Pints With Aquinas - 13: Does evil disprove the existence of God?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Pints with Aquinas, episode 13. I'm Matt Fradd. If you could sit down with St. Thomas Aquinas over a pint of beer and ask him any one question, what would it be? In today's episode, we'll ask St. Thomas the question, does evil disprove the existence of God? God. Welcome back to Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a bar stool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. And today we're going to be discussing the greatest emotional obstacle to belief in God that there is, namely the problem of evil. Now, I want to make it very clear that this isn't a podcast for you listening so that you can then help other people who find the problem of evil problematic. That's what the problem of evil is, problematic, I guess. This is a podcast for you and me, because you and I find evil problematic. And let me just say from the outset, if you don't

Starting point is 00:01:19 find the problem of evil difficult to understand, if you haven't ever felt yourself thinking that, golly, maybe God doesn't exist when you confront the evil and suffering in the world, maybe that's a sign that you haven't experienced a great deal of evil. And I think too often, Catholic Christian apologists can be too flippant in dismissing this problem of evil. Y'all remember that awful tragedy that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School back in 2012. I'm just reading the Wikipedia entry here. 20-year-old man fatally shot 20 children, 20 children aged between six and seven years old, as well as six adult staff. It says prior to driving to the school, this man shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at

Starting point is 00:02:23 the scene, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. I had to speak in Connecticut a few weeks after this shooting took place, and I was told before I got up to speak that one of the mothers of one of these children was going to be in the audience. these children was going to be in the audience. Now, when I consider this evil, when I consider many other evils, say sex trafficking or rape, child abuse, I just need to be honest with you. I find it difficult sometimes to believe in God. Don't you? I remember my wife saying to me about this Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, because it happened, you'll remember, around Christmas. It was in December. Who was sitting there one night and she said, honey, do you realize that these parents of these

Starting point is 00:03:20 dead children probably put Christmas presents somewhere, right? Probably hid them by this point, maybe even wrapped them. How sad to think that these parents would have to take down these presents and do something with them, give them away, donate them. What a heartbreaking thing. Imagine a mother opening up her closet and seeing those wrapped presents for her beautiful son or daughter that she's never going to see in this life again. So, I want to just try and make the argument as best as I can. It doesn't seem like an old loving God should allow this to happen. If you and I were God, we think we wouldn't allow it to happen. There was an atheist by the name of J.L. Mackey. He was an Australian atheist who basically had this to say. He said, belief in God is irrational because evil exists. How did he flesh out that argument? Well, he said this, if God is omnipotent, that is all-powerful,

Starting point is 00:04:27 he could eradicate all evil. Yeah? Okay. If God is all-knowing, he would know about all the evil taking place in the world. So, he can't be just all-powerful, able to do something, but hey, I didn't know. I was a little ignorant of that bit happening over there. No, he would know about it all. And if he was all good, omnibenevolent, he would want to eradicate all evil in the world. Let that argument sink in for a moment, would you? If God's all powerful, he could eradicate all evil. If he's all knowing, he would know about all the evil. And if he's all good, he would want to eradicate all the evil. But guess what? Evil exists. Therefore, God doesn't exist. Or if you still want to maintain that God exists, then you have to concede that he's either impotent, ignorant, or wicked, which an impotent God, an ignorant God, this isn't befitting of the term God. Okay. Now, while the problem of evil is the greatest emotional obstacle to belief in God,

Starting point is 00:05:36 you'll remember I said that at the start, I do not think that it is a strong intellectual obstacle to belief in God. And I think it's very important when we consider these truths that we be led not by our emotions, but by our thinking. Okay. For example, an atheist might bring this up and I think he could respect this point because you could say to him, let me back up, he might say to you, the only reason you believe in God is you like the idea of seeing your loved ones again someday. What's he saying to you? He's saying, yeah why that's an emotional obstacle, but we should be led not by our emotion, but by our head. And then he would give an argument for atheism, presumably. So, we're doing the same thing. We're agreeing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. When we consider these philosophical issues, we should be led by our head, not by our emotion.

Starting point is 00:06:43 So, in this podcast, that's what we want to do. We want to take a look at those three attributes that Mackie mentioned and show that far from disproving the existence of God, we can see not only that an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent God is compatible with evil and suffering. And then furthermore, I'll try and show that the existence of evil is actually an indirect proof for the existence of God. You know, what's interesting is in the Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas, as you know by now, always presents the best arguments from the opposing side. I think in one of his articles, I saw as many as 12 or 13 objections.

