God's Problem - Bart vs. Richard G. Swinburne
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- On January 10th, 2009, Bart D. Ehrman and Richard G. Swinburne are invited as radio guests by moderator Justin Brierley on radio show "Unbelievable," a weekly program on UK Premier Christian Radio. They reference Bart's bestselling book "God's Problem" where Bart states that the Bible contains different and unconvincing explanations about the problem of suffering. Richard Swinburne is a renowned Christian philosopher. He answers Bart's objections with arguments from his own book "Providence and the Problem of Evil".
Program discussed on Bart Ehrman's Foundation Blog: ehrmanblog.org/...
Christian radio show "Unbelievable" hosted by Justin Brierley: www.premier.org.uk/unbelievable
Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He came to UNC in 1988, after four years of teaching at Rutgers University. At UNC he has served as both the Director of Graduate Studies and the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. A graduate of Wheaton College (Illinois), Professor Ehrman received both his Masters of Divinity and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary, where his 1985 doctoral dissertation was awarded magna cum laude.
Copyright © Bart D. Ehrman and Justin Brierley. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized use, re-posting and/or duplication of this media without express and written permission from Bart D. Ehrman and Justin Brierley is strictly prohibited.
Program starts at 10:00. Discussion starts at 24:00.
Thanks
Clearly Swinburne approaches his views on suffering like a chess player sacrificing pawns in service to a future victory. It's completely detached from even a remote understanding of the blood and guts and miserable reality of the subject matter. I would suggest that before Richard weighs in on the topic he allow himself to become the plaything of a brutal dictator; beaten, starved, exposed to the elements for several months crying out to God to use his goodness, love and omnipotence to help him (only to hear the sound of silent detachment). No, Richard demonstrates he is simply incapable of understanding the awesome depravity of deistic neglect in the face of unimaginable suffering on an industrial scale throughout history but I credit Ehrman for appreciating its full scope.
David Lenett - my thoughts exactly. I wondered if he would keep the same views if he and his family were kidnapped, subject to all the various depravities that humans have done to each other, and he alone was released as a survivor. Could he ramble on and on using his brilliant IQ to support the higher level purposes of suffering?
You're absolutely correct!
It hasn't occurred to me before, but Justin Brierley is actually a pretty good host, managed to be pretty fair despite obviously being very much on one side of the issue. Good for him.
Justin is awesome. You can tell he’s listening and understanding because he never fails to rephrase people’a points and put them to the opponent in order to get a direct response. He’s both smart AND knows how to mediate a conversation.
Even if he believes in a magic sky man.
Okay so i am trying to figure out why Swinburne isn’t considered a horrible person for some of the things he said here.
The reason Bart always "wins" these debates is that he's not really debating in the sense of using debate tactics and sch. He simply cares about the topic -a lot - and I think the genuineness of Bart cuts though any debate rhetoric thrown at him.
I am dumbfounded by Swinburne's warped view of suffering and congratulate him for putting forward the most convincing ANTI GOD argument I have ever heard.
Pretty fascinating. A viewpoint steeped in British Colonialism on full display.
Would Swinburne have the same cold hearted attitude it were his grandchildren starving to death?
crystalheart9
Fair point..I'm a Christian.. but it's a fair point
one thus come YEA I MEAN YEAH ME THREE
@Animating Apologetics Hilarious.
I am utterly disgusted by Swinburne's arguments, psychopathy at its finest.
+Adam Southworth Besides the fact that I disagree with your claim, I find it amusing that it is self-defeating.
Adam Southworth Never mind, I misread your comment. I thought you were implying that by calling Swinburne a psychopath, the poster of the comment was actually revealing or providing evidence for his own psychopathy. Which would be self-defeating because making that claim would itself be an accusation of psychopathy. But that's not what you said, my bad lol.
I feel the need to have the opportunity to choose good tomorrow. Should I nominate the population group who will suffer to make this possible or should I leave that to God?
And they wonder why people are leaving the churches in droves.
I wonder what it could be ... it's really has me stumped, real head-scratcher there.
Thanks Bart! I am with you buddy!
I would love to hear more about how Bart and his wife make things work! I had no idea he was married to a believer who is also an intellectual and author...fascinating!
I am afraid Swinburne's views are extremely sadistic.
So my ancestors suffered during the transatlantic slave trade to bring glory to the Christian god?
