It is the argument. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And it's been discussed ad nauseum and why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?
SPEAKER_04The way mathematicians react to that is that they say perhaps we're asking the wrong question. So I propose another question, equally difficult.
SPEAKER_01Is Professor John Lennox moving the goalposts when he discusses the problem of evil with Alex O'Connor? That's a common criticism I'm seeing in the comments of this wonderful video. It was a fantastic discussion between Alex O'Connor and John Lennox. Well done, Alex, for hosting this. But John Lennox takes the problem of evil that is being raised by Alex and he reframes that. Is that a dodge? Let's see what John does.
SPEAKER_04The way mathematicians react to that is that they say perhaps we're asking the wrong question. And I I think I find that helpful in the following way. And I'll be brief.
SPEAKER_03It's this that What faces everybody as a mixed picture. I call it beauty and bombs.
SPEAKER_04In other words, we look at the world, we see some beautiful things, and we see some horrible things. And any worldview has got to take that into account. That is a fact. And we can argue as long as we like about the theoretical side of the God is good and all powerful by this, why that why the other. And we never come to a satisfactory. So I propose another question. But I think it can't be different.
SPEAKER_03Granted. Is there any evidence anyone? That there is a God understanding I can feel not that I've got an answer. That I can say there's a possibility of coming to some place of earth.
SPEAKER_04And my answer to that is that yes, I think there is. And it's the fact that the God presented in the Christian gospels is a God who in that sense has suffered, because the central claim of Christianity is that God became human and that Christ is God. So crudely put, what is God doing on a cross? Well, one thing it certainly shows me is that God has not remained distant from human suffering, but has become part of it.
SPEAKER_01Now is John Lennox just dodging the question, is he moving the goalposts, as some people have said in the comments? I don't think so. I'm going to show you why in this video. I'm Glenn from Speak Life. We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus. Please do give this video a like and a subscribe to the channel. What I want to do with John Lennox, both in this clip but also in other clips in John Lennox's career, unpack what he's doing here in pointing to the beauty in this world and the bombs of this world and the resurrection hope that we have. Beauty, bombs, and hope are a key part of a Christian answer to the question of evil. And the real problem is actually on Alex's side because Alex does not have a sufficiently great problem with evil. In fact, he doesn't even have a category for evil, as we'll see. The classical framing of the question is that if a God is all knowing, then he knows about evil. If he is all good, then he will want to do something about evil. And if he's all powerful, then he can do something about evil. Therefore, why is there such a thing as evil? It's important to reframe that though, because perhaps there's a fourth element. Perhaps the God we are discussing is the God who enters into suffering in order to redeem. And perhaps there's God who is beyond has reasons for entering into suffering and redeeming it that are sufficient, that they may not satisfy all creatures, but then our comprehension of God is so inadequate anyway. What John Lennox does here is he focuses our minds on that fourth element, the God of the Cross. And that is, of course, the heart of the faith, and it's the heart of the answer to this question. But before he gets to the God of the Cross, he's going to talk about beauty and bombs. I think that's so important. Because in order to have a problem with evil, you first of all need to identify that there's beauty in the world. You need to have a concept of good. And John Lennox makes this point really well when he debates Michael Ruse. Check it out.
SPEAKER_04I think about this a lot because I find it's the hardest question for any of us. There's no two ways about it. And if you want a short response, it'll have to be short. My approach to it is: first of all, it seems to me atheism doesn't solve it. It solves it in an intellectual sense that people say, like Dawkins, the universe is just like you'd expect it to be, when at bottom there's no good, no evil, no justice, and we just have to face it. Well, if that is correct, of course, it means you've solved the problem. You've removed it in some sense, but what you haven't removed is the suffering and the pain. So I find that philosophically a disaster.
