't make sense of my emotional response it it makes sense at an intellectual level it doesn't make sense at an emotional level here we are referring to it as natural evil um but actually if if if is all that there is there isn't really such a thing as evil there are just biological events geophysical events you know viral infections are biological events um earthquakes are tectonic plate movement they're actually the flip side of uh you know living on a planet that can sustain life they have a a sustaining role and it's just the look of the draw you get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and there's nothing particularly right or wrong about it it's just the way the world is but when we call something a disaster uh or when we say we want to fight cancer or battle mental health we're actually saying that there's something wrong with the world we're actually um saying that the way that the world is is not how it ought to be it ought to be different to how it is and I that response to Natural evil can't be accounted for under naturalism that makes more sense if there is such a thing as uh objective good and also objective evil um so that's how I would take that to the next stage thanks shanon and I'm gonna make a note we'll pick up on that theme because that's an important part of this conversation as well before we head to a break Stephen is there anything in the other direction that that you look at and you say yeah I could see how this at first glance maybe points towards a supernatural explanation even if that's not your overall conclusion yeah there's so there's some that I think are true and they do Point towards theism over atheism and then there's some that a lot of other people think is true that I don't which also would Point towards theism um I'm going to Sid step Omnimax God because I think that it produces so many problems but just theism per se I would say the fact that we exist is better explained or at least intuitively better explained on theism to be clear I'm not saying fine-tuning I think the fine tuning is a very poor argument it doesn't make any sense of God's powers for instance if he's omnipotent there's actually no prediction on what he could do he could make life span light years apart with the atoms being light years apart there's no predictability but the fact that there just is life I think that that is something that at least intuitively makes more sense on theism or at least a religious framework than a naturalistic framework if you believe in objective moral values now what I mean by this is if you believe that morality is instantiated in something or somewhere other than ourselves so it's a very specific idea of objective morality a religious one if you think that that exists and that it's stationary and it hasn't changed I think that that would make much more sense on theism than naturalism my problem is that I think the data screams that that's not true the fact that Christians today don't endorse slavery despite the fact that aquinus and Augustine and all of the early fathers did the fact that today we allow women to have conversations with men and to have authority over men when that wasn't allowed with ainus or Augustine or in fact Martin Luther Martin Luther spoke incredibly poorly about women as has most Christian uh Elites throughout all of history all of this moral development makes much more sense by my lights when you realize you don't have this subjective moral framework but if you did have that objective moral framework and if you believe in that that would make more sense of course on theism there are more but sensitivity to time I'm happy to leave it there that's great thank you Stephen uh and we're going to pick up on these themes after we take a quick break uh while we do tell us what you think let us know what questions you'd like to see on the show you can comment on YouTube or get in touch at unbelievable Fe on X and at Premier unbelievable on Instagram and Facebook we're just getting started on the topic of natural evil with my guests stevenh Woodford and Sharon Durk be back in a moment you would call yourself an atheist I would yes I would call myself a Christian humanist one of the big themes over the history of what we now think of as science has been questioning the exceptionalism of humankind I think the critical thing is what gives something value would you say that Minds construct meaning or detect meaning I have had made from a little piece of my arm something that could re reasonably be called a second brain I think one of the real challenges that evolution by natural selection puts to Christian belief is the idea that welcome back to part two of this episode where a Christian and an othe have come to very different conclusions about how to think about the suffering that is caused by the harsh realities of our natural world such as earthquakes famines and diseases I'm your host Vince vital and you're listening to the premier unbelievable podcast let's pick up where we left off we've had some discussion about whether or not the believer in God actually needs an answer uh to this question in order to believe rationally and it was actually really refreshing to hear both of you say I can see how certain things about the world might actually Point against my My overall uh conclusion but Sharon as you've said you do think it's important for the believer to have a response to this Challenge and and you think that you have one uh which is why you wrote a a book on it uh can you please start this segment of the show by by summarizing your the main Contours of your response yeah um um so oh gosh I mean there are lots of different elements to this which is why it took it took a whole book to to look at it um I guess the first part of my um argument would would actually be um to look at um some uh natural events that seem to have a life sustaining role um where actually you know for example um tectonic plate movement uh is to recycle nutrients from the ocean beds back to the surface volcanoes uh have a role in releasing pressure from beneath the crust um and uh actually um uh you know volcanic soil is incredibly fertile even flooding is vital to bringing in nutrients in um mountain ranges are necessary for the water cycle enabling water to rise and cool and then fall again as precipitation which supplies vast are is with water and so some of these geophysical events have a have a life sustaining impact and so one of the views is that actually the the disasters the way that we get caught up with them is is more due to the fact that we've become um vulnerable to to Natural uh events rather than the events themselves being inherently wrong now I'm sort of aware that there are lots of different kinds of natural disaster