Swinburne reminds me of a woman who defends her abusive husband.
I know! lol
Hahaha!! So true 😆
Stockholm syndrome...
The Christian's arguments are truly disturbing and veer on insulting. It is good for the Holocaust victim to have suffered and died horribly because it taught someone else a lesson and it is even good for them to have been able to improve others through their suffering. How does that make any sense at all?
This is almost like arguing that cancer is a good thing because without it doctors would not be able to apply their ingenuity to combat it.
Dont mind me pls...that Dr.is living good life...idiot as it is...no feelings towards sufferings bcos he has yet to TASTE it prior to realise the reality of suffering hoping seek Justifications. Thks.
Bart is the clear winner in my opinion, as he uses practical sense, observation as well as thorough research to give a logical, comprehensive and persuasive argument. Richard seemed to be out of his element.
I wonder if Swinburne has considered that, with the kind of reasoning he chooses to use, that he can explain ANYTHING away if he likes...and a technique from which one can explain anything away actually explains nothing.
Bart gave direct biblical quotes supporting his views... Swinburne then took the quote that Bart provided and performed 10 minutes of mental gymnastics until he could stomach the passage.
+Robert Curtis This is because as he says in his opening Swinburne starts with his churches understanding the world and then dismisses evidence that doesn't fit with that worldview. Fact's do not matter when you assume that you are right from the start.
Put swineburn in a difficult life and he would stop lieing to himself and others I'd bet money.
But he had to spend decades thinking up philosophical arguments for God's existence while on multiple research fellowships at Oxford. Think how difficult that must have been!
Damnit. Richard's childish logic makes this completely unlistenable.
I'd like to hear Swinburne v Stephen Law, a philosopher who has an interesting argument against the excuses Swinburne is so fond of - what Law calls the "evil God challenege" . Which is basically: if someone wanted to argue that God is pure evil and wants only evil (and there is plenty of evidence that could be used) then no one would accept the "excuses" of believers in EvilGod who say EvilGod only allows happiness and goodness because some evil things can't be achieved without allowing this residual goodness.
I love your Sentiments n understandings...Great man...greatest understanding in such logic!
So, according to Swinburne, Laws of non contradiction existed before god. Or he created them and now he can't break them.
*****
I do not see how you can support that statement. According to the Bible, God does contradict himself, God does change his mind, God does murder people ...
typical atheist misunderstanding his point
I don't think it should be seen as a suffering problem. Its a Problem of Non-Intervention. Why would anyone with the ability sit by and not intervene within then power. We hold every human, even children to this standard. We teach our children this. To not intervene, within your power, is seen as cruel & detestable. In no other case do we give a pass to this standard, than to God. We can stop a mugger and some diseases over time, but God has to cover the earthquakes...but alas. Would you ever teach your children to allow a clearly understood evil to happen to a person, if it was said to be good for them? A rape, a hit & run, kidnapping?
Spot on.
I can do good without taking away anyone's free will, does that make me more powerful than God?
If Swinburne isn't wearing an ascot, smoking a pipe and wearing corduroy, I'll eat my hat. But seriously, please don't have him on again until he takes voice lessons. Not being smarmy, it was UNLISTENABLE!
I find it interesting that Richard does not see a problem with starting with the churches teaching and fitting the bible into that rather than the other way around. The churches teaching obviously has changed over time. We no longer kill heretics or go to war over the holy land.
Now I am not saying that changing ones mind is a bad thing but I feel that it is disingenuous to start with the answer and then look for evidence that supports that answer.
Instead of "explaining away," as Swinburne attempts to do, it's more honest and useful to simply describe what we see. One thing we see is newborn infants suffering intensely for days or weeks with genetic insufficiencies, from which they then die. 1) THEY certainly had no character building experience -- infants can't develop in that manner. 2) ANIMALS are susceptible to PRECISELY the same experience and suffering.
From that a much more reasonable conclusion about a god is that he...wishes to see a lot of pointless suffering going on in the worlds he creates.
Disliked because of Swinburne, 1 minute after he started speaking I was suffering and I lasted 1 min because Christianity is about suffering. Then I just turned if off.
