my reply to BellatorChristi on the evil and atheism

This is my reply to a BellatorChristi article by Brian Chilton entitled

Christianity Offers the Best Solution to the Problem of Evil

By: Brian G. Chilton | May 29, 2022

------First, I posted a short reply at his website, but Chilton responded to my initial reply there while I was composing this blog piece.  In his response, Brian did two things demonstrating his genuine fright of getting steamrolled in debate:

• He declined my debate challenge by hiding behind the dishonest excuse that he thinks I'm not paying attention to his points, when in fact he has a posting rule that rejects replies if they are more than a few lines, and 

• He removed the reply-function from the article that I replied to, i.e., Chilton has engineered things to make sure that his criticisms cannot be exposed on his own website. When Chilton has responded, God has spoken, and that shall be the end of the debate.

For reasons that will become clearer herein, Chilton is being dishonest.  He does not fear that I won't be "paying attention".  He fears that a counter-apologist like me would most likely corner him and expose the fallacies of his "apologetics".  

I now reply to the article.  Chilton says:

Another week, another tragedy. This time, we heard of the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Like most of you, I am troubled by the incessant and increasing reports of violence across our nation and world.

You shouldn't be.  You assume everything god does is morally good, and in Deuteronomy 32:39 "god" claims personal responsibility for all murders and death:

 39 'See now that I, I am He, And there is no god besides Me; It is I who put to death and give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal, And there is no one who can deliver from My hand. (Deut. 32:39 NAU)

If Job is correct that God has assigned each person a specific number of days to live, the only way that makes sense is if he was intimately involved in decreeing the time and manner of their death:

 5 "Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; And his limits You have set so that he cannot pass. (Job 14:5 NAU)

Chilton continues: 

For many folks, these senseless acts of violence leave them with a tinge of doubt. Why is it that a benevolent God would permit such acts to occur?

Perhaps they ask that question because they are using modern western democracy, instead of the bible, to define exactly what it means for god to be "benevolent".  I think it pointless and deceptive to call god "benevolent", because the only way we can conceptualize of it is by human analogy, and in the human world, "benevolence" cannot exist if the human in question also decrees the murder of children.  Back to your "mysterious ways of god" refuge.

This question enters the philosophical and theological sphere known as theodicy. Theodicy ponders the goodness of God’s providence in light of acts of evil.

Bellator Christi Ministries has addressed the problem of theodicy in considerable detail on both the website (https://bellatorchristi.com) and the Bellator Christi Podcast.

Just like Christian apologists have been doing for centuries.  And yet why god allows evil continues to bother Christians today no less than it did in the first century.  Congratulations on your demonstrable problem-solving progress. 

While we could go back through those issues, I think a more pressing issue is at hand. By their statements online, I have observed that some people have contemplated the thought of hitching their wagon to another theology in light of such senseless acts of evil. This is not a good idea, for reasons I hope to show.

You won't be showing any such thing.   

For the remainder of this article, I would like to pose four different theological and philosophical options that cover the problem of theodicy, and I will show that Christianity holds the best answer for why a benevolent God permits evil acts.

Then you are contradicting your own bible.  Your god allegedly thought there were times when pre-teen girls should be burned to death (Leviticus 21:9).  "benevolence" is not an option, it is a pipe dream that tries to use John 3:16 as the lens through which to interpret divine atrocities. 

The article examines the following parameters: 1) either God exists, or he doesn’t; 2) humans have free will, or they don’t; 3) God is benevolent, vengeful, or both; 4) there is ultimate justice, or there isn’t.

Option A: Atheism—No God, Questionable Freedom, No Justice

When acts of violence occur, it is strange that many begin to gravitate toward the position of atheism.

Not any stranger than the raped daughter who gravitates away from her father, who had both ability and opportunity to prevent the rape, but knowingly chose rather to just stand there watching and doing nothing. 

Because many believe that a loving, benevolent God would never allow evil acts to occur, it is naturally assumed that such a God does not exist. Most problematically for the atheist is that ultimate justice cannot be found. If there is no God, then there is no day of reckoning, no scales that are measured, and no ultimate meaning to anything.

That's a fallacious appeal to emotion.  Longing for justice is an emotion. 

One may very well assume that good and evil are just figments of our imagination.