um and I I guess gu we have to sort of be clear what types we're talking about when when we're making a point and I'm thinking of the bigger cataclysmic events and so how is it that we've become vulnerable well one of the ways that we've become vulnerable is through the impact of um poverty um if you look at the number of deaths due to um an earthquake say in the um uh uh developed world uh or the majority uh world uh sorry the uh a world of high high economic status I think that's the best way to put it and you compare it with the number of deaths of an earthquake in a country with a low low economic status uh you will find that there are several orders of magnitude uh uh the number of deaths in in the low economic status country will always be uh several orders of magnitude greater than the other and often due to the impact of poverty and Corruption if I can just give one sort of concrete example um one of my the stories in broken planet is from Haiti 2010 um and uh there was a similar magnitude earthquake in California 1989 um and the number of deaths in California was 59 57 the number of deaths at Haiti was um on the hundreds of thousands scale they don't really even know the final fig figures somewhere between 150 and 250,000 and the one of the main reasons for for there being so many deaths was because building regulations hadn't been adhered to and so buildings even luxury hotels pancake and just crumbled under the effect of this earthquake people should have been able to evacuate to safety but they weren't able to and the reason was more due to human negligence um than due to um the the fact of the earthquake itself now I'm well aware that doesn't get us around the question of why there was an earthquake in the first place and I do want to to get get to that but one of the um things is that the problem isn't so much with nature but with with our relationship with nature and that we have become vulnerable to it yeah thank you Sharon no thank you that's a lot to chew on uh and I I think at times you've put it by saying there's no purely natural um disaster let me let Stephen pick up on on these themes as well yeah absolutely by that I mean I don't mean that there aren't any natural disasters and what I mean is every natural disaster is a complex combination of natural events in the world and human beings making them worse as well great that's helpful that's helpful jump in here Stephen if I may begin with a question then um Sharon what role did we play in the extinction of the Dinosaurs well I mean so I think it's really important that we are kind of thinking about the yeah I so I I I agree that the argument it depends on what you're talking about and as I develop my own argument later I I also make the point that there are some natural disasters that seem to have no beneficial role and no human contribution so I I I agree with you there are some events in the world that that don't fit either of those categories but some of them do and it is worth making the point especially when people raise the question why do so many people suffer when there's an earthquake or a tsunami part of the answer to why so many suffer is is human contribution human failure to respond failure to evacuate failure to heed the warning signs and so on I'm not saying it's the whole answer but it's part of a few puzzle pieces that that fit together wouldn't your admission of some natural disasters not having human components render your your bold claim of there being no natural truly natural disasters false um no I I think so I think I would I would say that that that it becomes that that actually different kinds of explanations are needed for different kinds of of disaster and I also um the way that I unpack things uh in my book is that I I talk about these three elements and I I don't know how soon you want to get into this Vince but I talk about natural factors the way the natural world is I talk about human factors the way that humans behave and interact with nature and the extent to which we help each other in our relationship with nature and then I talk about spiritual factors um and I think that there are um and here is where I I'm aware that you know we become you're a naturalist and I'm a theist and we have different Frameworks for for making sense of this and and to thinking about this question I'd be happy to say more about that at this point Vince or unless you want to um pause and go back to Stephen yeah that's great let's let's get to that let's get to that in just a couple minutes um and maybe we'll just yeah stay here for for a moment uh Stephen you know this quote by you I thought was kind of helpful analogy you said just because we can throw gasoline on the fire would you mind if I reply to some of the other comments CU I wanted to just point out that by my lights that's a contradiction uh in Sharon's view if she says that there's a we didn't we're not involved in the extinction of the dinosaurs to just give one instance then you cannot say that there is no such thing as a natural um a natural uh disaster let me just finish this um quote from you because I think it's I think it's going to be relevant and just a helpful analogy to the point that you're making the you want to and so it's it's just just because we can throw gasoline on the Fire doesn't negate the question why is there a fire at all that was just helpful for me in terms of getting my head around the point that uh I think that you're making feel free to take that in whichever direction you were going to no great point I should have let you finish I'll I'll Le for the future not at all so okay we the topic of tectonic plates came up and Sharon you laid out that there are benefits that come out of these disasters so if a volcano erupts and it wipes out an entire ecosystem hundreds of thousands maybe even millions of of of potentially sentient creatures dying well when the Ash has set and maybe several centuries on it could be even millions of years on uh what we will have is a prosperous Society grow on that and this is an indication that what it's telling us is that there are always Silver Linings well the issue isn't that there's no Silver Linings someone like me isn't going to come in and say these horrible nasty things never produce something good no they almost always do um but that's not sufficient to be able to deal with the problem you have to show that it's the greater good it has to be better than the devastation and destruction that it caused and on a surface level this is outrageous when it comes to many of the the disasters that we see with humans let alone all of the disasters that happened long before us um it's interesting that you mentioned about third world countries suffering more than First World