Bart wrote on his site "I have to say, this is probably the only radio debate that I’ve ever done where I got genuinely angry at an opponent. Swinburne’s answers to the worlds misery struck me as completely remote from any pain - the stereotypical arm-chair-ivy-tower rationalism that makes me wonder if some people have any empathy at all with their fellow human beings who suffer so terribly." In others words Richard won and all Bart can do is question Richard's empathy for other human beings. This is typical Bart lose an argument and then claim that you open is stupid, unworthy or bad.
@@TBOTSS Swinburne's entire argument is disgustingly immoral and stupid. So some people suffer immense pain because God thinks it will make other people they'll never meet do good. This has two flaws:
1. It thinks that the only reason people do good to one another is to avoid suffering and we would somehow be immoral or unfulfilled if the person we're helping isn't on the brink of death or abject poverty
2. It doesn't explain the extent of the suffering in the world
Swinburne's reasoning essentially lacks a significant understanding of true suffering, There
Is no value in suffering. There is no cultural exchange or personal engagement served by
This point of view. Bartering "good" outcomes for suffering seems to be
A shallow argument devoid of compassion and empathy. There is no component of "good"
In suffering. No pain, no gain has always been a silly and shortsighted argument. There is
No market for human suffering where a benefit is exchanged for pain.
Very, very wrong. Suffering purifies. We learn right from wrong and wisdom from foolishness through suffering.
I can see value in a certain amount and specific types of suffering. Children starving on the other hand has no value at all....it's grotesque and meaningless. I notice they never lay out a clear definition of the level of suffering they are debating. There is no one thing that is suffering. All human experience is on a spectrum...some experiences will be more pleasurable than others. If there were no unpleasant experiences at all, our lives would be very small and limited. So I see a certain amount of suffering as necessary in order to have a rich full spectrum of existence. But for many types of suffering there can be no justification. Not the least eternal torture in a place called hell.
@@georgepenton808 purifies what? For instance, a well-meaning parent could arguably be justified to dish out a stern warning or even a controlled disciplinary smack on the bum of an erring child, but it would be ridiculous to say the same child's actions warrants some sort of excessive punishment, like being locked in the basement and starved for the rest of his life. The latter has zero justification seeing as how a much lighter "sentence" would suffice in "purifying" or to serve as a prohibitive lesson.
In answer to Swinburne answer to natural evil
if the angels revolted and that revolt was evil then they had to have free will, and if they had free will while living in heaven then there must have been natural evil preexisting in heaven.
“If suffering was only caused by other people, most people wouldn’t experience suffering”. What a load of rubbish. Swinburne has had an extremely sheltered life to believe this. Absolutely disconnected with reality.
Stupidest thing I've ever heard. Suffering is so we have opportunity and character building. I hope the suffering children appreciate the sanctity Richards gets from it.
Bart Ehrman is always excellent... I’ve only heard one person that could compete with any of his arguments.
Who is the one person? I am interested.
The person making the statements about evolution makes an if not deliberate misrepresentation completely ignorant representation of the evolutionary synthesis. Evolution is not a directional process and has no intended outcome.
"survivability' implies no directionality of process
_"Evolution is not a directional process and has no intended outcome."_
You probably meant "directed" and not "directional". Obviously evolution has a direction. That's the entire point of the concept of natural selection - differential reproductive success selects(Or even IS) the direction of evolution.
Cut to 24 minutes if you don't want to hear the same thing said in different orders.
A tenured Oxford professor speaking of suffering and all the good it brings. wahahahahah
Ad hominem. Engage his arguments.
Unfortunately, it's areas and populaces which are absolutely materially devastated which have the highest rates of faith in a future justice and authority, while those elsewhere in the world are the most benefitted by their not organising to improve their material standing at their expense
I wish there was a timestamp to where Justin stops introducing the guests and actually gets into the interview. Especially with repeat guests, I'd love to skip the intros.
This is why we live in a (thankfully) post Christian country. The theist's explanation for suffering is ludicrous and obscene in equal measure.
What a foul man Swinburne is, and a disastrous example of a "Christian". The man has no love, no humanity, no compassion... and he carries it all off with an arrogant, pompous attitude. He is a disgrace.
That's a bit of an overreaction
Wow professor Swinburne. Ok I know a young man who while at the age of 16 his 3 year old brother drown. Now please explain why this now 30 year old man still blame himself for his brothers death? Wow
I'm with Bart. How can there be a god with all the suffering in this world.
Swinburne’s perspective is really interesting. “If the end of life is simply to have 60 years on Earth, then it doesn’t really matter what sort of a life it is and whether we’re holy or not.”