SPEAKER_01To get the point, the atheist does not have a problem with evil, and that is a problem, because evil is problematic. It's a reality in this world, and an account of reality that does not deal with life as it is is not really an account that we can take seriously. Richard Dawkins is famous for saying that the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. That's what we should expect on atheism, and yet we look out at a world of evil. And we have been asking this question and shaking our fist at the heavens for millennia. Why? Richard Dawkins' materialism doesn't give him a problem with evil. And that's a problem, because evil really is a reality. And if it weren't such a reality, we wouldn't shake our fists so very sternly, but we do. Because we do recognize that evil is a reality, evil with a capital E. And this is what converted another Irishman, C. S. Lewis, from atheism to theism. In around about 1929, 1930, C. S. Lewis was on his journey from atheism to Christianity. One of the staging posts was his theistic period. How did he come to believe in some kind of God through the existence of evil? He said this. A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If there's no such thing as a straight line, then there's no such thing as crooked lines. Lines are just lines and things are just messy. What do you expect? But if you do say that is crooked, you are saying that at least notionally, there is the idea of a straight line. And if you look out at this world and you don't just say, it is what it is, life is messy. But if you do say that's wrong, well, why do you call it wrong unless there's something that's right with a capital R? Why do we call these things evil if there is not good with a capital G? Professor Lennox is right to point to bombs in this world and to press into that question of evil. He's also right to point out the good in this world. Professor Lennox was once asked about the famous Stephen Fry tirade. Do you remember it on TV?
SPEAKER_02Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain? That's what I would say. And you think you're going to get in? No. But I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want to get in on his terms. They're wrong. The God who created this universe, if it was created by God, is quite clearly a maniac. Yes, the world is very splendid, but it also has in it insects, whose whole life cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind. They eat outwards from the eyes. Why? Why did you do that to us? You could easily have made a creation in which that didn't exist. It is simply not acceptable. What kind of God is he? It's perfectly apparent that he is monstrous, utterly monstrous, and deserves no respect whatsoever.
SPEAKER_01Here's what Professor Lennox says.
SPEAKER_04I must be honest, I'm not impressed with that kind of reaction because he's leaving out how much good there is in the world and how much good he himself has taken out of the world. And he might have to thank God for that.
SPEAKER_01There is tremendous good in this world, a fact that is easily forgotten, and it is most forgotten in times and places where people have it best in life. People often trace back the problem of evil as a real theodicy, as a real question, back to the Lisbon earthquake in the 17th century, and Voltaire really rages against the heavens at this cosmic injustice. The problem of evil in that sense is about 350 years old, which coincides with two different things. It coincides with kind of the birth of a post-Christianity. It also coincides with immense enrichment in the West. It is post-Christian, affluent societies that have the biggest problem with evil, and are the most forgetful about the good in the world. And that's very curious because in order to have a problem with evil, you need to have something that is good, because evil really is something that has fallen from goodness. We expected life and we got death. We expected health and we got disease. We expected riches and we got poverty. It's a fullness that is somehow corrupted and perverted and twisted. It's a fallen state, but it's a fallen state from a great height. In order to even have a problem with evil, then we ought to have a problem with evil, but we need to have good. And it is curious that at the macro level of history and culture, it's the peoples who are the most affluent, who are most blind to the goodness that they have experienced. There was an atheist bus campaign in Melbourne that was copying the London bus campaign from 2009. In 2009, Richard Dawkins' campaign said there probably is no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life. There was a Melbourne bus campaign at a similar juncture, and that slogan was, if God exists, he better have a very good excuse. The source of the quotation was Woody Allen. Woody Allen, incredibly rich, powerful, artistically fulfilled, famous, and someone who, if there is a God, better have a very good excuse for him. But why is it that we think that it's God who should have a good excuse for us? And what's always struck me about the Melbourne bus campaign is that Melbourne is a wonderful city in a wonderful country. I can imagine that bus driving past some Melbourne cafes, people enjoying their flat whites. They read the slogan and they say, too right, too right, God better have a good excuse. Whereas that same bus driven through a slum in Rio de Janeiro, or in Kabira in Kenya, or like pretty much anywhere outside of the affluent West, people would not understand the sentiment. But post-Christian affluent people who have experienced more good than anyone else on the planet ever has are those who are most forgetful of that good. There are bombs in this world, and it's really important to pay attention to that. But there's also beauty, there's crooked lines, but there's also straight. And I just want to compare that to Alex O'Connor's view of reality. Here is a debate from about five years ago, which uh Mike Jones, Inspiring Philosophy, had with uh Alex when he went by the moniker of uh Cosmic Skeptic. And Mike Jones talks about there is an inherent worth to the Amazon rainforest, even though it's an ecosystem that involves all sorts of brutality. Okay, there's beauty and there's brutality in the Amazon rainforest, but don't we think that it is worth having that ecosystem because there is an inherent goodness to life, even though there's a circle of life. But Alex is having none of it. He doesn't want the Amazon rainforest to stand if it involves suffering, because suffering is just a net negative and his utilitarianism says that we must maximize pleasure and minimize suffering. And so if the Amazon rainforest includes too much suffering, it's got to go. And the calculation that determines whether it should stay or go is a purely utilitarian calculation of whether it causes more pleasure or pain. Uh he is explaining himself.