Starting point is 00:07:27 So, it's very interesting that when it comes to the existence of God, this is in the first part of the Summa Theologica, question two, article three, whether God exists. It's very interesting to note that he only comes up with two objections. So, presumably, these are the two that Aquinas thinks have any merit, but that's kind of it. And it's interesting that even today, it seems like these are really the only two. Number one is the problem of evil. And number two is that God is a superfluous hypothesis, that it's unnecessary, right? Because science explains everything. These are really the two that I don't know of any others. I mean, we have the incoherency of the concept of God and some others like that, but these are the two main ones. Let's read Thomas's objection that he writes,

Starting point is 00:08:16 remember, against God from the problem of evil and see how he responds to it. Here's what he says. Quote, it seems that God does not exist because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word God means that he is infinite goodness. If therefore God existed, there would be no evil discoverable. But there is evil in the world, therefore God does not exist. Can we just stop a moment and again admit or agree that Aquinas really does not set up straw men here? Have you heard that term before? Straw men, straw man fallacy is where you misrepresent your opponent's position in order to more easily

Starting point is 00:09:07 refute it. But Aquinas isn't doing that. I mean, that's a solid objection. Let's take a look at how he responds to that objection. It's very brief. And then I'll, as I say, look at those three attributes. He says this, quote, This is part of the infinite goodness of God that he should allow evil to exist and out of it produce good. So that's Aquinas' answer, that God allows evil to exist in order that he might bring an even greater good out of it. So let's look at those three things, the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence of God. So, let's see here. Omnipotence, okay, all-powerful. Some people have the false idea that omnipotence means the ability to do what is logically incoherent. So, you'll hear people say, what is logically incoherent. So, you'll hear people say, if God, they'll say, can God create a rock so heavy that even he can't lift it? If you say no, then there's something God can't do.

Starting point is 00:10:33 If you say yes, there's something God can't do. But notice that the question is kind of incoherent in this respect. A God, right? God is infinite in power. Therefore, he has infinite lifting capabilities. If you ask, can God create a rock so heavy that he can't lift, then you're asking, can a rock exist that is more than infinite in weight, such that a being who is infinite in power cannot lift it? But listen, that more than infinite is one of these nonsense words. It doesn't make sense. So, no, God cannot create a rock so heavy that he can't lift, but not because God isn't all powerful, but because the question has an incoherence in it. This is why God can't create a square circle. A square circle isn't anything. God can't create

Starting point is 00:11:24 a married bachelor because a married bachelor isn't anything. These are mutually exclusive terms. They're contradictory. So, you know, God can do anything, but a square circle isn't a thing. A married bachelor isn't a thing. So, omnipotence means the ability to do whatever's possible. So, God can create beings with a kind of free will that can choose between good and evil. Yeah. But having done that, he can't also force those creatures to choose the good freely. Why? Because if he forces you to do the good freely, you didn't do it freely. And if you did it freely, he didn't force you. So, I think that's enough for omnipotence. What about omniscience? Well, you'll notice that Mackey would say if God's omniscient, he would know about all the evil. But listen, if God is omniscient, if he has infinite knowledge, then God knows many things that we don't. And this means, and this gets back to Aquinas' argument, really, that God may, in fact, have good reasons for permitting things such as evil and suffering,

Starting point is 00:12:42 even things that seem inexplicable to us. Human beings have a very limited vantage point, right? And so, we often lack knowledge of a thing's true significance. What appears to us to be a tragedy might end up having effects that are really good. And conversely, what appears to be a great good for us individually or mankind may in the long run prove harmful. Think about this analogy. Think of a small child being taken to the doctor for his immunization shots. What does the child know? He knows that the needle hurts and he cannot understand why his own parents are allowing the doctor to cause him pain. That these shots, these inoculations help prevent the much greater suffering of disease.

Starting point is 00:13:37 He's unable to perceive the greater good, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a greater good there. that there isn't a greater good there. And so, I think likewise, we should recognize that a being with more knowledge than us, like God, may have good reasons for things, even pain and suffering, that we are unaware of. And so, he allows evil to exist because of his omniscience, not in spite of it. What about his omnibenevolence? He's being all good. Okay. I think it's really important when we think of the all goodness of God, the omnibenevolence of God, that we be careful not to impose on him our inadequate understandings of what goodness is. I've got a quote here from C.S. Lewis. This is in The Problem of Pain. Listen to this quote. It's lovely. He says this, quote, By the goodness of God, we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness.

