So before I went on vacation, I received an email that I wanted to respond to,

but that I didn't have a chance. I ran out of time, so I thought there's no reason why I can't

go back and respond to it now. So that's what I'm going to do. All right, here's what it says,

Matt, you are constantly giving God credit for good things that happen, but I notice that you never

blame him for all the evil in the world. If your God exists and he is good, as you claim, how do you

explain a world filled with rape, murder, torture, terrorism, sex trafficking, and so many other

evils, it's clear to me that there is no evidence for any kind of God. There especially is no evidence

for a good God. All right, so this is the classic Why Do Bad Things Happened to Good People

Objection. And I think it's a good and important and complex question, and it's one that Christians

have been talking about and debating and writing about for centuries since the beginning.

And I also think it's kind of a weak argument against the existence of God. So it's a good

question to talk about. I don't think it's a great argument against, you know, in the on

for the atheists. I don't think it's a good argument in the atheist corner. I also think that my

friend here in the email didn't even use the best version of his own argument. He made the same

oversight that a lot of atheists surprisingly make when it comes to this objection, which is they

use the weakest version of it. So let's unpack it and we'll start with this. There are two forms

of bad things that might happen to a person. Just broadly speaking, right, there are two categories

of bad things that happen in the world. There's the kind of bad thing that the email describes,

which is rape, murder, and so on, things that are the result, in other words, of human choices.

If you're the victim of rape or murder, that is the result of the choice of not yourself, but

somebody else, the person who is victimizing you. Then there are the bad things that may happen to

you as a result of your own choices. And then there are the bad things that happen to you as the

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