SPEAKER_00The reason why I think it's worth keeping the rainforest is because if we get rid of the rainforest, it will cause ecological disaster that will cause more animals to suffer than if we kept it. If that weren't the case, if it were really the case that if we just got if we just tore down the rainforest, it wouldn't produce more evil, wouldn't produce more suffering, more ecological disaster. Um but the only downside was that we wouldn't have something like the aesthetic beauty of the forest, then I would be on the first plane over there, chopping it down with an axe. I wouldn't allow the rainforest to stay up because of its aesthetic beauty if it meant that billions of human beings were dying and suffering as a result. And so I'm certainly not going to allow a rainforest to stay up just for the sake of its aesthetic beauty uh because a bunch of animals are dying as a result. Um I absolutely don't think that it has any intrinsic worth outside of the effect that it has uh on suffering, except for maybe a minimal worth with things like aesthetic beauty, which are nowhere near as important as the suffering that it's inflicting. Um besides, I've never seen the rainforest in person. Uh and and so kind of I doubt how much the aesthetic beauty of the rainforest or something like that actually should play into a consideration like that.
SPEAKER_01So everything on Alex's view is boiled down to its utility, whether it causes more pleasure or pain. And Alex likes to turn the tables and say, look, on the Christian worldview, enter into that forest and let's imagine a deer, for instance. Here's what he said when he debated the Kinectoles.
SPEAKER_00That deer, leg trapped under a branch on its own. No moral free choice, no moral soul development, no people looking at this with a chance to save them, giving them an ability to achieve some higher order good, just starvation for say I don't know, a week before finally being stumbled upon by a mountain lion who will kill it by sticking its jaws in its throat and it will die excruciatingly over the course of a few minutes. This kind of thing happens routinely throughout the animal kingdom. I've said that if I gave you the opportunity right now, if I said that you were about to become a w a random wild animal somewhere in the world right now, when I press this button, I think you would kill yourself before I had the opportunity, because you know that you're about to enter a life of untold misery. The question is, why? Why is this allowed it?
