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Christian Apologetics - Lesson 6

The Problem of Evil

If God is good and all powerful, then why does evil exist?

Ronald Nash
Christian Apologetics
Lesson 6
Watching Now
The Problem of Evil

Part 1
 

I.  Introduction - "Painful Preliminaries"

 

II.  Three Problems

A.  The Deductive Problem of Evil

1.  Argument: Logical contradiction in Christianity

2.  Response: Alvin Plantinga

3.  Faith & Reason, Chapter 13

B. The Inductive Problem of Evil

1.  Argument: Strong probability that God does not exist

2.  Faith & Reason, Chapter 14

C.  The Gratuitous Problem of Evil

1.  Definition: Evil that has no redeeming value.

2.  Examples

3.  Faith & Reason, Chapter 15

 

III.  Popular Presentation of the Problem of Evil

A.  Objectives

1.  Provide a good example of apologetics at work against the toughest intellectual challenge that the Christian faith has to face.

2.  Knock the problem of evil down to size. Reduce it to smaller, more manageable parts.

B.  Naturalists and the Problem of Goodness

C.  Problem exists because of the essential attributes of God.

1.  All powerful (Omnipotent)

2.  All knowing (Omniscient)

3.  All good (Omnibenevolent)

4.  Logical implications of beliefs

5.  The problem of evil must be reconciled with the attributes of God.

D.  Important Distinctions

1.  Theoretical Problem vs. Personal Problem

2.  Evil in General vs. Specific Instances

3.  Moral Evil vs. Natural Evil


Lessons
About
Transcript
  • Introduction to Apologetics.

  • Apologetics involves finding evidence and presenting arguments to defend the Christian faith.

  • Two prominent worldviews are Christian theism and naturalism.

  • The law of non-contradiction states that A cannot be B and non-B at the same time and in the same sense.

  • Explanations and responses to different worldviews.

  • If God is good and all powerful, then why does evil exist?

  • Discussion about how the existence of evil is consistent with God's character.

  • Your noetic structure, presuppositions and view of epistemology are important elements in the formation of your worldview.

  • Discussion of deductive presuppositionalism vs. inductive presuppositionalism.

  • Objections to inductive presuppositionalism.

  • Arguments for and against evidentialism.

  • Arguments for and against foundationalism.

  • Discussion of natural theology.

  • There are valid, sound and cogent arguments for the existence of God, but no coercive proofs.

  • Discussion of different arguments for God's existence.

  • One version of the cosmological argument for God's existence emphasizes God as first in time, another emphasizes God as first in importance.

  • A possible world is a way the real world could have been. Modal logic, propositions, state of affairs and eternal entities are some of the considerations when discussing a possible world.

  • Something is logically possible if its description does not include a logical contradiction. The existence of the laws of knowledge refute the system of naturalism.

  • Middle knowledge is a form of knowledge attributed to God by Molina.

  • Miracles are a dividing line and central to Christianity.

  • David Hume's rational arguments against miracles and responses to those arguments.

  • Two miracles central to Christianity are the incarnation and resurrection.

  • The question of whether or not Jesus is the only savior touches on pluralism, inclusivism and exclusivism.

  • Pluralism is the view that all religions have salvific value.

  • Inclusivism is the view that even though the work of Christ is the only means of salvation, it does not follow that explicit knowledge of Christ is necessary in order for a person to be saved.

  • Salvation is totally the work of God and all children who die in infancy are elect of God.

  • Discussion from a biblical perspective of God's character and attributes.

  • Open theists believe that God does not have a perfect knowledge of the future.

  • Divine omnipotence and divine omniscience are two attributes of God.

  • When contemplating life after death, remember, Jesus has been there and come back. Will you commit your life to him or reject him?

These lectures were given at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida during the fall of 2001.

