Thank you for coming Dr. Craig, I really
appreciate it. My question concerns the
issue of natural evil that you brought
up in response to one of those
objections. My basic question is: I
would object to your response by saying
you propose this third proposition
that you know God can justify natural
evil if there's some morally sufficient
reason to justify it. So for example
making a world in which people can know
him. But if God is all-powerful then he
could fulfill this morally sufficient
reason, for example, having people know
him, through any mean. He could create any universe without natural evil that
would fulfill this morally sufficient
reason because by definition he is
all-powerful. [Dr. Craig] God's being all-powerful
doesn't mean that he has the ability to
do logically impossible things, and it's
logically impossible to make someone do
something freely. So given human freedom,
we don't know that there is a world
that's feasible for God in which he
could bring as many people to eternal
life and salvation freely as this world,
or a world suffused with natural evil and
suffering.The atheist would have to
prove that there's a possible world that
God could have actualized of free
creatures in which more persons, or a
greater percentage of persons would
freely come to find salvation and
eternal life, but without an equivalent
amount of suffering, and that's pure
speculation. Nobody knows such a thing. So I think
that the atheist's argument just lays a
burden of proof so heavy on the atheist's
shoulders that no one can sustain it.
[questioner] that seems to me like you're just
limiting the definition of all-powerful
at that point, there's a limitation.
[Dr. Craig] I don't think so; this is the general
understanding of omnipotence, is that
it's the ability to do whatever is
logically possible for an agent to do. It
doesn't mean God can do logical impossibilities. [questioner] Why is it logically
impossible to create a universe in which
you can make free agents willingly
believe in you while not suffering
natural evils? why is that logically impossible? [Dr. Craig] Because it's
logically impossible to make someone
freely do something.
[questioner] Why can't you create a universe, rather. my verbage was... [Dr. Craig] you're asking why
couldn't God create a universe of free
creatures in which just as many people
come to know him in his salvation, but
with less natural evil in it? And I'm
saying that we have no idea whether such
a world is feasible for God or not. Given
human freedom there are possible worlds
like that, but they may not be actualizable
or feasible for God because the human persons
wouldn't cooperate, they wouldn't do what
God would want them to do. So the burden of proof lies upon the atheist to
show that there is a feasible world like
that available to God, and there's simply
no way to prove that. Now let me come
back on your earlier point. Suppose you
do say that omnipotence means the
ability to do the logically impossible.
Then the problem of evil immediately
evaporates, because God can bring it
about. That he is all-powerful, all-good
and that natural evil exists, even though
that's logically impossible. No problem.