Both seem to be talking past one another, but only because I think they are both simply established and unwilling to budge in their particular views along with the fact that this is a very big topic. Knowing how and where different aspects of this conversation converge and diverge, and all in a relatively short exchange seems unfruitful.
I actually find neither particularly persuasive in this instance.
I believe that Richard did an excellent job of showing how pathetic the religious people's apologetic arguments are for why there's so much evil in the world and how that matches up with their All-Good God. Paraphrasing: "It's good (even, absolutely necessary) for building up our characters."
We could build up our characters quite enough without all this EXCESSIVE suffering. This also completely evades the question of how NOT good it is for the millions who suffer+die as a result and don't ever get any "chance" to build their characters.
Richard adds at the end that people earn either eternal bliss in Heaven or eternal torture in Hell. But he (as he did throughout this debate) evades the most important point: Christians insist that the only KEY to salvation/damnation is that one professes faith in Jesus before their death. SO: 1) If they led the most evil of lives, that is all, like magic, forgiven unjustifiably; 2) whereas, all non-Christians, despite many of them having led very good lives, are condemned to eternal torture because they never made (or even knew about) such a profession of faith in Jesus. What an horribly unfair, unjust god, Christians (want to) believe in.
One other thing about this "debate" that should be mentioned. Richard is allowed at least twice as much time making his (non-) points as Bart is allowed. Completely unfair.
A minor point (ONLY as regards this debate): Bart says we may not be able to know why there is so much suffering in the world. I DISagree completely.
Overall, I come away from this 80 minutes as NOT very useful at all.
Swinburne is deeply self deluded and indoctrinated
This guy is one of the most sadistic apologists I've heard to date :(
Quoting the Bible is a circular argument...when God has not been shown to exist...we don't need divine causes for anything!
swineborn is borderline sociopathic in his reasoning
are we gonna name next typhoon opportunity?!?!?
What is swineburn talking about as "our sins"? What sins??
Just like the previous installment: here’s someone that challenges Christian beliefs and faith. But let’s not spend much time listening to his ideas; let’s instead get listen to this other academic we’ve invited on for the purpose of providing intellectual-sounding rebuttals to the challenging ideas. Now let’s all go home and feel good about our faith without actually wrestling with the problems on our own
Swinburne says evil exists to give us the opportunity to do good by fighting it.
From which it follows that god doesn't realise humans don't have the ability to fight all the evil he throws at us. Or else doesn't care.
Thus, for Swinburne, god is either stupid or evil.
***** actually it is the theology of Christian belief that is stupid...........think of this way........if you grow to an age where you are old enough to make a decision of whether you accept Christ or not in your life then you risk going to hell if you deny the 'free gift" of salvation.But in the theology of many Christians if you die before you reach that age.....or even in the womb then you have a one way ticket to heaven.By that theology we would be best to abort all humans in the womb so they can be assured of salvation.What is the point of life anymore?Utter nonsense..........
***** Please entertain us by trying to justify that remark.
***** Your lack of reading skills does not inspire confidence in the reasoning abilities you're trying to parade.
Now, try again. Please attempt to justify your assertion that the opening post is a non-sequitur.
***** Incorrect. If the existence of evil entails the possibility of combating it, and it is not always possible to combat evil, then this reduces to the formula:
(1) If E then C
(2) E
Therefore, C.
(3) Not C.
Thus if god's plan _is_ as Swinburne suggests, god fails logic.
***** Christian movies, christian rock music, christian education. They can pastiche the form, they can parrot the words, but they never understand _why_ we do any of it.
Swineburn is quite poor at bringing forward valid points
The more woo woo in Oxford than I appreciated.
Think he should have stuck to philosophy and avoided Christian apologetics.
I’m shocked he gets his religion from the church not the bible. That was a telling comment for a Christian to admit.
The Bible doesn't tell us why everything is,it just makes Metaphysical claims not supported by Maths or Science
To be free moral beings, we do not need a world in which children are allowed to be tortured and murdered. God could even allow all adults to be tortured and murdered, but just not the children.
It's easy to just say "he could", but interestingly difficult to demonstrate that's the case... Or maybe not? Then, well, why don't you do it? :)
He's described as omnipotent.
