Post tagged with problem of evil

  • Does God punish people through natural disasters?

    October 05th, 201110:48 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    By some counts more than three hundred thousand people were killed in the 2010 Haiti earthquake while an additional three hundred thousand were injured and one million rendered homeless. The scale of human suffering is truly unimaginable. And then, even as people were still struggling for their next breath while buried in ten tonnes of concrete, a...

  • Do Arminians have the same problem as Calvinists?

    July 29th, 201110:49 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Paul Manata offers a response to my article "Calvinism preaches a God of love, and yet..." The response was a tu quoque, an argument form which functions like this: Randal and Paul were walking home from the Barry Manilow concert when Paul was surrounded by a group of growling headbangers who were focused on his powder blue concert T-shirt. Just b...

  • On God, leprechauns and really bad analogies

    July 09th, 201111:58 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    My first smile this morning occurred as I walked past a looking glass and caught a glimpse of my handsome visage peering back at me. My second smile came when I read the comment of Curt Cameron (not to be confused with Kirk Cameron) in response to my discussion of protest atheism. Let's begin by citing Curt's comment in full: Here's a hypothetica...

  • How much evil could God allow for a greater good?

    April 29th, 201109:32 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    In "Does God ever visit Ronald McDonald House?" I asked a question that crushes me. But as a Christian theist how can I not ask it? A few responses from the skeptics in our midst were, as I expected, incredulous. For example, Ray replied with the following: "The good of consolation is only a runner-up prize to the good of not needing consolation. ...

  • Does God ever visit Ronald McDonald House?

    April 26th, 201109:44 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Several years ago I worked with a fellow who volunteered regularly at Ronald McDonald House with terminally ill children and their parents. Every couple months he'd come to work in pieces because another child had died. I always wondered what it was that drew him back. Could it be due to the fact that his family situation growing up could charitabl...

  • Michael Douglas on the upside of cancer

    January 24th, 201111:32 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    It came as a shock to many last August when Michael Douglas, in an appearance on David Letterman, announced that he had been diagnosed with stage four throat cancer. And the Letterman public appearance would be the last one before disappearing down the black hole of seven weeks of intense radiation therapy. Douglas has since reemerged cancer free ...

  • Does meticulously-tuned evil count as a defeater for meticulously-tuned good?

    July 06th, 201011:34 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    There are two key issues I want to explore further in relation to the waving statute, St. Tom's Orphanage, and other cases of synchronicity. The topic of this thread is evil and other potential defeaters to positive events with putative high MDS. Let's begin with SilverBullet: "You've clearly spent some time thinking this over, so in the meantime...

  • Christian Atheism?

    May 04th, 201011:58 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Back in the article "Believe propositions p and q and thou shall be saved" I argued against the view that the necessary and sufficient conditions for a saving relationship with God are found in the mental assent to one or more propositions. This raised many intriguing questions and possibilities in the following thread, including the one raised by ...

  • Is God behind the earthquake in Haiti?

    January 14th, 201010:50 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    I will not soon forget the image on the news last night. Arms desperately waving for help from between huge chunks of concrete. I thought with a shudder about the people inside, trapped, covered by several tons of rubble. How many would be saved, and how many more would die? Then as the world stood on in shocked horror, along came Pat Robertson an...

  • Does God speak today? A Case Study

    December 02nd, 200908:39 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Over the years I have spent much time studying the epistemic status of religious belief. Certain religious beliefs are wholly subjective (i.e. bereft of immediately veridical elements). Such is the case with a belief like "God loves me". From a philosophical perspective, cases that are at least modestly veridical, (e.g. which involve the commu...
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An exploration of faith, knowledge, reason and doubt (with the occasional trite pop culture reference thrown in for good measure).