countries when it comes to these problems I guess when that quote of the the meek will inherit the earth it quite literally meant the Earth because they wouldn't be able to build their structures in such a way as to preserve themselves from the earthquakes the problem is that God designed these things now it's true that we may exacerbate it and sometimes it will be because we consciously are aware of what we should do but we don't know but we but we don't do anything better so for instance if you know that earthquakes happen in a certain area and then you build your civilization on that settlement in that area then of course you know there is a human element here involved but this just isn't true for the Hunter and gatherers that are our ancestors they didn't know about the Earth they didn't know much at all though in fact when it came to their gods they beli there was a God for Thunder a God for the Sky they believe the Earth was flat if you go far back far enough they didn't know these things and God designed the world so that they didn't he also designed them so that they wouldn't know about this he also designed nature and gave these creatures claws claws explicitly to be used teeth teeth explicitly to be used and he didn't just design these creatures in a way where he has to use them sometimes it's incredibly cruel um one example that comes to mind is the North American short tail shrew it's a mammal that's developed Venom but the Venom it's it's a toxic saliva it doesn't kill the prey it just subdues it so that it can take the insect or worm or small creatures into its into its little environment and eat it alive over days we are asked to believe not only that an all loving God designed this deliberately but somehow this is the best of all possible worlds and to me it it just isn't good enough to look at this and go well maybe it's true maybe we don't understand well no we have we we don't act like this in any other domain of discourse this is not the skepticism we do um this is in fact makes my skepticism my skepticism look incredibly poor you you require the utmost skepticism to buy these kinds of propositions um so there's a couple of things addressed there and yeah thank you no I I really appreciate you being candid with me stevenh and I just want to reiterate that these are it's really hard to talk about this as a kind of abstract thing that we you know we both care about people that are caught up in in the way that natural evil comes to land in our lives and the way that we see it portrayed in the natural world I don't I don't approach this kind of blly or just something that I want to sort of brush away and have a sort of watertight logical answer that I can can give you um but what I would just keep coming back to as I as I listen to you um all of those instances that you've named before me are under naturalism merely events so what why are we what you know what but when we get angry about them or feel like this is you know by calling something a disaster by attributing a kind of an emotional response to to it we're saying that things ought to be different but where did the most persuasive explanations come from for that instinct where that very Instinct comes from I say it makes more sense actually if God exists so I am able to call it natural evil I don't believe under naturalism you are um okay and so I you know that that's what it keep and and I think that people that are not versed in philosophy you know that is there inuitive response to to the way that you know disease and sickness and covid-19 and everything that it should be different um and actually the Christian framework says that that God is good and has created a good world he can't create outside of his character and so he has created a world that is good but he created a world with the potential for evil and somehow that that potential became actual now we can unpack what what I mean by that but what that means is we don't just have God in the framework for the theist we actually have there is such a thing as Supernatural evil and I've listened to your responses and I know that you've heard a lot of Christians tie it up to a a kind of a free will defense that is tied to to human uh you know h a human fall but actually I think there are other ways of thinking about this that help us make sense of predation and mass extinction and and so on that in a way that predates human human existence but the the the the the the Essential Elements being that we don't just have God in the framework we have Supernatural evil that has somehow woven itself into the natural world in ways that look like it's always been this way um but that actually it may not have always been this way um and that's part of where I'm coming from I I unpack that in broken Planet uh as we get into the arguments that's amazing thank you for placing that down I um I can respond to it on two lights so okay the first light is that what someone is doing when they bring up this contradiction in Omnimax theism is they're not presenting an alternative they're saying your model doesn't make sense of the earth and so what's coming across here is not here is a different account or a different way to ground ethic and morality it's rather saying your view is incoherent you don't make sense of the data so having a way to actually instantiate morality or evil outside of a theistic framework is irrelevant to this and it's why you don't see this objection come up much in the literature it only really comes up with lay people because it works on the intuitions and emotions by myls in the way that I see it but it doesn't come up much in the philosophy because they recognize it as an internal critique pointing out there's a contradiction in the view now when it comes to evil itself and to address the lay person this is this is or like the more common um view this is the way that I would address it what do you think evil is if you wouldn't mind can you give me an answer of what you think evil is um evil is a a personified being known as uh Satan that has uh some degree of influence in the world at the moment but that won't forever he is a created being which is distinct from the Creator uh and so there's a difference in in in state of being but he has a level of influence in the created world at this point which is why it's a kind of valid for the theist a valid kind of way of making sense of natural evil because there is indeed natural evil okay that's interesting so a lot of the answers you get to that is is basically going back to aquinus and what he says is that the world is good and anything that deviates from God's creation is evil so he took a radically different view to what evil is compared to Aristotle which based it in virtue ethics and then of