 

Dr. Ronald Nash
Christian Apologetics
th601-06
The Problem of Evil
Lesson Transcript

 

[00:00:01] Let me just comment on the prayer that we just read. I hadn't read this before class, but once again, let me just read these words in this prayer by Charles Head and SPURGEON. Father, prepare us for the height of blessing to which you have called us. Help us to receive gratefully the painful preliminaries necessary to fully receive thy highest good to us. There is a highest good coming to all believers. But in the plan of God, the reception of that highest good is going to be preceded by what SPURGEON calls painful preliminaries. And we just got a taste of those painful preliminaries a week ago today. This class is being taped on September 18th, 2001, exactly one week after the attack on America, the horrible events that occurred on September 11th. Since I'm going to talk about the problem of evil sometime in this course. What better day to talk about it than an a time when the presence of evil in our world is so fresh in our memories. Now, before I begin, please understand I am under no illusions that anything I say in the book for the faith and reason book or anything that I say in this oral presentation provides a totally satisfactory answer to the problem of evil. Rather, I hope you'll regard my comments both in the book and in the class today as laying the groundwork for all of us to make further reflections in the future. All right. Now, if you brought your faith and reason book, please open it to chapter 13. If you didn't bring it, then you just make notes on what I talk about. Ten years ago when I started to teach this course here, and when in fact I made the original set of tapings that have served the seminary for these past ten years, I spent a lot of time going through the textbook and commenting and explaining on the material that is in the textbook. For example, Chapter 13 of Faith and Reason is titled The Deductive Problem of Evil. In fact, before I finished that thought, let me tell you, since you have not read this material before today, my organization of. The faith and reason books material on the problem of evil proceeds in this way. I look at three major forms of the problem of evil. Chapter 13 is titled The Deductive Problem of Evil. This is highly technical, philosophical stuff. This is cutting edge stuff. As far as this particular feature of the problem of evil is concerned. The reason I can call it cutting edge stuff is because it's not original with me. This particular work was was first produced by the Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga. And I'll come back and say a little bit more about his work on this subject. The basic feature of the deductive problem of evil is this 50 years ago, this was the major form that atheistic philosophers used to demolish. Or so they thought. The historic Christian faith. The reason why atheists and I give you their names and I cite their their articles in their books, in the footnotes to Chapter 13. The reason why this argument was deemed so successful that in fact it would wipe Christian theism off the face of them off the map is because it it supposedly proved that there was a logical contradiction at the very center of the Christian faith. And listen to me. If there if there is or if there were or if there ever becomes a logical contradiction at the center of the Christian faith, then the Christian faith is not just false. It is thereby proven to be necessarily false. Now for a belief or a system to be necessarily false would be tantamount to arguing that two plus two equals five. Now before the rise of postmodernism. Anybody who said that two plus two equals five was deemed an idiot. All right. Postmodernism has changed that. Today. People who say that two plus two equals five are no doubt regarded as prophets. Not Islamic prophets, but prophets of something or other. Okay. But listen to me. If you and I are proponents of a worldview. That is logically self defeating. That means it is not only false in this world, it is false in every possible world. And you and I are idiots Who. But along around the year 1973. A graduate of the philosophy department at Yale University named Alvin Planning a. Who was then an evangelical Christian and who today remains an evangelical Christian. He wrote some articles. In which he absolutely demolished. The deductive problem of evil. Now, as I suggested, as recently as seven, eight years ago, I used to spend an entire 2 hours just going through Chapter 13, the deductive problem of evil and laying out for you, planning those incredible piece of work. Let me tell you something about. You can count the number of times. That proponents of a particular philosophical position have thrown in the towel and admitted that they were wrong. You can count the number of times that that has happened in the history of philosophy on the fingers of your left hand. Because philosophers are vain, they are proud. They don't like to admit that they are wrong. But when you read through Chapter 13, you will find quotations from the very same philosophers who propounded the deductive problem of evil, admitting publicly that they were wrong. That doesn't happen. And yet this is what planting accomplished. Now, I no longer take the time in my lecture to go through the details of planning the argument because the course isn't long enough to do that. So your assignment is to read chapter 13 and do the best you can to understand how planning to demolish this argument. It's a magnificent piece of work. It has never. It's one of the most incredible accomplishments in the whole history of philosophy. Okay, now. I understand that you're not going to memorize. You're not going to. You're not necessarily going to commit all of chapter 13 to memory. But here's what I want you to remember. The day is coming. The day is coming when you're going