SPEAKER_01There is brutality in that forest, so how can it stand if there is a loving and good God? Now notice that Alex said we wouldn't switch places with a deer, but I wouldn't switch places with a deer if it was having a wonderful time either. I just wouldn't swap places with a deer, and I think that's testament to human exceptionalism, that we we have a dignity that is very different to the animal kingdom. You might ask a worm whether it would like to have the life of a deer, and I think it would probably say yes please, because there is a brutality to the life that that deer is involved with, but there's also a beauty to it as well. I could paint you a picture about a sunlit glade and the dew glistening on the grass and a single tear on the eyelash of the deer as it looks up to its mother. And it like I could paint you a different kind of a picture and you go, oh, that's amazing, right? Is there a worth? Is there a value? Is there a dignity? Is there a beauty to that in and of itself? And actually, Alex has wanted to boil that down to utility, pleasure and pain. Later on in the debate with Mike Jones, somebody asks him about, well, what about love? We love people for their sakes, we don't just love people for what we get out of it, right? Um, Alex actually disagrees.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um, I would I would just say that in my view, uh if something like the development of a relationship is good, it's good insofar as it brings people pleasure, right? Um this is kind of a it's a very basic psychologically utilitarian point to make, but I think it roughly holds, which is that it doesn't make much sense to talk about intrinsic goodness of something like a relationship. Um I think what we mean to say is that we derive goods from having that relationship, right? My relationship with my friends, my relationship with my family, the reason I value those things is because of of all the things that flow from them, because of the conversations that flow from them, the pleasure I get from that, from the from the feeling of safety and the feeling of friendship that I that I feel, the pleasure of that. But not that the thing itself, the act in isolation of just two people entering into a a social contract by which they say they both like each other, intrinsically doesn't have any moral component to me.
SPEAKER_01That's just one more thing that gets dissolved in the atheistic, certainly in the utilitarian, consequentialist worldview. Everything gets boiled down to pleasure or pain. Which is why John Lennox is giving to Alex O'Connor a gift. It's the gift of beauty and bombs. Can you name the reality of beauty with a capital B? Can you stare at bombs and call that the evil that it actually is? And then John Lennox refocuses our eyes on Christ, and I think he is the answer to this question. The two natural answers to the problem of evil that humanity have always gone for is either it's karma or it's chaos. Okay? Traditional cultures have always said that suffering comes to you because of what you did or what your ancestors did. You're caught up in the circle of life. And why should you expect it to be any different to what it is? And why do you think you deserve any greater than you're getting? In a karmic worldview, what goes around comes around, but what do you notice? You don't have a problem with evil at that point, because there is no such thing as unjust evil. It's just the way things are, and you've probably deserved it. So you have no problem with evil, and you certainly don't have a solution to it. You're kind of bound up in this just cycle, and there is no mercy above the justice. There you are in a karmic worldview. That's one way of answering the problem of evil. Another way of answering it, and the post-Christian way of answering it, is chaos. Okay, it's not karma, it's chaos. It's the Richard Dawkins answer in a world of blind, pitiless indifference. What do you expect? If everything is random, then nothing is wrong. So what do you notice about both karma and chaos? They don't have a sufficient problem with evil, and they don't have any hope beyond evil. But now here comes Christ. Christ enters into the valley of deep shadow to take our karma on himself, as it were, our justice, our evil, and to rise up again to offer us his hope. With Christ you have three things that you don't get with karma, and that you don't get with chaos. You can enjoy the beauty of this world and not instrumentalize it. There is goodness with a capital G. You can know a divine companion with you in the valley of deep shadow. And you can know a future beyond suffering. John Lennox gives a gift to Alex O'Connor. Here are four things he can have. He can truly believe in goodness, he can truly believe in evil. He can truly know comfort in the middle of suffering, and he can truly know hope. Some people have said John Lennox is moving the goalposts when he reframes the question the way he is. He's not moving the goalposts, he's actually establishing the goalposts. We finally have a rule book, we finally have a game to play. There is finally a ball, there is finally a goal to all this stuff if what John Lennox says is true. If what Alex and Stephen Fry and Richard Dawkins says is true, there is no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. And we've stopped having a problem with evil. And the real trick with the problem of evil is to make sure you've got a problem. I'm Glenn Scriveter from Speak Life. Have you done our 321 course? We would love you to go and check out Life According to Jesus, whether a Christian or whether you're just investigating Christian faith. This gives you Jesus Christ's vision for God, the world, and you. Go to 321course.com, start an account that's entirely free. We won't spam you, but it's your way of checking out life according to Jesus. Have you given the video a like? Who can you share it with? And why don't you subscribe and tap that bell so we can see you on the next one? God bless.