Dr. Richard Swinburne: Why Does God Allow Human Suffering & Wrongdoing
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 เม.ย. 2017
- Dr. Swinburne is a distinguished professor at the University of Oxford and author of a number of books including The Existence of God (2004), Faith & Reason (2005), Revelation (2007), Was Jesus God? (2008) and Mind, Brain, and Free Will (2013).
Dr. Swinburne gave this address on September 21, 2016 at an event co-sponsored by Evangel University, Drury University and Missouri State University.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by Dr. Swinburne are his alone and do not necessarily represent the views, opinions or positions of Evangel University. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
This could easily turn into a sermon. Thank you Dr. Richard Swinburne.
I think in summary, free will > absence of suffering. For free will is a great good that outweighs consequential evil, satisfying the four conditions as mentioned by Swinburne.
- Allowing the suffering is a means to a good that could not be obtained without it
- The good actually occurs
- That who caused the suffering has the right to
- The good caused by the suffering outweighs the suffering itself
5:03
wonderfull vid
Dentists are indeed a primary cause of human suffering
LoL
Preach it brother 😂
Yea try living without one and you’ll know suffering and loneliness
😂😂
I find it difficult to see how my merely being of use to others is a [great] intrinsic good for or to me. The benefit, if there is one, must be something else, e.g., the fact that my being of use satisfies my strongest desires, or will make possible a more deeply positive relationship with God, and so on.
I have great respect for Dr Swinburne but I must take issue with one of his presuppositions and his argument in defense of nahual evil. One of the presuppositions he mentions at the start is that since we have been given free will God doesn't know what choices we will make and he suggests to having such knowledge would interfere with our free choices. It is my understanding that Dr. Swinburne accepts God is "Timeless" meaning existing outside time and that God, in fact created time (along with space matter and energy). If this is correct then God would, as the Bible says, "know the end from the beginning" and have the unique ability of perfect prophecy and as such, being omnipotent, would "preknow" every decision each of his creations will make. There is no logical reason HIS knowledge would limit the free choice of any individual, so Dr Swinburne's assertion that it would is logically false.
Second, on to the justification of "Natural evil". IT is far from clear that "character building" or the benefits of research to counteract the natural evil is always a greater good than the suffering experienced though the natural evil. A logical defeater here would only require one example where character building was NOT a greater good or greater potential good than the natural evil experienced.
I find His argument justifying the exitance of moral evil coherent and persuasive but I do not see the same or even sufficient explanatory power for his argument on natural evil. For natural evil we need a better answer.
Mother Theresa not knowing how to explain why people suffer just said, For me to help! I start to understand her.
And she did indeed help them to suffer. What an evil woman.
"We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts." Aristotle said in Ethics book.
I'll make it simple for you. God is God, and He created you, I, and everything, which means He owns us and can do whatever He likes.
Let us say, for instance, you make a piece of pottery and then destroy it; do you not have the right to do so?
"But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand." (Isaiah 64:8 KJB)
I have suffered many things in my life, such as war (Vietnam 69-70). I have suffered from tinnitus in both ears for 53 years due to a mortar going off near me. Fortunately, I was in a bunker at the time.
I have congenital spinal stenosis I inherited from my mother, from which I've had two surgeries. I've had a torn rotator cuff and a fractured femur, which resulted in more surgeries.
I've had accidents, two failed marriages, and other incidents in my 72 years on this earth. I am not trying to garner sympathy; I am just making a point.
These things were allowed, but I don't believe God caused them. I don't blame God for any of these occurrences.
We suffer because this is a fallen world, and everyone in it sins, including we believers; this causes us to suffer because we have been given free will to do whatever we want to do. Even so, we have man's and God's laws, and the free will to break them causes us all to suffer the consequences.
We were given free will to love God; otherwise, we would be automatons.
That's beautiful
You Sir will have a unique glorious appearance in the new body in heaven because your faith is deep in the Spirit.
If God only ALLOWS suffering, then who ORDERS suffering to happen?
Mankind
So stealing is good as long as you donate 10%?
Mfs got eleventeen monitors and fitty sheets o papier 🤣
Since no-one has ever produced an intelligible definition of 'free-will', no appeal to the value of free will has any merit.
There are multiple intelligible definitions of free will lol
@@abhbible But none of them satisfy our expectations as to what free will should be.
@@Brian.001 Perhaps none of them satisfy you, but they satisfy the philosophers that routinely make use of them and many more besides.
@@abhbible I am a philosopher, and I don't know of a definition that matches the intuition. We think routinely that we have free will, but it eludes definition.
@@Brian.001 I am a philosopher, and again, real philosophers happily interact with several definitions of free will routinely without any problems.
GOD shows favour to those who serve HIM. Others are on their own.
Not good then?
@@celestialteapot309 By essence He is the source and owner of all good.
If that were true, we'd all have been dead hubdreds or thousands of years ago. I wasn't serving Him for years. If He didn't love me enough to pursue me, and show me His grace and love, I'd have been dead long ago.
He sent His Son, Jesus, to Earth. Jesus suffered persecutionfrom humans throughout His life, especially during His ministry. Then He died in the most awful way human have been able to create during our entire existence.
And He did it all for EVERYONE in the world, so they could see Him in Heaven and experience His love on Earth. That is proof that He loves all humans, and takes care of everyone, good or bad.
I'm not saying He doesn't let people's choices bring consequences to them, or that He won't judge them. All I'm saying is that He loves everyone, doesn't want them to die and go to He'll, and helps us. Otherwise, no one would come to Him, and likely no one would even have survived till now.
