Crash Course in Presuppositional Apologetics: Problem of Evil

The Problem of Evil and the Presuppositional Response

Hey, it's John again from RoarNoMore .com. Welcome back to a crash course in presuppositional apologetics. This is our last video, and this is about the problem of evil. The charge is often brought up that God can't be good and powerful if evil exists, and what I want to show you is that that is actually not the case.

So here we have God is good. We have God is powerful, and yet we have evil existing, and here's a question. How do these things coincide? If God is good, he has the power to get rid of evil, why doesn't he?

Isn't that a contradiction? Well, I want to point out to you something very simple that will resolve the logical contradiction, and there's a fourth step here, and that resolution is extremely simple.

A Sufficient Reason for Evil

God has what we call a sufficient reason for evil to exist. So God has sufficient reason. Now atheists don't like that because they will want to press you on what is this sufficient reason you're talking about, and the answer is we don't know.

See where things belong to God. We do know that trials bring about maturity and perseverance, and that God does have a sufficient reason. For the Christian, at least, we know that all things work together for good to those who are called by God according to his purpose.

The Hidden Assumption That Man Is Good

But there's another assumption hidden in the argument that an atheist will give, and that is that man is good. And we know biblically man is not good. Man is deserving of eternal punishment, and so anyone who doesn't get that punishment or who's not in hell right now is actually experiencing God's mercy.

And so when someone says, if God is so good, why is there evil in the world? And why do good things happen to bad, or bad things happen to good people? You say, what good people? Now another thing to realize here is there's a second presupposition, and that presupposition is that evil exists.

To assume evil exists assumes that good exists. To assume good exists means there's a moral law, and to assume a moral law means a moral law giver. If there is no moral law giver, there's no evil. So to even say that evil exists means you believe in God.

You're relying on him. That's an underlying presupposition. That's why atheism presupposes theism. Now, in order to reason with an unbeliever, we must bring out these two presuppositions and show them why logically there is no problem of evil.

Comfort, Hope, and the Christian Answer to Tragedy

Emotionally there may be. Someone loses a loved one. It's hard for them. But there's a third thing to bring out here. What comfort can a non-believer give to someone who's experienced a great tragedy?

They can't. Only the believer can, because we know the King of Kings, who came into this world, died on a cross, can basically empathize with all our infirmities and weaknesses, as Heber says, because he experienced them himself.

We have hope to give. We have an afterlife. We have a good God to rely on. All the non-believer has is the universe, you know, heaven above us. It's easy to imagine, if you try, as the words to a John Lennon song go.

And so those three things. Number one, to assume that evil exists means you have to assume that God exists. So therefore atheism presupposes theism. Number two, to assume that there are good people means you're not doing an appropriate internal critique of Christianity, because we don't assume that.

And if you're going to be rational, you need to be doing an appropriate internal critique, or else you're not you're really not being a fair-minded person. If you're trying to judge Christianity based on the merits of atheism, Christians don't do that.

Atheists, unfortunately, do sometimes. And three, bring out the emotional components that atheism cannot account for having comfort in the death of a loved one or some kind of tragedy. Christianity, though, on the other hand, can't.

So we have a great hope. That is the problem of evil in a nutshell.