course as time has moved on we've had like K and we've had Thomas Hobs where they're starting to talk about deontology they're starting to talk about consequentialism and the whole concept of suffering comes up because none of them found Divine command Theory to be frankly anything to do with morality what it's actually talking about is God said so therefore it's right so it's actually got nothing to do with with suffering nothing to do with evil in our intuitive sense is just simply are you doing what the dictator says I know this language is Crash to the to the theist but that's basically what's what's happening there whereas you're grounding evil in a being so does that mean that he is responsible for all evil so is it that the devil is the one that made the dinosaurs go extinct for instance I think we really do need to be clear there are lots of different kinds of uh kind of the way ways in which Nature has impacted life I think probably the extinction of the dinosaurs I see that as kind of quite an unusual uh event that wasn't doesn't seem to have you know occurred many times whereas you know when we're talking about predation there four other mass extinctions at least wiping out 70% of on Earth 90% of life on Earth it's actually a regular feature well regular in the sense of four over Bill billions of of years I guess there there are just lots of different kinds of of natural evil um and each response each kind requires a a slightly different kind of of response I guess I guess one way you could clarify this for me then is if this uh conscious being of the devil um is what evil is when he acts in order to bring say cancer on a human or to erupt a volcano or when he does something that under your view would count as natural um is it in all cases he is deliberately doing this so like does he deliberately go out there and go that community in the third world I particularly don't like the third world so I'm going to have more disasters happen there and make sure that you know because they're going to exacerbate it because of they're ignorance or because they're not doing you know what the big big guy thinks is right is is it all a conscious decision on the devil's part yeah I mean this this is a really great question um and we we are getting into you know deep matters here and but I think what the reason I kind of named my book broken planet is because I think it's hard to know um but I think that um the the impact of evil on nature is more at an kind of an endemic level a little bit like when you drop a piece some dye into water it's of of infuses through the whole thing rather than fight squirting individual people just the whole network is broken well it's got qualities that are both incredibly beautiful pointing to the goodness of God but also deeply broken pointing to the reality of natural evil um and so it's kind of like a mesh that we're all caught up in um and what's interesting about the way you rais the question Stephen is that very often people's go-to is that it's God that's punishing them you know that your suffering is a lightning bolt from God to you um for something that you did that you don't even know about and and actually how how far that is from from the truth in fact the oldest story uh in the Bible chronologically is the Book of Job which I'm sure you're familiar with and um and it's about a man who suffers greatly and his friends all think that he is to blame he's done something wrong but actually we are party to a different dimension which is that it's actually nothing to do with that it's because of the reality of Good and Evil in the world um and so suffering uh is not Divine punishment um well on that on that front does god control the devil well is he more powerful could he click his fingers and get rid of him due to his omnipotence and then the question is begged or it comes up if he's all loving why hasn't he done it um how does this fall into your model yeah I think this is a a really another really important question I would uh want to say um that the kind of theological thinking there are lots of different opinions and voices out there but um that God didn't just create the Earth with kind of free beings known as humans who um he also created the heavens with with free beings um known as as angels and actually um Satan is a fallen uh Angel uh which perhaps isn't too uh uh unfamiliar that is this kind of Fairly traditional Christian uh view on the origins of of of Satan um and the reason that that was possible is because that the Angelic realm also has has free will not just the human realm and so there's something about God want being committed to a world in which the beings that he has made can live meaningfully whether that is in the Heavenly realm or in the Earthly realm um I'm aware now Stephen that this is where it the way that I make sense of this starts to differ and diverge quite differently from the way that you make sense of it because as a theist I do have different a different framework for thinking about this that does involve um the supernatural um it involves things that are kind of unseen but have a seen effect in the world well I guess that would land and I I'll just be a quick Vince if you wouldn't mind what this would land on is your very concept of evil just it's it's not something that's a model that's used by basically anyone other than in this case the Christian uh because if this maybe you could say abrahamic faiths right so when it comes to evil and defining evil from a naturalistic perspective you're going to have some that pertains to suffering something that pertains to our moral dispositions that either have evolved or is objective depends on what kind of role that you come from but the M the main point here is it does not matter whether or not the atheist can ground evil because the the critique is an inner critique it's showing that the person who upholds an omnipotent omniscient Omni benevolent God cannot say like cannot end off no ifs no buts cannot say there's gratuitous evil there's an instance of evil that has no greater purpose they have to have to say no it will serve and it is serving a greater purpose and they have to do this even if they can't explain it they could say I'm epistemically blunted here but they have to say that it is a greater good thanks so much guys for the for the back and forth massively appreciated and we will pick up in the in the third segment of the of the show so we'll definitely let you get back in there Sharon if I could just kind of frame how I'm hearing you know some of the main Contour of the discussion um to this point point you know just one way that's been helpful for me to think about this as I've listened to you both uh you know on the one hand the person who does believe