God and Suffering | 5 Minute Video
Isn’t human suffering proof that a just, all-powerful God must not exist? On the contrary, says Boston College Professor of Philosophy Peter Kreeft. How can “suffering” exist without an objective standard against which to judge it? Absent a standard, there is no justice. If there is no justice, there is no injustice. And if there is no injustice, there is no suffering. On the other hand, if justice exists, God exists. In five minutes, learn more.
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Script:
All good people are appalled by the sufferings of the innocent. When an innocent person is struck by a painful disease, or tortured or murdered, we naturally feel sadness, helplessness, and often rage.
Many people have claimed that such suffering is a proof that God does not exist. Their argument goes like this:
God is all good and all powerful. Such a God would not permit unnecessary suffering. Yet, we constantly observe unjust suffering. Therefore, at least one of the premises about God must be false. Either God is not all good or He is not powerful. Or He just doesn’t exist.
What’s wrong with this argument?
First, let’s examine what we mean when we say that God would not permit unjust suffering.
There are two categories of suffering: Suffering caused by human beings, which we call moral evils, and suffering caused by nature, for instance earthquakes or cancer.
Free will explains how God could be good and allow moral evil. Because God has given people free will, they are free to behave against God’s will. The fact that they do evil does not prove that God is not good.
In addition, if there were no God, there would be no absolute standard of good. Every judgment presupposes a standard. And that’s true of our moral judgments, too. What is our standard for judging evil to be evil? The most we could say about evil — if there were no God — was that we, in our subjective taste, didn’t like it when people did certain things to other people. We wouldn’t have a basis for saying an act was ‘bad’, only that we didn’t like it. So the problem of human evil exists only if God exists.
As for natural suffering, that poses what appears to be a more difficult question.
We see an innocent child suffer, say from an incurable disease. We complain. Understandable. We don’t like it. Understandable. We feel it is wrong, unfair, and shouldn’t happen. Understandable, but illogical, unless you believe in God!
For, if you do not believe in God, your subjective feelings are the only basis upon which you can object to natural suffering. OK, you don’t like it. But how is your not liking something evidence for God not existing? Think about it. It’s just the opposite. Our judgments of good and evil, natural as well as human, presuppose God as the standard. If there’s no God, there’s neither good nor evil. There’s just nature doing what it does.
If nature is all there is, there is absolutely no need to explain why one person suffers and another doesn’t. Unjust suffering is a problem only because we have a sense of what is just and unjust. But where does this sense come from? Certainly, not from Nature. There’s nothing just about nature. Nature is only about survival.
What, in other words, does it mean for suffering to be ‘unnecessary or wrong?’ How is that determined? Against what standard? Your private standard means nothing. My private standard means nothing. We can talk meaningfully about suffering being ‘unnecessary’ or wrong only if we have an underlying belief that a standard of right and wrong objectively exists. And if that standard really exists, that means there is a God.
For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/videos/god-and-suffering
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There are a few straw man arguments in this video. The atheist doesn't actually argue that things like cancer in children are immoral, they argue that a god, being a person with great power, would be immoral if he were to give a child cancer. In this case, the argument isn't that no god exists, only that the Christian God does not.
Umm what? I want my 5 minutes back
God told Moses – I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, I will have compassion upon whom I have compassion. God is sovereign. This video falls way short of explaining anything, it is just word salad. Very disappointing!!
I'm Catholic and I think some of his points are dumb
Boooooo i heard the reverse psychology this guy was trying to pull.
If there is a guy that is all good and all powerful, who loves all of his children equally and would not condone bad things. His weird explanation still raises the question, even if a standard of what is concerned to be good or evil, how do we know it comes from something called God specifically? Who decided that and who put that person in charge to decide for the rest of us?
If God is the true god, then prove it. Have him come down and speak to us all.
Very, very good.
Suffering is meant to inform about a specific disorder, so providing no ability to suffer, would result with lack of such information, and make it hard for anyone to act upon a disorder, simple as that.
Johnny Rivers had a meaningful song that calls for deep introspection, heightened environmental and social consciousness hinted in and from his biggest best seller album in the 1967-68 decade, called "Realization." The 1960's were a time of deep turmoil, defiance, disobedience, and rebellion in the U.S. (as it continues and worsens today not only in the U.S., but all over the international community). A title track from this album might answer a question that some viewers and listeners believe Professor Peter Kreeft of Boston University did NOT answer, Rivers's track was entitled "Look to your Soul." And so, the need to look to your soul from within, as well as to look without in the environmental and social "status quo."