***** I think you have a slightly naive understanding of what omnipotence means. It's like the old schoolyard question, "Can God create a stone so heavy he himself can't lift it?" The answer is no. And that is because omnipotence is the ability to do any _possible_ thing. God cannot, to give a better example, create a spherical cube because spherical cubes are not possible objects and therefore creating them is a non-action. It does not belong to the set of all possible actions. It is not an action.
The argument is that a world without suffering in which people have moral responsibility _and_ ample opportunity to develop moral character is like a spherical cube. It is simply not possible and therefore God cannot create it. And since moral responsibility for rational creatures is good, and since the ability to develop moral character is also good, God (who is concerned above all else with just these things) allows suffering to exist.
Ben Mines Why are you spouting off theaudicy without addressing anything I actually said?
Preventing all children from being tortured or murdered is a possible action, and it does not make humans amoral in any way.
***** Prove the logical feasibility of a world in which _each_ human agent has free will and therefore moral responsibility over _every_ other but in which it is impossible for children to come to harm.
But you cannot because the two things are mutually exclusive.
I agree with Ehrman's consideration of the many views of sufferings shown in the Bible, however his opinion of irreconcilability is simplistic and Swinburne reply was, if not undisputable, yet proper. I also like Swinburne detached-study approach rather than the more personal-emotional of Ehrman, often a cynical analysis is the one less biased. Both of them were obviously logical, difference of ideas coming from difference of presuppositions and approach. Overall a good and insightful discussion.
I would like to hear someone else defend God...this guy is just making lame excuses. Im a Christian that's suffering terribly in this life and slowly losing my faith. I hoped this debate would be a win for God, but sadly its not. I really hope you're wrong Bart...I really do.
God is so evil because God doesn't intervene to abolish innocent suffering. Therefore God does indeed deserve to die. But why does humanity not intervene to abolish evil ? It could - in theory - though self evidently doesn't. And, of course, if God deserves to die for not abolishing evil, then the same true for humans too - and do.
@Dirk Knight Met a young soldier in local hospital, about 20, had both hands and both feet blown off. Still proud. Modern medicine preserved his life. But he will die. And he will suffer greatly before he dies. Shit happens.
As much as I enjoy Bart, having to endure this "bloody English" blowhard was too much to take. I took an early leave on this video.
Didn’t quite catch what Swinburne said at 16:56 anybody understand him?
The problem with the soul-making theodicy (that evil is necessary for X reason) is that it doesn't justify the AMOUNT of suffering in the world. When you discipline your child so they build character you make them suffer the minimum amount for that good to be produced. You don't beat them within an inch of their life. In Swinburne's worldview, God is essentially torturing his children to build character. On a side note, I feel Swinburne doesn't care sufficiently about how much suffering in the world there is. If you extend your compassion to all conscious creatures and the level of suffering is exponentially greater. What kind of omniscient designer makes it necessary for organisms to consume each other for nourishment?!
Consider this thought experiment. An Amish family decides to leave the community and enter into modern society. Consequently, they break all connections and are known by nobody. After they leave their community a natural disaster causes their death and their bodies are swept into the ocean. Nobody is ever aware of this suffering. Analogous hypotheticals can be constructed where suffering occurs where nobody knows and nobody is affected. This is a problem and is an additional rebuttal to the already weak soul-making theodicy.
So that hurricane sure made me a better person. I'm glad extra people died from it. But seriously, is God so weak that he can't think of any other way to build our character other than through horrible acts of immense suffering? And worse than that, while the doctor can (and does) explain why the arm must be removed in such a way the tha pateint can understand them...God clearly does not.
I like the "logically possible" caveat... which excludes making a rock so big he cannot lift, and also making everything from nothing.
By the way, I can make a rock big enough that I cannot lift.
Something can't come from nothing. Therefore we know there is a First Cause, a Creator.
I'm gonna make a comment BEFORE I listen to the discussion.
I'm a Christian who when it comes to the problem of suffering (theologically speaking) I throw my hands up and say to the sceptic, "I dunno..good one".
All attempts to "answer" this problem just seem miss the mark.
Of course, one thing the Christian CAN say is that suffering is not incompatible with the biblical worldview. That is to say..people in the Bible experience all manner of suffering. And yet, it is a book about the Lord.
I find the "moral improvement" arguement in defence of evil utterly and completely immoral.