Starting point is 00:14:40 And in this, we may be right. And by love love in this context, most of us mean kindness. What would really satisfy would be a God who said of anything we happen to like doing, what does it matter so long as they are contented? This is a false, inadequate, unchristian view of God. I think many of us have this sort of hallmark, suburbia idea of God, this health and wealth idea of God, essentially that it's God's job to create, in the words of William Lane Craig, a comfortable little habitat for his human pets. We think that's what God's job is, make me happy. Now, look, I can see if you think that it is God's job to make you happy and without pain, without suffering, without annoyance, and without pain, without suffering, without annoyance, and you find yourself suffering and confronting evil and being annoyed, yeah, that's a pretty good argument against the existence of God. But this is a faulty understanding of God. It's not God's job for us to be happy in this life, merely, all right? But also, and more, I mean, God does want us to be happy, okay? But most theists, especially Christians, right? We don't believe

Starting point is 00:16:34 that God created us merely for happiness in this life, but also, and more importantly, for eternal happiness with Him in the next. So, His all goodness, his omnibenevolence should be judged neither by our limited human standards of goodness, nor by what happens in this world alone. William Lane Craig, who's a lovely evangelical philosopher. By the way, everybody, I've noticed, I listen back to these podcasts occasionally, and I notice I say lovely and gorgeous a lot. I think I was talking to Father Chris Prochaszko in, that was episode 10. If you haven't listened to it, go listen to it. It was a great conversation. And I think I said something like, oh, this argument is gorgeous. And I'm like, oh my gosh,

Starting point is 00:17:16 nobody else says that. So I don't know where I picked that up. Anyway, ADD moment, back to where I was. William Lane Craig is an evangelical philosopher. Actually, I live just north of Atlanta. He's in Atlanta. And he says this, I think it's a good point. Look, God's interested not in us living a comfortable life per se. God is interested in bringing free creatures into relationship with himself so that they might experience salvation and eternal life. And he says this, listen, it's not at all implausible to think that only in a world infused with evil and suffering might the greatest number of human creatures come to find salvation. That's not at all implausible. And if you want to say that it is, you need an argument for that. I think we all know, people, and maybe even ourselves, it's when we suffer that we take our eyes off of ourselves and onto something higher than us. God. This isn't always the case, I know that, but still I think Craig's point stands. So, putting these three things together,

Starting point is 00:18:31 what we've said about God's omnipotence, his omniscience, and omnibenevolence, we can recognize that this sort of creator, right, all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing, might have good reasons for tolerating abuses of human free will that lead to evil and suffering, and that we might not know what his reasons are, but we sense the value of freedom, including the value of being able to choose good freely rather than by compulsion. We can see how in both his power and knowledge, God can bring good out of evil in ways that we, in our limitations, aren't always able to comprehend. So, if you want to say, okay, I get that God and evil aren't logically incompatible, but surely the scope of gratuitous evil and suffering make God's existence less likely. But again, how do you know it's gratuitous?

Starting point is 00:19:24 We're not in a place to make that judgment, I don't think. So, we can see that in both his power and his knowledge, he can bring good out of evil. There's that quotation from St. Paul. This is from Romans 8, 28. We know that in everything, God works for good with those who love him. Now, you'll remember I said that evil can be an argument for the existence of God in an indirect way. Why do I say that? Well, a couple of things. Listen, if evil exists, then it follows that real morality exists.

Starting point is 00:20:04 Why? Because evil, by definition definition is that which acts against the good. So, if there were no objective good, then we could say that there were things that we dislike. We could call it suffering. But we couldn't say that there were things that were evil. Therefore, if objective morality exists, if objective moral facts exist, then it follows that God exists. Because objective moral laws point to a perfect and unchanging moral lawgiver. Let's flesh that out just a little bit. We haven't spoken a lot about objective morality, but think about this. What do we mean when we talk about morality being objective? Well, what we mean is that it's mind independent. It's independent of us, essentially.

Starting point is 00:20:53 Again, to refer back to William Lane Craig, he uses an example. He says, suppose the Nazis won World War II, and then they brainwashed and exterminated everybody who disagreed with them. And then they brainwashed and exterminated everybody who disagreed with them. So that right now, everybody on the planet thinks that the Holocaust was a good thing. Okay, does that make it a good thing? Wouldn't we say no, it doesn't? Okay, okay. So then what's right and wrong doesn't depend upon what I or all of us think. We think it's a fact,

Starting point is 00:21:32 yeah, like gravity. What explains that? And we don't have time to get into this fully today, but it seems to me that it only makes sense in light of this perfect and unchanging good who grounds these objective moral facts. Another way of saying it would be this. Look, what do we mean by evil? Well, evil is the way things shouldn't be. But listen, if there's a way things shouldn't be, that presupposes that there is a way things should be. And if there is a way things should be, that points to a designer. So, that's all I'm going to say today. Obviously, libraries have been written about this problem. And let me put it this way. If you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking to yourself right now, wow, man, Matt Fradd and Thomas, you know, like y'all totally just, I totally get it now. This

Starting point is 00:22:25 is no longer a problem for me. Then you haven't heard me. This still remains a problem. But as I say, I don't think it's a strong intellectual one. I think when you hear people talking about why does God allow suffering, bad things happen to good people, this is an emotional reaction. And when you can break it down intellectually, you can see that it's not actually a strong obstacle. Now, a couple of things to say. If someone's suffering, they don't need Christian apologetics right away, necessarily. What they need is Christ. So, you and I know people who are suffering. Let's reach out to them. Let's be compassionate, right? To suffer with, that's what compassionate means.