in God has to be willing to say that there's some type of good reason that God could have for allowing these natural disasters even if we don't fully comprehend what that is on the other hand Sharon has been saying that from her perspective The Atheist needs to be willing to say that in some sense some of these natural disasters are Evils are not actually in a deep fundamental sense objectively evil from an atheist perspective Sharon would say this is just nature doing its thing uh and if I'm understanding correctly you know Sharon is saying it's actually more unlikely to think these things are not actually objectively evil than to believe that God could have a reason for allowing them and Stephen would say uh the opposite actually it's more unlikely that God could have any type of good reason for allowing these things uh than to even think that perhaps these things are not uh fundamentally uh evil you guys may want to come back on that and we'll have a chance for that in the third uh segment we have to pause there for now listeners we're so glad you're part of this conversation if you're enjoying it take a moment to hit the Subscribe button or rate the podcast uh help us to shape the future of these shows by emailing us your questions your thoughts at unbelievable premier.org or on social media at unbelievable Fe forx and at premere unbelievable for Instagram and Facebook today we're talking about natural evil would a good god really allow it we'll be back in just a month the mind and brain are connected but the scientific data doesn't enable you to establish the nature of that connection or the relationship just because science can't demonstrate that physical processes and mental processes are the same thing that in and of itself doesn't give you any evidence that that's not the case either some people talk about seeing deceased relatives and communicating with them this idea of floating up out of your body and watching things happen and being able to describe it afterwards that could be formed in your imaginative mind conscious experience and brain processes are two fundamentally different things I wonder if we're talking about if you like me to go out for a bit you guys seem really happy welcome back you're listening to unbelievable with me vce Vitali and my guests Sharon durik and Stephen Woodford still a lot of ground to cover in the last segment of this uh spirited episode and debate on a topic which is uh at once philosophical but also deeply uh personal uh even sobering the topic of natural evil disasters uh diseases the harsh realities of our world are they better explained if God exists or if he doesn't you guys were having some great back and forth at the end of the last um segment and Sharon I know you were trying to get in there so let me just throw it back to you to continue that conversation yeah thank you um Stephen I was just um thinking about your point about how um you know the that these things must serve a greater good um I mean I think that obviously you know that the Christian um perspective is that um there's a bigger perspective the story isn't finished yet I'm sure we'll get to that in our conversation but even before we get to that actually where where I stand with this is that um and certainly at a personal level when people try and impose this idea that there's a greater good or there's something that God wants to teach you or that things happened for a reason is this terrible phrase that we've got in the UK you know I actually find that really problematic I I some I I think that these things happen because the world is broken because we live on a broken planet and it's endemic to everyone and we're all cut caught up in it it's not it's not that there is some sometimes there is no greater good that comes out of it certainly not in this life um obviously we have the perspective of a life to come and and we can get to that um but there are things in this world for which we we don't always get a a reason we don't always get a kind of a a sense of there being something bigger or greater it's just messed up the world is broken um and it's both beautiful and it's broken um and both of those point to both the reality of God who wants to be with us in the midst of it and the reality of evil that has kind of woven its way in um so I don't think I would sub subscribe to that kind of standard view that there must be a greater good for every form of suffering we're talking about deeply mysterious things here okay um forgive my transparency but that would and and correct me if I'm mistaken but that that would actually mean you're conceding the argument um because let's talk about a broken world right so we have this situation where the world is broken and this is often the fol The Odyssey defense right it's a defense of why things are the way that they are the fool The Odyssey of course struggles with the fact that it presupposes that animals didn't exist for billions of years for before us so there's there's issues with the science but in any case you have the story of a broken World why is it broken an all powerful all loving God is responsible for the Earth so why is it broken well if he's all powerful he could have made it so that it's not broken so the fact that it is broken indicates in fact entails that he had a good reason to allow it to be broken now normally this is cashed out in the Free Will the Odyssey the Free Will defense but of course that's going to have absolutely no nothing to say about the dinosaurs it's going to have nothing to say about the the billions of creatures that have suffered long before we existed and if there are other creatures in the universe it's going to have nothing to say about that either well almost certainly not unless you're going to in by my lights bend over backwards in order to um to achieve that so what normally happens is the theist will say look the world is broken but it was the this is the best of all possible worlds trust me God wanted to give us free will so that we could build our soul cultivate our characters and that leads to us being able to go to heaven at least those that accept Jesus for some reason atheist like me it doesn't matter how much I think about it I'm going to go according to a lot of Christians to Hell forever still this has to be the best of all possible worlds whereas what you're saying is that no there are instances in in the world where no that that doesn't serve a greater good that actually is just gratuitous evil but to say that is to say that an all powerful all Ling God doesn't exist yeah no I I wouldn't say that it it does it's more that um that actually it's a a reminder that that the world that we live in is broken but it's it's been allowed to be broken I suppose I'm not