Its treats the lives of some human beings as object lessons for the moral betterment of other human beings. Why are these people horribly killed off or condemned to suffer such horrible fates simply so that others can learn a valuable lesson about helping others? Why does god play favourites in this manner - singling out some people for death and misery while singling out others as the audiencce for their pain and suffering?
Ultimately, the lives of these unfortunately beings are simply treated as means to an end. Their humanity, their suffering, their personhood is extinguished and treated as irrelevant - just so YOU can learn a lesson about helping others.
Is this really the best god can do to teach moral responsiblities to the fatally flawed being he designed? Death, voilence, rape, torture, muder, poverty, disease, starvation, child abuse, genocide, and all manner of chaos and suffering? These are the tools he uses for our moral improvement?
Thank goodness there is no good evidence that this immoral preachment is true.
I have no interest in "converting" anybody to atheism. But I will say this in its favour: at least with atheism you don't have to wallow in this kind of moral bankruptcy or twist all logic and human decency to excuse it.
Atheists "twist all logic" by failing to explain where the first matter originated.
How on earth could he reconcile the belief that the bible should be interpreted in line with the teaching of the church with the fact that he changed the church he was affiliated with?
God can violate the laws of logic. He can wait an infinite amount of time before creating the universe, he can be a son without a mother and mortal as well as immortal.
If it's an enormous good to form character, then why do up to 90% of foetuses or blastocysts autoabort?
"It's a fascinating argument" that we'd choose a life where we'd prefer the slings and arrows than unmitigated bliss, but it's completely contrary to the Christian impetus towards the afterlife. Of course, the just world hypothesis and authoritarians believe that suffering is either the result of human evil, salutary or both, but every depiction of heaven has it where choices are constrained absolutely. There is no option to feel the pain of childbirth in heaven as marriage won't exist, nor to forego the bliss of agape when confronted by god.
Because the church he was affiliated with was no longer His church. They failed in carrying out His word. They ended up killing Him.
Omnipotent god granting man's free will are a contradiction...Either man had no free will or god is not omnipotent. It cant be both.....It's like saying god can make a stone so heavy he can't lift it.
danny3571 Well stated...........a dilemma for the theist which I doubt ancient superstitious humans gave much thought to in their manuscripts.....
I see no contradiction between free will and omnipotence. You probably meant omniscience? Omniscience contradicts both omnipotence and free will. Free will also contradicts omniscience and omnipotence.
Prophecy also contradicts free will. God knows the future and no being is able to change it. You are just a puppet doing whatever god chose you to do in this universe.
BART kicks all you guys ass one after the other.. lmao, NEXT!!!!!!
I can't even listen to this, even his voice/accent is driving me nuts!, let alone his pathetic apologetic's.
british academics have the craziest accents
not only academics! Most of the the time spoken British sounds like a person in the constipation pain...
I just finished reading the book. Im totally agree that the only sufficient answer of suffering in bible come from the Qoheleth. The answer of suffering is that there is no answer, so just seize the day and live as happy as happy you can because life is all we have.
the whole God, Christian, Allah magic deity thing has always seemed like a bunch of BS to me. Not sure why people belief such non-sense.
Thank you Bart for trying to make sense out of this 'nonsense'.
A problem in professor Swinburne’s reasoning. He says that god can change the physical laws of nature but not the logical laws. If the logical laws exist in a world that was created by that god then why couldn’t it change whatever it wanted? You can’t have it both ways
Because God is restricted by His nature. He cannot kill Himself or be illogical.
Suffering is the meaning of separation from God without which we would not even understand why we would want to go and be with God.
Swinburne does a lot of making up about why bad things happen, I don't see non of his views in the bible, I suppose he's a God's mind reader, but of course his views are malignant as phisophical ideas!
Bart is right, the writer of Ecclesiastes knew what’s up
I guess the more intelligent or educatedone is the better at mental gymnastics one will be.
Swinburne babbles on and on.......
Dude obviously never tried Heroin...
Which dude?
i have good collection of Bart's books.
God sends suffering the wicked to suffer to bring about their conversions. God. God sends suffering to the good to make them mote like the suffering Christ.
Wow the English guy did a disgusting job here and extremely rude.
Swinburn disgusts me
Circles over there
At around 42", the comment abt Tsunami takes the cake. The extent believers need to go is unfuckingreal.