to be in a position of ministry and some young person. Male or female is going to come to you and say, I have just been exposed to the deductive problem of evil and my faith has been shaken to the roots. I believe I have been told told that my Christian faith is logically and necessarily false. Can you help me? That's when you go to your library shelf. Okay. And the first thing you say to that person is you come back tomorrow. You come back tomorrow. And then you reread chapter 13 and you can help that young person recover his or her faith. But in the meantime, here's what I want you to tell that young person. If you are studying with a philosopher who believes the deductive problem of evil still is relevant, you're studying with an idiot, All right? You're studying with a guy who doesn't know his own discipline. This argument was demolished. So there's the little bit that I'm going to say about the deductive problem of evil. This is this is, as I've already said, this is one of the great accomplishments in the history of philosophy. But I'm not going to take the time here. You read it and get what you can from it, and then don't give this book away. You save it for the day when you're your son or daughter or your grandson or granddaughter comes to you because they went to a college that you shouldn't have allowed them to go to in the first place. Okay. Well, and then if you still believe I'm fooling, you read the last two pages of chapter 13 and watch these guys throw in the towel and say, I was wrong. Boom. Now, chapter 14. Chapter 14 is called The Inductive Problem of Evil. Nothing I've hinted at with respect to Chapter 13 has eliminated the problem of evil from the table. It's just that the deductive version of it is finished. The deductive problem of evil again, says the presence of evil in a universe created by an omnipotent, omniscient, the omni benevolent God points to a logical contradiction. At the very center of the Christian faith. But now the most that anti Christians can say is the existence of evil in the universe suggests that there is a strong probability that God does not exist. I trust. You see, the difference between saying it is logically impossible that the God of the Christian faith can exist, and it is highly likely or highly probable that the Christian God does not exist. That's a much less potent argument, even though it still carries a lot of clout. Now I'm going to make a number of comments in there in my later presentation today that are relevant to the inductive problem of evil. But even that can be answered. As you will read, the really tough nut to crack. Is the third version of the problem of evil, and that is the problem of gratuitous evil, the gratuitous problem of evil. Now, what is gratuitous evil? Gratuitous evil is evil that appears to have no redeeming value whatsoever. Evil that is so bad, so horrendous. As to appear as though there is no good reason that could possibly justify that sort of thing happening. And may I suggest to you that when you start scanning the list of gratuitous evils, the events of September 11, 2001. Come pretty close to fitting that bill. Let me give you some other examples of possibly gratuitous evil a parent learns. That a small child has just been diagnosed with a terminal disease, a terminal disease that is going to result in months and months of suffering and agony. Or that there is some inexplicable accident. Of course, what what's horrible about the events in New York City and Washington, D.C., is that they weren't accidents. They were planned. By people who claimed to be doing this in the name of God. So this is the really difficult example of the problem of evil. And I before I'm finished, I will have to try and say something about that. Now, what you're going to get from me for most of the rest of today is a popular presentation of this material. When did I first give this? I think it happened at a small Baptist church here in Orlando. Okay. The fact that I see it's a small Baptist church eliminates eliminates a lot of opportunities. This this was a church that served a community of working people. And I was asked not only to give the Sunday morning service, but also to do something in Sunday school. And I was just led. I said, well, let's do it. Let's let's give these people and introduction to the problem of evil, something that. Well, let me ask you this. How many of you other than last Sunday. And the sermon I heard last Sunday had a lot to do with patriotism, had a lot to do with a Christian response to that horrible event. But how many of you have ever actually heard a Sunday morning worship service that dealt with a sermon, dealt with the problem of evil? It's a tough sermon to preach. It really is. So I said to myself, I'm going to put together a Sunday school lesson. These are people who, for the most part, never went to college. And I'm not putting people like that down. You want. I'm just trying that you get. I had I had to simplify this stuff. And by the time that Sunday school class was over, I thought, I think I'm on to something here. And so that's one I want to share with you. That's what I want to put on the tape. And what I'm giving you comes in a different format than what you get in your textbook. The textbook contains some pretty highfalutin philosophy stuff, in some cases cutting edge philosophy stuff where perhaps and I'm confessed, making a little confession here, perhaps the audience I had in my mind at that time was other philosophers. Well, who care? Who wants to communicate with other philosophers? I mean, when you write to other philosophers, you're probably going to get that material across to maybe 20 people in the whole world. Who cares about that? Okay, so let's get started on the overheads. These overheads are not perfect because I've never corrected these since that first Sunday school class, which means either