So our world is full of pain and suffering. Rarely does a month go by without news of another school shooting, a massive terrorist attacked, or a devastating natural disaster. In addition to events like these which grab the world's attention, there are also the sufferings which don't make the headlines. For all of you who are future medical professionals, these sufferings

are part of your daily life. The young mother battling cancer, the elderly man who no longer

recognizes his wife because of dementia, the survivor of rape who comes to the R. As future doctors,

you are called to attend to the myriad of ways in which human beings suffer through their bodies and minds.

It's a privilege to be with you tonight to talk to you about how that suffering fits with the reality of God and his goodness.

So the obvious fact that our world includes much suffering of many different kinds is the starting point of one of the oldest and most compelling

arguments against the existence of God. The argument known as the problem of evil goes as follows,

and this is on your handout labeled as the atheistic argument on page one. If there's a God,

then there can be no evil, but there is evil, therefore there is no God.

Why you might ask is the existence of God incompatible with evil?

Well, if God is supposed to be all-knowing, as the traditional religion say, then God would be aware of all the evils happening in the world.

For example, God would know about the first emergence of the cancer cells before they can grow into an uncontrollable tumor. Furthermore, if God is all powerful, God would be able to stop

all evil. An omnipotent being like God could wipe out

not only terrorists, but also ailments like cerebral palsy. And finally, if God is supposed to be all good,

as religious people say, God would want to stop the evils in our world. You and I are not

infinitely good as God is supposed to be, but even we would want to

end the suffering that your patient's experience if only we were able. So if God is the sort of being

who would know about all evil, be able to stop all evil, and would want to stop all evil,

then it follows that if there were a God, all evil would have already been

eliminated. But clearly there is still evil in our world. Therefore, it seems that there cannot

also be an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good God. So variations of this argument that I just made

have been put forth by philosophers and theologians for centuries

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