No, good and evil are real, but they do not transcend the human level.  They are merely words we use to describe events that we feel promote or inhibit survival/thriving.  You don't have a corner on the language market:  the atheist is not doing anything illogical or inconsistent in saying the boy who killed the kids at the recent Texas school massacre was "evil"...because the atheist doesn't define "evil" in the broad ultimate sense you do.  The boy inhibited the survival and thriving of many children and adults in those shootings, and he did not do so for reasons current American law will recognize.  That is PLENTY to justify the atheist in characterizing the shootings as "evil".  There is no logical requirement that evil always be attached to the devil, or to "god's" opinion of things.

Even though atheism is a popular go-to theory,

So is "Christianity".  Did you have a point? 

the worldview only exacerbates the problem when it is taken to its logical end. If you follow the route of atheism, you will find that not only do you not find an answer to why evil things occur,

Strawman fallacy:  "atheism" does not express or imply answers to why evil things happen.  Your argument is going to basically be that by denying god's existence, nothing matters. Sorry friend, but atheism doesn't logically necessitate nihilism.  But yes, you might sound convincing to crowds of Jesus-followers who have no training in philosophy, who are thus incapable of discerning where and how your inferences go wrong. 

but you will also find that you have no standard by which to gauge anything evil in the first place

Wrong again:  you don't have a corner on the language-market: "evil' is not required by definition to linked to god or the devil.  The dictionary will confirm this:

https://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › evil

1 : something that brings sorrow, trouble, or destruction

There is nothing illogical about the atheist who characterizes the recent Texas school shooting as "evil" because it brought "sorrow, trouble or destruction".  

as well as no final standard of justice.

According to Genesis 6:6, God sometimes berates himself for his prior bad decisions, so your bible doesn't even justify the assumption that god's decisions about matters are "final".  The originally intended pre-scientific illiterate goat-herder audience would never have understood this to be an "anthropomorphism".  Modern Christians only do that out of a prior commitment to bible unity or inerrancy.  God being stupid would probably not harmonize with other bible statements about god's great wisdom.  But the more objective hermeneutic is the concern about how the originally intended audiences would likely have understood the passage.

In a world that God does not exist, then morality does not exist.

That is false, you have not even gotten near making even a prima facie case that "god" is necessary to explain "morality".  I suspect that is the case because of how stupid the proposition is.  Morality is simply the word we use to characterize situations where we opine that somebody "should" or "shouldn't" do something.  Does Chilton seriously believe that if the atheist puts a bandage on his child's scratched knee, the atheist cannot justify this level of concern and is merely borrowing Christian capital? 

If you have no God, then you also have no ultimate justice.

So?  The only "justice' that is the least bit demonstrable is the human legal system.   

Life then becomes nothing more than pitiless indifference.

First, so?  I find most people to be pitilessly indifferent toward most evil that takes place outside their daily lives.  Even you.  Could you be doing more charity than you currently do?  What's unreasonable about saying that the reason you don't do as much good as you could with your resources and time, is because there are limits to how caring you are about other people?  

Second, you are now fallaciously appealing to just those readers who feel sorry for all people who have ever suffered, which means you are fallaciously pretending that it is only the people who feel such sorrow, who "count" in this argument.  You are wrong.  Throughout human history, plenty of human beings have been pitilessly indifferent toward other human beings.  Are YOU doing all the charity that you could possibly do?  If no, why shouldn't we chalk this up to your own pitiless indifference?

Third, naturalism provides a perfectly reasonable explanation for altruism without god.  As mammals, we naturally care about those closest to us.  As a civilized society, we naturally feel sorry for people further away who are criminally deprived of life, liberty or property.  For a start, see Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism (AuthorHouse, 2005) by Richard Carrier.

Fourth, you are only hurting your own case by trying to prove that some type of belief results in pitiless indifference.  Your own god allegedly commanded his people to have no compassion on others (Deuteronomy 19:21), God has no pity on orphans despite it not being their fault that their parents were heretics (Isaiah 9:17); God has no pity on children suffering the ravages of war (Ezekiel  5:11 ff, 8:18, 9:5-6), and he tortured a baby for seven days with a horrible disease despite the obvious fact that such infant was not guilty of the sins in question (2nd Samuel 12:15-18).