I'm very busy or I'm kind of lazy. All right. One or the other. Now, here is my basic objective. My basic objective is to my basic objectives are number one. To provide. A good example of apologetics at work. In the case of what happens to be the toughest challenge, the toughest intellectual challenge that the Christian faith has to face. I've talked to you about negative and positive apologetics. This is the toughest weapon in the theologians arsenal. When I run across somebody who says I used to be a Christian, I don't know what that means. All right. Obviously, the person who says that isn't a Presbyterian isn't a Reformed Baptist. Somebody says, I used to be a Christian. What they're saying is I used to believe certain things and I don't believe them now. And then we will on some other day, we'll deal with the theology of that. And I say to them, okay, why did you stop believing? And they say, and they give me any answer other than the problem of evil. I want to kick people like that. I do. I want to say to people like that, you dummy. The reason you're giving me for abandoning Christian theism is peanuts. The only argument that, you know, that ought to carry any weight with any thinking person is the problem of evil. What are some of the arguments you've heard? I can't believe in Christian theism because so many Christians are hypocrites. Well, my goodness, guy, if you think that's reason for or I just don't like Jerry Falwell or case Jerry's listening there are Jerry there are people in the world who don't like you. All right. But, Jerry. Put your chin up because there are a lot of people in the world who don't like me. And that's just my students. All right? It's just my students. This is it. This is the best weapon the anti-Christian has. Don't let anything else sway you. Now. An example. Suppose an £800 gorilla walks into this room. Do you know how big an £800 gorilla is? Even King Kong is scared of that guy. An £800 gorilla. Where does that £800 gorilla sit? Anywhere he wants. What a class. Brilliant. Now, for most people, the problem of evil is an £800 gorilla. Because where do you start with this guy? Do you step on his feet? Do you hit him with a baseball bat? What do you do in wrestling with an £800 gorilla? Well, one of my objectives here is to knock this gorilla down to size. One of the reasons why the problem of evil seems so unanswerable is because we have failed or we don't know how to chop. The big problem of evil down to a bunch of smaller problems. And so that's one of my objectives, to take this humongous challenge and cut it down to a size where perhaps we can deal with it more easily. Now, one of the first points I want to make is the one that shows up on the overhead naturalists and the problem of goodness. Let me explain this point. If evil is a problem for Christians. And it is. Then goodness is a problem for non-Christians. Like naturalists. Let's take let's suppose you're you're you're in an argument or in a debate with someone who believes in the closed box form of naturalism that we discussed our first day. All right. You tell me how a person like that. How a person like Carl Sagan in his naturalistic period of life, how you can account for moral goodness. You can't. How can you account for real genuine beauty? Not that. Not some theory. Well, this is beautiful for me, but it doesn't have to be beautiful for you that there is genuine beauty in life. Or genuine agape love. How do you account for that? If you live in a universe in which there is no God, no purpose, no intelligence, no significance of any kind whatsoever. Think back to the quotes I give you in chapter one of this book, the intro book from Bertrand Russell. So we have our problem. But doggone. And forgive the language here because the language is a little inappropriate. I think that you can have a little fun with a naturalist when asking him to give a naturalistic explanation for genuine moral goodness. We're going to have more to say about that later. That's step one. Step two. The problem of evil exists for Christians because of. The three essential attributes of God that are mentioned on your screen here. Christians believe, and in fact, we must believe because our worldview requires this of us. We believe that God is all powerful, all knowing and all good, and the technical words are omnipotent, omniscient, and omni benevolent. If God is all powerful, all knowing and all good, then the question arises why does evil exist? If God is all powerful, it would seem as though he can get rid of evil. In the church service I attended on Sunday. There was a prepackaged little video thing that was shown on the screen. And it showed the planes crashing into the World Trade Center and then it got some interviews from people on the street. I couldn't tell whether those people lived in New York City or what. But there was an astounding interview with a lady who uttered these words. I'm certain that God wanted to protect us. I'm certain that God wanted to stop these terrorists, but he couldn't. He couldn't. That is the first response that a lot of people give. And that response includes a denial of one of God's essential attributes. I want to write this term logical implication. Somehow we have to succeed in getting people to recognize the logical implications of their beliefs. Let me tell you this. If a person's answer to what happened at the World Trade Center is even though God wanted to prevent it, he couldn't. We're in trouble. The Christian faith is the world is in trouble. If our God is a finite God who does not know the future, who cannot control the future. We need to pray for that God. But we better start changing the way we think about the Christian faith. This is one of the horrible consequences of what we call open theism. Now, granted, if God is not all powerful, then the problem of evil disappears. Okay. Remember many