Starting point is 00:23:08 Let's suffer with them. Let's not run away from their poverty. Let's call them up. Let's invite them out for a drink or just a chat, you know. That's what they need. They need to see the face of Christ. They don't necessarily need to hear right now Christian apologetics. The last thing I'll say is this.

Starting point is 00:23:24 don't necessarily need to hear right now, Christian apologetics. The last thing I'll say is this, even if ultimately the existence of evil is a mystery, all right, but we could say this, okay, let's say you totally disagree with this argument and Thomas's argument. If we've got a good reason to think God exists and that he's all good, right? Which I think we do. You know, I think Thomas's arguments are good. I think even the argument from Jesus Christ is good, right? Jesus Christ, you know, believed in this God, was this God, rose from the dead to vindicate these claims. Okay, so we can go, okay, I've got good reasons to think God is good and that God exists and that he's all-powerful and so forth. So, we might look at the problem of evil and say, wow, this is a mystery, but one of the answers to the problem of evil isn't going to be atheism, right? So, we can just

Starting point is 00:24:15 take that off the table right away and say, okay, I don't know what the answer is necessarily, but I know it's not atheism. So, yeah, in some sense, the problem of evil is going to remain a mystery for us. But as I say, I think when you look at it intellectually, you can see that it's not atheism. So yeah, in some sense, the problem of evil is going to remain a mystery for us. But as I say, I think when you look at it intellectually, you can see that it's not incompatible with the existence of God. How are you doing? You okay? That was a great, it's a great discussion to have, you know. And by the way, if you're someone who's suffered terrible abuse or hurt, I'm sorry, that sucks. Evil sucks. But how beautiful that no matter how much suffering we experience in this life, God, in a sense, can make up for that by giving us an eternal weight of glory. I think it was Teresa of Avila who said, when we're in heaven, looking back on this life,

Starting point is 00:25:07 the most terrible life will only, from the vantage point of heaven, will seem like an inconvenient night in a bad hotel room. Would you please rate the podcast, guys? Go to, you know, Pints with Aquinas. By the way, if you don't have iTunes, by the way, you're probably listening to it through iTunes, but if you know people who want to listen to it and they don't have Apple, just type in pintswithaquinas.com and they can listen to the shows there. But please rate the podcast on iTunes if you would. Please reach out to me through Twitter. You might send me a message. Here's something I'd like to start doing, by the way. I would love to start reading your comments at the end of each show. So, you can go to Twitter

Starting point is 00:25:49 and send me a message and just tell me what you thought of a particular show. It doesn't have to be the preceding one. It can be any of them. Just give me your feedback because I'd love to read it. Here's one thing I'd like to read this week as we wrap up, just from the review section. Where are we here? Oh, here we go. I got a review a while back now from a Presbyterian pastor who listens to the show, and it just made my day. So, if you're listening, I think your name's Joe. I really appreciate it. Thanks for being open-minded enough to listen to a Catholic and an Australian, right? Bang on about Catholic theology and St. Thomas. Excuse me. Okay. So he says this, Matt does a great job at presenting Aquinas fairly and clearly. As a Presbyterian pastor, I disagree with plenty of Aquinas' and

Starting point is 00:26:41 Roman Catholic positions, but I find myself understanding Aquinas and his Summa Theologica better each time I listen to this podcast, and not once being disparaged as a Protestant. That has been fair to say the least. I have listened to the first five podcasts, and I have been edified and encouraged. All Christians should hear from Aquinas. Dude, thank you so much. And Joe, you'll notice, I know that you're a Calvinist and William Lane Craig isn't if you're listening, but you can see that I think this is great. You're a Protestant listening to a Catholic and I'm a Catholic and I listen to Protestants and we can benefit from each other. Of course, we have disagreements, but that doesn't

Starting point is 00:27:19 mean we can't benefit from each other. So thank you so much for that. All right, guys, until next week, I'm Matt Fradd. God bless you. Thanks for listening. Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive? Who's gonna survive? And I would give my whole life To carry you, to carry you to carry you and i would give my whole life to carry you

Pints With Aquinas - 13: Does evil disprove the existence of God?

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