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Defenders Podcast

Defenders: Excursus on Natural Theology (Part 33): The Problem of Evil and Suffering (4)

Defenders Podcast

William Lane Craig

Christianity, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality, Philosophy

4.7724 Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2022

⏱️ 36 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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0:00.0

Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig, today, and excurses

0:10.0

on Natural Theology, Part 33.

0:13.4

For more resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

0:18.0

We've been looking at the evidential or probabilistic version of the problem of evil and suffering.

0:26.9

And I suggested last time two responses to this problem. First, that we're simply not in a good

0:35.6

position to say with any confidence when some instance of evil

0:41.7

or suffering enters our lives that God probably doesn't have a morally sufficient reason

0:48.5

for permitting that. Given our finitude in time and space, our cognitive limitations and intelligence and insight,

0:58.0

we simply aren't in a position to make those kind of probability judgments with any confidence.

1:04.0

But secondly, I also suggested that probabilities are relative to background information and that even if God's

1:13.6

existence were improbable relative to the evil and suffering in the world alone, that doesn't

1:19.6

mean God's existence is improbable because when you can skitter the full scope of the evidence,

1:24.6

God's existence may be very probable. To illustrate, relative to the

1:31.2

facts of reproductive biology, my existence is enormously improbable. Of all those hundreds of millions

1:41.6

of sperm, what are the chances that just that one would unite

1:46.3

with my mother's egg to make me? Relative to the facts of reproductive biology, my existence

1:53.3

is incredibly improbable. So should I believe that I do not exist? Well, obviously not,

2:00.0

because I have very good reason to think that I exist,

2:03.6

even given any improbability that my existence might have relative to the facts of reproductive

2:10.8

biology taken in isolation. And in exactly the same way when we consider the full scope

2:15.9

with the evidence, God's existence,

2:18.3

is probable even given any improbability that evil and suffering might be thought to cast upon God's

...

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