of you know the name Rabbi Kushner. A liberal Jewish rabbi whose son contracted a horrible, debilitating and terminal disease. And Rabbi Kushner, who was liberal in the first place, finally decided that the only way he could make peace with admittedly his son's horrible disease is by saying God couldn't do anything about it. All right. If we get rid of God's omniscience, then we get rid of the problem of evil. If God didn't know what these terrorists were going to do, if God couldn't do anything about this, then, you know, it happened before. God would sort of sort of help us. Or if God is not benevolent, if he is not all totally good. You know, if we're dealing with a God who's kind of a lightweight when it comes to morale, but that's not the Christian God. That's not the God of Judeo-Christian theism. So we have to somehow reconcile the existence of evil in the world with these essential attributes of God. Okay, Now, that's the first page of my overhead. Now the next overhead. Call this step three of my little procedure. I want to make some important distinctions. And the purpose of these distinctions is to help cut this £800 gorilla down to size. I think these distinctions will help. First of all, I want to distinguish between the theoretical problem of evil and the personal problem of evil. When you counsel people. When you teach this stuff either in a sermon or a Bible class. Just this distinction alone will help will may solve this may settle this for most people. The theoretical problem of evil is illustrated by what I do in your textbook. Take the deductive problem, the inductive problem, the problem of gratuitous evil. And here is the best I could do. When I wrote this book, when I published this book about 14, 15 years ago. Today, I think I could do a little better job. The theoretical problem. If you're dealing with the theoretical problem of evil, you need a philosopher. Okay. You need training. You need a lot of reading. Some of you are thinking about doing your research paper on this. There's a lot of stuff you've got to read and read. Take a look at the footnotes and these three chapters. But what's the personal problem of evil? It is this. Even if somebody. Reaches the place where he thinks he understands in theory, why evil exists. Even if you think you climb the mountain of the theoretical problem of evil. You can still get clobbered by the personal problem. Now think in your own life about the worst tragedy that happened in your family. The worst. Now we're making this personal. It is very likely that all of us will go through the rest of our lives and never see anything as terrible as what happened one week ago. But think about the worst tragedy in your. Well, I'm beginning to break up a little bit here. And when I break up like this and some of you know this, the only way I can recover is if I say the word Cleveland. And I may say the word Cleveland a lot in the next 5 minutes. In our case, it was a head on automobile accident that instantly killed my wife's sister and her husband. And almost killed their two little girls. And in that case, we learned about it when that dreaded phone call in the middle of the night comes, you know? I mean, whenever your phone rings at two or three in the morning, your first thought is that or what has happened. And that happened. I forget the date in July 19. I'm going to guess here some date in July 1973. Some dumb 17 year old kid had stolen his mother's car and was racing away from the state police and just hit hit their car. Hit on. 25 years to the day. And I'm getting old and I forget the the debt 25 years to the day. My wife's second sister and her husband were in a head on automobile accident. And since then, nobody in her family drives on that day in February. But they weren't killed. But they were. It was very close. They went through the windshield. And they're still not completely recovered. Why do those things happen? I'll give you another example. C.S. Lewis. What a great warrior he was, what a great apologist he was, even though he had his theological problems. And if you want, I'll spend a whole day lecturing on C.S. Lewis theological problem. C.S. Lewis wrote a book called The Problem of Pain. Great book. I read it early in my Christian life. He says so much in there that is so helpful. And much of what he does, what much of what he says is just borrowed from the great philosophers Thomas Aquinas and later thinkers in the Anglican tradition. So at a relatively early age, C.S. Lewis thought somewhat triumphantly that he had solved the theoretical problem of evil. Nothing could shake his faith. And then, of course, he met an American divorcee named Joy Gresham. The story of C.S. Lewis relationship with Joy Gresham has been told in a couple of movies. Joy Gresham met C.S. Lewis. She was a divorcee. She had two sons. And for a variety of reasons, C.S. Lewis proposed. They married. And then Lewis discovered that he really did love this woman. And then she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and then she went into a period of remission. And and Lois rejoiced because he thought God had given her back to him. But then the cancer returned and she died a very painful death. And then he he wanders around and one of Joy's children tries to help him and finally does help him. But he goes through this great period of depression and despair until finally he walks back into his into his church and he sees his friend, the Anglican pastor, and he says, I'm back. I'm back now. Lewis had solved the theoretical problem of evil, but he was unprepared for the personal problem of evil. There are two totally different things. When you're confronted by the theoretical problem of evil, you need a pat, you need a philosopher. When you're confronted by the personal problem of evil. You need a friend. A pastor. In the case of my family, my wife is much better at