Day 2 has no good
Have a question, Bart. You pose here that heaven will be a place where "free will exists, yet there will be no suffering." If God could create a world where this exists, why didnt He just do that?(my paraphrase). Heaven only exists for people who have exercised their free will on earth to choose to serve God. How is an extention of that combined with fullness of the sanctification process equal to a world where beings are moral free agents and have no history of moral choices? I'm interested to know how you can equate these two radically different settings.
"Heaven only exists for people who have exercised their free will on earth to choose to serve God." Why doesn't god create only those who freely choose to serve him? What is the point of having this test in the first place?
Swinburne can not be a professor!!!!!!!!!
I reach the end of this book with some dissatisfaction. I am well aware of objection other than the ones which I have discussed which can be made to almost every sentence which I have written...
Argument and counter-argument, qualification and application, can go on forever. But religion is not exceptional in this respect. With respect to any subject whatever, the discussion can go on forever....
But life is short and we have to act on the basic of what such evidence as we have had time to investigate shows on balance to be probably true...
The conclusion of this book was that on significant balance of probability, there is,a God. If you accept it, it follows that you have certain duties. God has given us life and all the good things it contains, including above all opportunities to mould our characters and help others.
Great gratitude is abundantly appropriate. We should express it in worship and in helping to forward his purpose- which involves, as a preliminary step, making some effort to find out what they are.....
Yet, if we have any sense and any idealism we cannot leave it at that. God in his perfect goodness will want to make the best of us: make saints of us and use us to make saints of others....
All that involves an unlimited commitment. But God respect us; he will not force these things on us- we can choose whether to seek them or not.if we do seek them, there are obvious obstacles in this world to achieving them. The obstacles are necessary, partly in order to ensure that our commitment is genuine, but God has every reason in due course to remove these obstacles to allow us to become the good people we seek to be, to give the vision of him self-government.
Epilogue: so what?
Is there a,God ? Richard Swinburne
Most of the people commenting on this video find Swinburne offensive. I find Ehrman offensive. Ehrman has abandoned the Christian faith because of the problem of human suffering. My question: what the hell does Ehrman know about suffering? He has been fantastically successful in his academic career (one of the most rewarding careers on the planet), his wife is an academic and fellow intellectual, and each separately brings in an income which places each separately within the top 8% of Americans. The blessings Ehrman receives and has received from God are second to none, and he exceeds in objective happiness and blessedness 99.9999999etc % of all humans who live now and who have ever lived. And how does he show his gratitude to God? By abandoning his faith and devoting his public career to spitting in God's eye, so to speak, with a lot of philosophically lame arguments, and discouraging other people from turning to God. I have known dozens of Christians who been to hell and back, have known sufferings that Ehrman has never experienced and can never imagine, and who have come through them with their faith even stronger than before. And what did they go through? Many suffered intense persecution as Christians (Christians are currently the most persecuted religious group on the planet), suffered imprisonment, torture, saw parents and/or sibblings killed, their villages destroyed, and lived for years as refugees. In the nightmares that were their lives, they have told me, one of the very few things, and in their judgement the most important thing, that got them through was their faith. And this faith is what Ehrman denigrates and discourages in others. Disgusting.
Think of the consequences of having a world with no consequences!
;-D
Ha!
Bart D Ehrman, you are very philosophically unsophisticated, when Swinburn points out that God "allowed" the "crazy nazis" to do what they did, you say: "IF you believe in God", but the issue that you and Richard discussed wasn't whether God exists, but rather whether "evil" is compatible with God having certain properties, clearly those are two different issues.
Swinburne is a poor Historian and Philosopher...Dr Richard Carrier has already refuted him!
His Bayes Theorem claims are bias and indoctrinated nonsense!
More like Richard Swill-burne. Amirite guys?
AS I CONTINUE TO LISTEN TO THIS DEBATE I FIND IT ASTONISHING AND DISTURBING TO LISTEN TO A MAN WITH SO CALLED PROFESSORIAL CREDENTIALS ENDEAVORING TO RATIONALUZE HIS RIDICULOUS ARGUMENT
WITH SUCH PROFOUND DRIVEL !
Bart D. Ehrman, He does not believe in the life after this life this is one reason that he was not able to find answers in the bible for the problems in suffering
+tat eng Chiam You do now that Bart was a Christian minister when he was seeking those answers right?
Do you even know who Bart is? He was a Christian for 30 years, became a pastor and etc.
tat eng Chiam there is no such thing as life after death.