Option B: Universalism—Benevolent God, No Justice

Universalists hold that everyone, no matter their theological moorings or ethical behavior, will go to heaven in the end. Admittedly, while this is one heresy that I wish were true

But if morality comes from God, then maybe the reason you wish universalism to be true is beacuse the Holy Spirit is telling your heart that the parts of the bible about an angry god injuring people are just fictions?

, the aspect of justice is highly questionable in this worldview. True, it could be that the ethically immoral go through a time of purgatory before going to heaven. However, what if the person does not desire to go to heaven? Sounds strange, but it is not beyond the scope of possibility.

In Luke 23:34, Jesus actually forgives some humans who neither express nor imply any remorse or intention to repent.

Consider the lyrics of AC/DC’s Highway to Hell.

Do you want your readers to investigate your sources?  Does a true Christian encourage others to consider anything Satan has to say? 

The authors of the song appear to want nothing to do with heaven.

Because even humans on this earth eventually found Jesus too disinteresting to keep communicating with (John 6:66).  No reason to think it will be any different in heaven...where God often authorizes evil spirits to make people tell lies (1st Kings 22:19-23). 

Furthermore, is there a reckoning for evil acts in universalism?

No, because universalism preaches an absolutely unconditional divine forgiveness.  And God is quite capable of getting rid of human sin without needing it to be "reckoned".  See 2nd Samuel 12:13.  David's sin was taken away, he was spared from the mandatory Mosaic death penalty for adultery and murder, and yet nothing in the context expresses or implies David would have to endure any priestly sacerdotal rite.  God no more "needs" to punish sin than you "need" to wear blue socks. 

Though universalism is better than atheism, it does not seem to have the power necessary to deal with evil acts.

The god of univeresalism deals with a rapist by forgiving him immdiately, fully, and unconditionally.  No need to "deal with" evil acts.

Additionally, it does not emphasize the great disdain that God has for sin. Quoting Deuteronomy 32:35–36, the writer of Hebrews notes, “For we know the one who has said, ‘Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay,’ and again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’ It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:30).

Ah, so you are NOT arguing to skeptics, but only to those who hold your fundamentalist assumptions about god and the bible.  No wonder your article was about as shallow as a Pentecostal sermon.

Option C: Fatalism—Vengeful God, No Choice

Fatalism is the belief that human beings hold no free will and, thereby, no responsibility.

It's also the belief of those Trinitarian bible believers known as 5-Point Calvinists, at least according to those who criticize Calvinism.

Fatalism may come in the form of naturalistic atheism, deism, or some forms of Christianity. However, fatalism does not answer the problem of evil.

If a man steals a car, the answer to this "evil" is the human legal system. The notion that we yearn for a higher form of justice against this thief, is just stupid. 

For the atheistic varieties of fatalism, the worldview does not resolve the problem of evil actions for the reasons mentioned in Option A.

There is nothing unreasonable in the atheist viewing the human legal system as the highest possible form of justice.

For deistic and theistic versions of fatalism, everything comes about by the pre-planned will of God with no human responsibility. This is not to be compared with divine foreknowledge of the willing acts of free agents.

On the contrary, God's infallible foreknowledge of future human choices makes those choices inevitable.  The only possible ways to refute a deductive syllogism are a) refute the first premise, b) refute the second premise, c) show that the conclusion didn't logically follow, or d) show that the syllogism is entirely hypothetical and inapplicable to the real world.  Keeping those in mind, a deductive syllogism proves that infallible divine foreknowledge leaves no logically possible room for freewill:

Premise 1:  Anything God infallibly foreknows will happen, is incapable of failing.

Premise 2:  God infallibly foreknow that Salvador Ramos would choose to kill children.

Conclusion:  Therefore Salvador Ramos' choice to kill children was incapable of failing.

You cannot refute Premise 1, it is simply assuming God's foreknowledge is infallible, which is a major Christian doctrine.  And "incapable of failing" is merely the dictionary definition of "infallible"

You cannot refute Premise 2, since as a doctrinally conservative Christian, you think that premise is true.

You cannot show the conclusion didn't logically follow, as it is constructed of information in both premises and doesn't add to or subtract from that information.