this than I am. When we go to a funeral home, I always let her go first. And I follow because I know. But she will always say the right thing. Okay. And then I come up and I say ditto or something like that. She'll always say the right thing. So there are two kinds of problems. You need two kinds of help. And some people never do get the help that they need for the personal problem of evil. Now, the second distinction is the difference between evil in general and specific instances of evil. I, I, I honestly believe friends that the material I give you in the faith and reason book gives you answers for evil in general. I think I can explain why. Certain kinds of natural evil exist. Hurricanes, tornadoes, at least I you know, I fool myself into thinking I can, but none of us none of us can possibly know what the what the reasons are for specific instances of evil. I can tell you why moral evil in general exists. It exists because human beings are evil. They're sinful. They're totally depraved. We shouldn't be surprised at the inhumanity of men to other men. There is nothing new about the Holocaust that simply is an unmasking of an evil human soul that is alienated from God or what those men did in New York City. But why did this specific instance of evil, you know? That's the problem. Next distinction, The distinction between moral evil and natural evil. It's amazing how many people don't can't think about this distinction. Moral evil is any evil perpetrated by human beings. It is evil for which human beings are responsible. And I think the day is coming when we will when we may finally discover. That moral evil is far more extensive in our universe than we ever thought. I remember making this distinction in a city in western Ukraine. A city that was only 50 or 60 miles away from Chernobyl, and there were already large numbers of people, large numbers of children in that area who were dying from cancers that resulted from the Chernobyl accident. And I remember saying to my audience after I'd made the distinction between moral evil and natural evil is what happened at Chernobyl, a natural evil? Or was it a moral evil and to the person? All of those people in Ukraine said that was morally evil. Evil perpetrated by. Russians who built that factory whose design was followed. Evil that was perpetrated by people who did not monitor the instruments in that in that place properly. That was morally evil. And the evil continues to go on there as as new cancers develop and as. Young people continue to die. Now, what is natural evil? Natural evil is evil that exists in the universe without any apparent human involvement. Examples of natural evil would be tornadoes, earthquakes. Fires that are resulting, let's say, from lightning. One of these days there's going to be an earthquake somewhere in the Atlantic and a huge tsunami is going to be generated. That will probably crash somewhere on the east coast of the United States and will destroy thousands of lives. It will make what happened would have made what happened in New York City look like child's play as a wave, 60 feet high, maybe as tall as a ten story building will crash on maybe the coast of North or South Carolina or maybe on the east coast of Florida. That's natural evil. However. What about some cancers? Now, obviously, when a person ignores the surgeon, joint surgeon generals, warnings that alcohol can cause cancer. And then after 40 years of smoking ten packs of cigarets a day, that person discovers he's got terminal lung cancer. He it's hardly fair for him to shake his hand at God and say, Why have you allowed me to get cancer? Okay. And for all we know, both seminary faculty and students who smoked pipes, maybe, you know, maybe a note in their case, it will be just cancer on the lips or something else like that. You know, there's a tumor in every puff. You know that. Natural evil. But how many of us can understand how I. I preached in Hollister, California, a couple of weeks ago, about a month ago. And the people. That's a city. Oh. 50 miles south of San Jose, California. Enormous high percentage of cancer in that area. They think the water may be polluted. Now, if all of those if their unusually high level of cancer. Can be traced back to human pollution of the air or the water. Is that a moral evil, or is that a natural evil? Which of us can say when someone we love is afflicted with cancer? Whether this was just a natural evil or whether this could, if we know enough, whether it would be a moral evil. So there's a difference. Now, these two kinds of evil require a different kind of response. If it's morally evil, I know that God knows how to eliminate all moral evil in the universe like that. Count to 60. And Almighty God would, within those 60 seconds, eliminate all examples of moral evil. You know how? By eliminating the human race. By eliminating the human race. Get get rid of human beings. You're going to get rid of moral evil. There's one problem with that, however. That's a pretty high price to pay. All right. I don't know about you, but I think life, this life as were to live it under God's. Control is worth some risk. It is worth some risk. So I'm glad God didn't decide. At 830 last Tuesday to just say, that's it. I've had it with moral evil. Now that day is coming. But I'll tell you this. When that when the day comes, when God Almighty says, that's it, we're going to close the book and there will be no more moral evil. That will be the end of all hope for people who do not know Christ. That will be the end. Natural evil is a little tougher. And I deal with the problems of natural evil in the second of my two chapters. And what? None of that is going to be totally satisfactory. But what I do try to deal with are reasons why the presence of the natural, even the natural evil in the universe might make sense. And I'll let you get what you can from that chapter.