Next question, Dr Craig comes from John in the United States.

Hello Dr Craig comes from John in the United States.

Hello, Dr Craig, you've said,

person skeptical of Christian Theism on the basis of apparently

pointless suffering must show that God cannot possibly have a morally

sufficient reason for allowing it.

You suggest that some suffering may appear pointless because its good effect may not become apparent until much later in time.

This seems to imply that in principle we could trace the effects of an evil event

and understand why that event was necessary to bring about the good effect or why it

had to be allowed.

There is no reason to think that we could not follow the chain of reasoning even if it took a long time. But surely the

skeptic can justifiably assert that no one has ever shown or even attempted to

show how a particular evil, say, the rape and murder of a child in a rural county in Arizona

40 years ago, led to a morally justifying outcome or how it might possibly lead to such an outcome. Absent a real example or plausible

general account of why every instance of apparently pointless evil is beyond such an analysis, the skeptic can

reasonably assert that our actual evidence seems to be that some suffering

really is pointless because there is no demonstration of a real morally

sufficient reason nor is there any account of what such a person or what such a

reason would be like nor is there any account of what such a reason would be like, nor is there any account of what such a reason would be like.

Hence the skeptic is quite reasonable in thinking that probably there isn't any such reason, and so the Christian God probably doesn't exist.

Thank you, John, the United States.

Now, John has run together here different versions of the problem of evil confusing the logical version

...