conceding the argument in the sense that I do I do believe that God was committed to a particular kind of world to create a particular kind of World um and one of that there are there are two elements to that one is that it's a life permitting World um which was my earlier point about some of the mechanisms that underly uh these cataclysmic events actually have a vital role they're not just a nice add-on but without them we actually wouldn't exist um even viruses uh if you got rid of all viruses on Earth we'd survive a couple of days and then that would be it but you know occasionally there's a pathogenic strain that threatens our existence but over overall God was committed to a life permitting Universe um and also the Free Will um theodicy I recognize its limitations but it does have some relevance when you think about the natural world that there's a need to have a regularity in the laws of nature so that we can live meaningfully I just saw you pick up a drink from your table if suddenly the laws of nature changeed so that when you went to pick that up it flew off into the air then you actually can't make the meaningful choice to drink the water because the laws of nature are changing around you so there needs to be a stability and a regularity for humans to live meaningfully as well and I guess arguably for animals too and they probably understand the natural world far better than we are we do with their you know their kind of relationship with nature and the ecosystems that they're embedded in and so you could make a case that although um the kind of human Free Will doesn't get us to where we need to be in um with natural evil on one level but in terms of its impact uh the law the impact the laws of nature have on our use of our free will there is still uh there is still something to say there so suppose in a way there God is permitt committed to the ultimate good of us living in a life permitting Universe where we can live meaningfully um so I suppose if that if that counts as the an overall good I am committed to those things I think at an individual level trying to imply that there's a greater good at a person byerson level is in sensitive and not very helpful that's helpful and I'm just going to make a quick connection with uh a point earlier in our conversation feel free to pick up on it if it seems uh useful but I thought that was interesting uh Stephen you know earlier when we talked about is there any evidence that you know could potentially at least down first glance points toward a God you know existence itself was one of the things that you noted Sharon you now seem to be arguing that some of the at least processes that um allow for the natural evil in the world is essential for us uh to exist is there any connection between those points uh in the conversation I just thought that was interesting as Steven was noting existence as something which could point in the direction of theism and Shan you know you're saying that perhaps the natural evil in the world is essential to the existence of of life itself any thoughts on that I guess it come it's coming down to semantics whether we call those events evil or not one of the arguments that I make in my book is that I and this is where I agree with Stephen there events they're geophysical events um you know and there are volcano volcanic eruptions happening all the time on Venus and there are there's a storm on Jupiter that's calls for a redefinition of the term extreme weather why don't we refer to those as natural disasters well because nobody gets hurt by them they're not evil they're actually quite magnificent and you know leave us in awe um but the problem is that when we start to interact with the natural world then people get hurt and that's where we start to introduce the language of disasters so it it again it depends on what disaster what events we're talking about and it it depends the extent to which humans are involved one argument is that these things are not evil in and of themselves because they have a life sustaining role um yeah in of themselves okay and and on the other hand you know you might think some would think that there's a problem of evil also for atheist in the sense of can an atheist truly call these things evil we've kind of talked around that topic but Stephen I'd be interested to hear you uh share a bit about how you think about that relationship between you know the a challenge that's based on these things being evil but then also and I understand you know you you see it as an internal consistency problem for the theist but is there a kind of separate problem for Atheism in terms of understanding these things as evil or just as natural processes okay so when it comes to so just to reiterate to me I I know you've said it B it should be really clear whether or not an atheist or naturalist can ground evil is irrelevant to the argument of an all powerful all loving God because it's an inner critique it's is an entailment of what happens with God to bring up you can't the the naturalist can't account for evil is to fundamentally misunderstand the dialectic um that's that's by my lights at least and that's why you don't see this raised in the literature often just one quick thought on that because I do see what you're saying that logically it's an internal consistency question for this but but I was just thinking about it in terms of you know imagine you know someone is this is real life right someone is trying to make the decision should I be a theist or an atheist uh and so they're trying to kind of weigh up you know which of those major starting point worldviews has the heavier cost like you know for which of those do I need to um subscribe to something that I find more unlikely and and so from that perspective I can imagine someone saying okay it's really hard for me to believe that a good God could have a reason for these natural evils that's a heavy cost I would need to accept if I were a theist on the atheist side if if if being an atheist meant that I couldn't call these things evil in some deep sense that's a heavy cost too so I find myself torn between these these two major worldviews as my starting point in terms of which philosophy to subscribe to that's how I think that there's some relevance there I think that's a useful um a useful way to approach it so um allow me to extend with it so suppose you had three people and three people started looking at the world you know they started Living their lives and they started thinking to themselves is there actually such a thing is evil what is evil how do we account for it suppose one of the suppose two of them decided that there is evil and one person decided there actually isn't not really and however they cash it out is not really