Yes, God exists, but also Evil exists. People have free will by God, but there is an Evil out there too, doing its things.
Oh my, thank you, I needed a good laugh today lol.
I watched this video!
This only demonstrated to me that university professors can be idiots on the left or right.
We don’t need an unproven god character to literally point at everything and file them under “good or bad”. Why should we be concerned and value the subjective opinion of an unproven god?
We humans set the standard and our empathy dictates what ought and ought not to happen for the sake of wellbeing.
Whether a god exists or not is irrelevant as this being is clearly less empathetic than any of us and thus does not play a role in this matter at all.
Oh good, more proof we no longer need that your religious dogma turns off the moral part of the brain — and if you're lucky, only that part…
can you please explain to me why the picture that depicts an evil man killing an innocent man has a police hat on? Are you suggesting that all police are evil?
We are all tested. Perhaps the thing to look out for is how the person responds. Is their faith strong or weak? Perhaps it is the case that if you cannot bring yourself to still have faith in God after the test, you will succumb to being enslaved.
It will almost useless as we suffering mentally and physically without any ways to cured or fixed by evils forced, and keeping talking about morals or atheist. And basically of good morals as do good many happiness as morals are rights.
My morals based on truth, goods, live liberty, pursuit of happiness. So I also believed in gods as believed all suffering we saw and experience every days can ended or cured in this world or next world on top of our powers of science and rights in real world.
We have suffering because of Satan the Devil.
Satan opposed God.
Satan partially ruined the universe, which is God's creation; when it was 1st created, everything was just fine & heavenly!
Satan tricked Adam & Eve into eating fruit that they weren't supposed to eat; he used Eve's curiosity to create sin & sin is what messed things up.
God is not the one to blame for the existence of suffering, Satan is!
I believe that human suffering is caused by human animalism and natural processes, rather than GOD'S PLAN FOR ALL OF US.
Belief in god is freedom belief in religion is slavery
What an absolute load of abject BS!!!!! There has been bad and good for the entirety of human existence, and cultural development/progression has set the basis for this, not any "god". I've been an Atheist for 40 years, and this has to be one of the most pathetic justifications for the existence of a god I've ever encountered, no surprise it is not used in a debate with anyone able to counter his BS.
The argument that without god or good, there is no evil is juat flawed circular logic.
Evolution can explain what we call good and evil. It is simply learned behavior for survival. We adapted to work together and evolved socially as well as biologically. If we kill one another or steal or some other selfish act that destablizes the community we risk its and our survival. If we give into fear, selfish desires, or more animal instincts, those acts are seen as evil or against the greater community. It's a matter of learning social rules to make survival easier.
Hmmmm….but nature is just though.
Follow a naturalistic/rationalistic religion, i.e., one that is heavily built upon and compatible with reason and science.
The Abrahamic religions are all founded upon the same fallacy: that man is guilty of possessing an innate (of having been involuntarily born with a) sinful nature.
A just god would hold a person accountable for refusing to change his/her lifestyle to live a good, moral life, but blaming a person just for having a sinful nature that no one chose to have been born with is unjust.
Eternal damnation is unfair and stupid when you realize that a person’s life and actions are greatly determined by his/her upbringing.
Moreover, there is no true free will if all humans are naturally sinful. If there was, then there would be humans who are completely free from sin. But all humans are naturally evil because we are all pleasure-seekers. Without our innate human desire to seek pleasure, there would be no sin or evil in the world.
Yahweh is just another sadistic, hateful, selfish, and unjust cosmic lunatic, like Allah, Jupiter, etc.
It's easier for me to accept suffering caused by natural processes than by a supposedly omnipotent god.