Hmm explain this 30 years ago I opened a karate school my friend took his teachers school over he attended church kind of. He also like young ladies while married with a newborn at home constantly crapped on his wife his school is still open to this day he has a staff running it and he likes going on vacations with new wife. I obtained from the "opportunities" that came to me my school closed 25 years ago and I'm stuck at a crappy job unable to live on my one and only talent/skill... let me guess the answer "He will get his and I have to have faith"
I abstained....
But God as Swinburne understands God is without condition. If God is omnipotent, he is bound by no limits on creating a good without any suffering at all. Human parents are not, as it us suggested of God, omnipotent.
Biggest issue here is that this is all based on the assumption that libertarian free will exists; and we know that it does not. Furthermore it is not unreasonable to imagine that god could have created a world in which suffering did not exist, after all how else would you describe heaven? But if free will is more valuable than the absence of suffering then surely this means heaven is less valuable than hell.
free will exists in heaven. just read the book, you won’t regret it. recently, i dove in clueless, today i see that there is no possibility of no god. look further, SEEK and you will FIND
@@driftingdandelion reading the Bible is the number one most effective way to deconvert a Christian: this is why many churches, famously the Catholic Church, don’t encourage you to read it. And those churches which do will say you need to read the Bible but they never actually expect you to. Never mind how arduous it can be given the obtuse and archaic language.
Regardless no: free will does not exist in Heaven. When you go to Heaven you will become perfect and spend eternity worshipping god because you won’t want to do anything else. To become perfect is to be stripped of any personality and anything that make you YOU because you are flawed by design. And the fact that you will spend eternity praising and worshipping god means you must have no will to do anything else. Free will does not exist in heaven according to Jesus himself.
I have sought and continue to search and yet I find only disappointment. The Christian god is unimpressive and very much a reflection of selfish and amoral humans from an age long gone. And thank fuck for that because Heaven would certainly be far more atrocious than hell.
Have you read How Not to Read the Bible by Dan Kimball?
Richard addressed your point in the video
He did create the world where suffering wouldn't exist. We ruined it by disobeying him and eating from the tree he said not to. Read the Bible my guy
Because he doesn't exist!
Note in all of this that he does mean EVIL when he chooses examples of injustice or suffering . Moreover note the logical point about how can freedom and indeterminism obtain and give us the empirical world we are factually in as part excludes absolute shepherding by the omniscent and omnipotent which would leave us as mere automata .
A lot in this is about the "stoical" or the about patient and humble letting be of multple evils , or at least these attitudes for the time being .
He has no idea. Just makes stuff up.
I know philosophy can sound dull and drone on, but he's building an argument, regarding a hugely important question. You would have more patience if the issue of God and suffering were of more importance to you. Wait a few years until you reach the inevitable decrepitness of old age, having suffered and lost, and are face-to-face with your own mortality ... maybe then you'll have time for it.
@@martinfroelich7193 I’m 82, old, and decrepit, and I’ve been facing my morality for years, and I say “He has no idea. He just makes stuff up.”
@@georgegrubbs2966 LOL. Touche. So then suffering is absolutely purposeless, life meaningless, there is no good, no beauty, and the task of growing in character, virtue and understanding as strength wains pointless and a mocking delusion.
@@martinfroelich7193 I fudged a bit. I am 82, but not decrepit and I don’t wonder about my mortality; I know what happens at death. Regarding suffering, one can learn and grow from it, but it also can tear down lives. I don’t recommend it.
Martin, God does not exist. All gods, other divine and evil beings are were invented by humans, as well as all religions The ultimate reality of life is natural and material. You can accept it and live your best life or elect to live in a fantasy world of religion.
@@martinfroelich7193 Life is not special, it has no inherent meaning just the same as everything else. Meaning is attributed, not found; without agency purpose does not exist. Suffering IS purposeless unless you give meaning to suffering. Funny you should bring up beauty, as beauty is defined by the tendency for things to end. Life wouldn't be precious if it never had an end, flowers would have no beauty if they never withered, and none of these things could matter if you weren't here to appreciate them. If you need a god to tell you how to make life meaningful then so be it. A lot of us don't. The philosophy of Swineburne, here, is dull and tired: based on the unfounded assumption of libertarian free will and justified by tossing out Kantian ethics in favor of nonsense. If it is more valuable to have free will than to experience a life without suffering, as Swineburne asserts, then hell is more valuable than heaven as heaven exists as a world void of suffering while hell exists specifically because free will does.
dumb argument Swinbrune is mid.
I think he may also be mad. He certainly has no good arguments.
@@cliveadams7629 Sadly darling, he is highly respected in academia. I know it's pretty hard for you to understand that people can have radically different views but good on you for getting into philosophy at the age of 14.
@@chaplain6141 I presume his fame in the academia has nothing to do with his approach to the problem of evil, but his other contributions. The logic he employs in this lecture is horrible. To give an obvious example, Swinburne emphasizes the need to have free will. So do the sufferers make the choice of suffering so other people can help them and grow in holiness? Did the Jews sign up to go to the concentration camp so the Nazis could be "forced" to have compassion on them? This is utterly absurd.
@@andrewtsai777 You do not understand the problem of evil. In this case, the free will argument is in relation to the Logical problem of evil. Swinburne is replying to (mainly) mackie's inconsistent triad in which god cannot be both omnibenevolent and omnipotent. The free-will defense simply shows a reason why god may allow evil to happen. i.e. it is necessary for the human condition. So the evil permitted in your examples is not the evil caused by god but by free will which is necessary ontologically.
@@chaplain6141 You did not even watch the video, did you? Swinburne specifically says that by allowing the existence of concentration camp inmates, God helps the camp commander to be more sensitive to people.
Jeez this is some babble of the 100th degree