relevant right in any case that's where the conclusion lands now one of them say the person that cashes it out and says that there is no evil we notice that there's just no problem he doesn't need to account for evil in the world because he doesn't have uh all like suffering in the in the in the Earth or anything like that because it's just not a problem under the commitments that he's bought uh he might not like it he might uh uh be repulsed by it because of evolutionary Tendencies or something along those lines but there just is no issue which is why this problem isn't a problem for naturalists it's just there's nothing inherent to naturalism to say that you will affirm a certain view on specifically benevolence and things along those lines whereas when you've got the two people that affirm that there is there is something that's real and it's evil well you could say there is real evil and um I'm going to ground it under a naturalistic worldview or that's the way that I see it okay well is there a problem with you accounting for there being gratuitous evil in the world well no because you don't have the problem of having an omni benevolent om um omnition uh omnipotent being so actually when it comes to you know look at look at all of the disasters around the around the earth no that's just evil I can make sense of it whereas if you affirm the that there is evil and you cash it out by also buying the proposition of an all powerful all loving God then you have your issues there um so so yeah like you could look at all of this data and and come to those three conclusions but the problem is I suppose when I just talk to people on the street or my family members or um just you know friends at at the schoolgate or wherever it you know you don't have to be thinking philosophic ly to have an instinctive response that this is not the way it should be that we actually we don't actually have to think is there such a thing as evil we actually intuitively assume there's something wrong with the world when when people get angry like even Steph fry in his video even uh you know his voice his tone was like this is not the way things ought to be and he was aiming that argument at at God but it doesn't seem to be something that we need to invoke in people it's intuitively there that there's something the way that things are in the world is not how they should be and the only persuasive grounding for that um that I can see is that that's because that we live in a world that is both good and broken okay because and the existence of God makes best sense of that okay so by my lights we're well of course and really what's being asked now is Steve how do you account for our moral intuitions and I'm happy to give that answer so I think that we've evolved we're a social species and I think that all social species are going to be running social software and the reason for that is that our ancestors that didn't have this love thy neighbor Essence within them which you find in all religions and in Christianity you find it explicitly those that didn't have that didn't survive because they acted selfishly they didn't love their neighbors they didn't cultivate an environment that allowed them to flourish and consequently the ones that survived got to reproduce and those those Essences those genes they proliferated and that's why as a social species we now love thy neighbor largely because it's again it's not perfect but again the fact that it's not perfect the fact that is always changing the fact that you know 200 years ago women weren't allowed to be authorative to men but now it's okay the fact that slavery has been absolutely fine throughout almost all of human history including under the the Dominion of Christianity and yet in recent years largely because of the Enlightenment largely after the enlightenment at least that has to be admitted the fact that that's changed all of this is data that has to be considered when you're trying to think about our moral intuitions and where they come from it's not good enough to say aquinus was just wrong when he was qu quoting Leviticus and quoting Jesus telling um slaves to obey their masters rather you need to be able to make sense of all the day dat and I think by far by far the best way to explain the data is to say we have we are a social species and what morality is is is grounded in that fact we love our neighbor I think that's really fascinating um it's fascinating that you've taken a line from the words of Jesus though as as where it's kind of ended up but the thing is with the thing is with biological evolution adaptation and so on is that there's nothing in the mechanism that says that um you ought to be a certain way the mechanism simply describes the way things are so you're right in saying that you know if people behave more kindly to each other then that makes reproduction more likely and um the the species as a whole are more likely to survive meaning that that set of moral apparatus continues into the Next Generation but there's nothing in the mechanism to say that they ought to be kind to each other the mechanism simply is and actually you could argue there are other ways that that outcome could have been achieved what if you rap all the women that would also enable survival uh to continue to the Next Generation or what if you get rid of the elderly who are slight drain on the Jean Pool that's a fantastic let me of course sorry so if you if you get rid of the elderly members of this population that might also enable survival because these guys have long outlived their productive Fitness and they're a bit of a drain on resources and so that would enable survival uh as well and a different set of moral apparatus and so using an evolutionary approach to morality you can end up with a variety of different outcomes um and there's nothing to say in the mechanisms that any of these is more moral than the other um if you want to appeal to one of them being more moral you're actually appealing to a standard that is outside of nature not not within nature itself and therefore the moral outcomes of evolution are essentially arbitrary I don't I don't think you can use that to to ground morality you're appealing to a standard that is outside of nature that is actually objective and yeah okay so lots to respond to um wonderfully put like hopefully I can do a good job of being succinct so you bring up not being able to get an ought from an is and I absolutely agree I think David hum is correct you cannot get an art from an is but we're not born when you're when you're describing Evolution you're just describing what's going on and because you're using descriptions you're only using is statements but you in yourself are not Evolution rather you're you're a product