DEBATENATE

Topics / Faith and God

The challenge

“If God is good, why is there so much suffering?”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

Suffering doesn't disprove God. It's the reason he came. The better question is what God has done about evil, and the answer is the cross. Romans five says God showed his love this way: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He didn't explain pain from far away. He took it. Second, love needs freedom, and freedom means people can choose cruelty. The philosopher Alvin Plantinga made that case, and many philosophers grant it answers the strict logical problem. Third, Revelation twenty-one promises a day with no more death and no more tears. You'll say none of that explains cancer or earthquakes. Not seeing the reason doesn't prove there isn't one. Let me ask you this. Without God, what makes suffering evil instead of just bad luck? God didn't watch suffering from a distance. He walked into it.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. Real love needs real freedom, and free people can choose evil. A world of puppets would have no cruelty and no love either.

    Alvin Plantinga's free will defense argues that it is logically possible God has good reasons to allow evil in a world of free creatures.

  2. The moment you call suffering evil, you've reached for a moral standard above nature. That standard points to God, not away from him.

  3. God's answer to evil is the cross. He suffered himself, and he promises to end suffering for good.

    Romans five verse eight teaches that God showed his love in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners. Revelation twenty-one promises a day when God will wipe away every tear and there will be no more death or pain.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Free will explains human cruelty, but not earthquakes or children with cancer.

Nate: That's the harder half. The same stable laws that let us plan, build and rescue also let plates shift and cells go wrong, and Romans eight says creation itself is groaning and waiting to be set free. Christianity doesn't promise an explanation for every tear. It promises a God who wipes them away.

What he grants the other side

Nobody can tell you why one specific tragedy happened.

The lines

Sources

  1. J. L. Mackie, Mind, Evil and Omnipotence (1955)
  2. Alvin Plantinga, Harper and Row, God, Freedom, and Evil (1974)
  3. The Bible, Romans 5:8; Revelation 21
  4. The Bible, Romans 8

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