Just take, for example, medical and/or altruistic charity organisations. These medical systems which treat and attempt to cure and alleviate suffering and altruistic organisations such as the UN, UNICEF, and the WHO, are not off the belief existence of a God, but rather off an indiscriminate, objective decency and respect for human dignity. They do not sacrifice time, money, and lives just because, as a whole, they fundamentally enshrine a belief in God, and a selfish desire for redemption in an afterlife. Belief in God does not make you a good person or in any way morally superior, as this video so smugly asserts: it is actions from a person, selflessly and with freedom of thought that is perhaps true goodness – not a selfish desire, as aforementioned. And, if I may digress, the examples suffering and evil in the world as a result of freewill, were, bar one, based on Religious grievances and/or fanaticism. I will cede, however, that as a moral relativist that this Religious 'fanaticism' is relative and steeped in a strong, almost blind faith in a cause, that we must question the true intentions of such an occurrence and whether it was the true intention of the individual during an act of free will, or really a diehard credulous zeal to a cause, but I digress.
This video does not answer the initial question:
Why God who is supposed ti be perfect and powerfull, created a world where suffering is so common.
Whatever arguments you bring to the table the answer is just that: He could have done it otherways but he did not.
Thus he either does not exist, or he is "evil", or he just does not really care much.
Whatever one of them is true, it doesn't make any difference for me. Just live your life the way you want and stop thinking about Gods/religions.
Free will is bs because science has proven we don’t have free will
The world ain't all sunshine and rainbow. It's cold, mean and mundane. No matter how tough you are, no matter how good or bad you are, nothing will hurt harder than Life. It will beat you and it will break you and if you let it, it will keep you down there. Pain and Suffering is a mainstay of existence, like a god of the human race. From it, there is no salvation, no rescue, no help.
You can't run, you can't hide, you can't fight. Only cowards try.
Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise has never truly lived.
Don't confuse yourself as to whether or not you deserve it.
Don't start blaming anyone or anything, don't even think about blaming "tHe dEviL", just hope that yourself isn't to blame. Don't go staring into the sky, hoping for a set of wings to teach you how to fly, or a pair of hands to hold you up. Don't look to the World. It will turn a blind eye to your misery or make you sure of it. Only the weak do this
If you can find the strength and the will to embrace and endure, learn and grow from hardship, to let it mold you like clay and forge you like iron. Then you will truly live.
From this philosopher with Praeger Univ. point of view… logic and reason and a philisophical argument can prove the existence of a creator ( God)….
I prefer to say this planet, this universe, the fact of our existence, etc. screams there is a Creator…(God).
And that the sciences, ( biology, geology, physics etc) point to only one logical conclusion…there is a Creator, ( God)….
Additionally I am convinced now that we can establish a relationship with this creator…..The truth, the way, the light, ..the Messiah Jesus….❤
God and suffering
I'm not Jewish. But if they're going to sell me a god (Jewish, Christian or Islamic) that allowed 6 million of his chosen people to die so that Israel can exist and be constantly attacked by almost every neighboring nation, then that is a VERY flawed deity. The All Powerful Being couldn't come up with a more elegant solution? Or is it not that powerful? Even if such a thing existed, given its track record, or ROI, it's a junk bond god – totally worthless to worship. 26 million soviets died in WW 2 to stop a Catholic choir boy from exterminating half of Europe. 65 million Chinese died under Mao – their buddha certainly didn't help THEM. Shiva didn't help in India – either brutally murdered by the British or starving from bad crops. North Koreans are brutally oppressed. No god there. Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, ….. Not worth a single prayer. And in case you're wondering: Raised RC.
God did not put us here to have Heaven on Earth. He put us here because we left Heaven. We are here to learn to love God rather than love ourselves over God. We do that by learning to care about others, and by accepting Christ as our Savior so that our sins are forgiven, and then we can we go to Heaven.
here is all the answers in this short video [3 min] as to why God allows suffering: https://youtu.be/86uNn2DeW9s
Free will can exist without evil.
Funny how all these god botherers forget that we evolved empathy.
Sorry Peter, don’t think you addressed the question, which was, why does God allow bad things. Not, whether or not there is a God.
Allot of babble garbage
This argument does not deny God, it question it's attributes. If God, suffering and evil coexist, explain to me how is God all good and all powerful?
If he has the power to stop suffering and evil but doesn't do it, is he conniving with both? If you had the power to stop evil, would you not do it for the sake of "free will"?
Then why ethics? Why governments? Why laws? Why are we, powerless humans, trying to stop and reduce suffering and evil when your all powerful God is OK with it?
I prefer to believe suffering and evil are products of pure randomness than conceive the idea that my almighty God has all the power to fix it but prefer not to do it.
Your God is either not as good or not as powerful as you think.
Circuitous and uncompelling
crystal clear explanation
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