of evolution and you were born with certain oughts which is to say that you were born with emotional impulses to do certain things to achieve certain things why was I born with certain Arts where do they come from because the mechanism can't for them yes it can because what it will say is those that are born with the with the ought of I ought to get resources to consume so that I can survive obviously they survive so Evolution has a reason to select for those Arts to be within you and then once you have an or well actually you can get an or from an or because you can say it ought to be the case that I consume food now whether or not you can ground this is actually irrelevant you just are born with it it's part of the social software you've got then you can say it is the case if I go to the bush over there I will get resources therefore I ought to do it it follows from an A from an ought you gave an example of rape and I think that that's a that's a that's a fair example of something that violates our moral intuitions today if you take the Bible out and you turn to numbers 311 17-18 what is said in that book is that God told Moses and the Israelites to go down into a settlement and to kill all of the males to kill all of the women that had laid with a man is explicit and to kill all of the little boys you're talking ait's level of Cruelty here you they would have been taking those babies and smashing their skulls against rocks because God commanded it but it explicitly states keep all of the little ones that have not lied with a man for yourself doesn't take too much of a genius to figure out what's going on there now the the of of course needs to make sense of this data and you can watch it with William Lane Craig with others by my lights this is a really big thorn in Christianity the founding fathers of America certainly believed it was it's been a big Thorn for a very very long time but notice that what you mentioned about the evolutionary theory it actually does a better job of making sense of the data it does better explain why morals seem to change per gen generation seems that unfortunately or fortunately we are easily molded towards our environment makes better sense of the fact that that so many cultures and so many um societies today have completely just opposed positions whereas none of that's predicted on theism and if I could just if I could just jump in I would just uh you know this has been great we're covering a lot of ground and the way that I see this as relevant all the different portions of this you know conversation uh is you know Sharon I think your questioning is there a sort of could there be an inconsistency within naturalism or atheism if big if if the naturalist is both committed to only natural processes but also wants to say that uh natural disasters are objectively evil in some deep fundamental sense Steve is saying that maybe we don't uh you know need to say that in that deep fundamental sense that maybe you would ascribe to as a as a religious person and he would push back in the other direction and say there seems to be an internal inconsistency within your worldview if you're claiming that God is all loving and yet seems to allow these things which appear to be the opposite of of loving so I personally I think there's you know been really good challenge uh there in in both directions and and we have to wrap up for this episode at least but uh I'd love to just throw it to each of you and we really you know only only have time for you know 15 seconds each here but if you were to leave our listeners uh with one thought to sort of take away from this episode and I hope we can continue this conversation another time as well uh what would that be I'll throw it to you first Sharon yeah thanks Vince I would actually want to say that what whatever the reasons for the kind of world that we have it was one that God himself was prepared to enter into as the person of Jesus Christ and in doing that has not left us alone in our suffering and I guess that's at the heart of what a Christian would say that we are whatever life throws at us whatever our interaction with natural evil we we're not on our own this forms the basis also of humanitarian aid forms the basis of why you might even help someone in in a form of like Medical Care social work and so on um I believe that uh if God exists that he has not left us alone in our suffering and therefore there's hope and he's also not finished and there's hope for today and there's hope for the future as well thanks how about you st I would say that even if it is the case that naturalism couldn't ground evil it actually has no relevance to to the objections that's been raised today um it it simply is not a relevant Factor the second thing I would say is taking the greater good argument and supposing that potentially it's for the greater good potentially this is the best of all possible worlds we don't operate with that level of skepticism ever and normally when an atheist brings kind of skepticism of that level a theists and sometimes rightfully point out that it's a mistake we could say for instance last thursdayism which is the view that last Thursday everything was created all started then we no one takes this seriously but it is possible that is the same thing that's happening with the the profound gratuitous evil in the world what happens is the theist will look at and go maybe but that ain't good enough not not by my lights and I don't think an all loving God would think it's good enough either guys fantastic conversation uh thank you for all that you've invested in it thoughtful robust spirited gracious uh really appreciate it uh I'm Vince vital we've been speaking with Steven Woodford and Sharon derk's about a philosophical but also deeply personal topic the natural evil in our world that affects us all I hope you'll continue this conversation by checking out Steph's YouTube channel rationality rules or picking up a copy of Sharon's book broken Planet you can find links to both in the episode description while you're at it hit the Subscribe button leave us a review be sure to follow on social media unbelievable Fe onx and Premier unbelievable on Facebook and Instagram thank you for joining me for unbelievable where we are committed to Bringing people together around the questions that matter most to all of us see you next time [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Premier Unbelievable?

Views: 5,186

Keywords: unbelievable, justin brierley, premier christian radio, christianity, atheism, philosophy, faith, theology, God, apologetics, Jesus, debate, science, evidence, Bible, big conversation

Id: Qq3ESYvH-ec

Length: 80min 55sec (4855 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2024