Hence, those Christians who subscribe to God's infallible divine foreknowledge, but who still insist we are "free" to "do otherwise", are illogical, and likely because their bible is that illogical. 

Rather, this view holds that God pre-planned everything to come about as it has. The problem with this mentality is self-evident. God is presumed to be the source of evil in this worldview as human beings do not have the capacity to choose other than their pre-designed nature and choices are dictated. Therefore, the ethical and moral standard of God becomes suspect. Of the three positions given thus far, this position holds a slightly higher rank than atheism but less than universalism.

I don't see your point, you own bible makes god the author of evil.  Read Deuteronomy 28:15-63.  Don't miss v. 63, which says God will take just as much "delight" to inflict rape, parental cannibalism and other atrocities, as he takes in granting prosperity.

Option D: Christianity—Benevolent, Just God Overseeing a World of Free Agents
Thankfully, a fourth option exists. The classic Christian worldview holds the best answer to the problem of evil. The position is as follows: A benevolent, just God created and oversees a world of human free agents and will hold each person accountable for their deeds in the afterlife. For this position to be true, let’s examine four truths the Scripture teaches.

Thanks again for clarifying that you are NOT trying to convince anybody except church folk.

Truth #1: God is loving and just.
While space does not permit us to afford a full examination of God’s goodness and just nature, let us consider a few passages as a case study.

It doesn't make any sense to say God is loving and just.  In the real world, the only reason we say somebody is good is because we find they have conformed to a standard of morality outside of themselves.  We never say somebody is good merely because they themselves declare themselves to be good.  But in the case of "God", there is no standard outside of god to which god is subject.  Therefore, when you talk about god being 'good', you need to make clear that you don't determine this in the same way you determine whether a human being is good.  But if you provide that much clarity, than you will have a very suspect doctrine:  god's goodness derives from nothing but his own statements about his own nature.  LOL.

First, God’s benevolence is shown in his great love for humanity.

Yeah, like when he directly  tortured an infant for 7 days (2nd Samuel 12:15-18).

Like when God specifies that King Saul must masscre "infants and children" (1st Samuel 15:2-3), the reason being nothing more than their descendants warring against Saul's descendants back during the Exodus about 400 years prior. In other words, kill your neighbor if his great-great-great-great grandfather had murdered your great-great-great-great grandfather. 

The apostle John states, “Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 Jn. 4:10).

The atonement of Jesus is an absurd doctrine that no amount of repeating 1st Cor. 1:18 is going to fix.  If the entire person of Christ became sin (2nd Cor. 5:21), and the whole person of Christ necessarily includes his divine nature, then necessarily his divine nature also became sin.  Be sure to run extra fast to "god's mysterious ways".  It's your get-out-of-jail-free card.

Furthermore, Paul writes, “For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly … But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:6, 8).

I just want you to know that when you quote the bible, the Holy Spirit testifies to my spirit that I need Jesus.  

Second, God is also holy and just. Job reflected on the holy nature of God as he said, “Indeed, it is true that God does not act wickedly and the Almighty does not pervert justice” (Job 34:12).

If God was holy and just when he created mankind, why did he later regret that particular decision (Genesis 6:6)?  

Because of God’s holy nature, he expects his people to act holy, as well.

That makes no sense:  Did God infallibly foreknow that Hitler would massacre the Jews?  if so, how could it be sensible to say God "expected" Hitler to refrain?  Does God "expect" us to surprise him by acting in a way contrary to his infallible foreknowledge?  

Do you infallibly foreknow that a 2 year old child cannot jump over the moon?  If so, could you still somehow seriously "expect" her to engage in that act anyway?  Of course not.

In Leviticus, God said, “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2). Jesus furthers this thought, saying, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

I deny that the bible teaches theology consistently.  And you will never show that anything Jesus told anybody in the 1st century "applies to" modern day people.  That would require to venture outside the bible itself and comment about how the bible survived the ravages of history, but that evidence is not inspired by God.  So any argument that tries to apply biblical anything to modern day people, is necessarily far less authoritative than you think bible-based arguments are.

Truth #2: Human agents are free.
This topic can easily dive into some deep wells of philosophical and theological thought.

Translation:  equally authentically born-again Trinitarian Christians disagree on how to interpret biblical statements about the freewill of mankind.  And yet they want skeptics to believe God is tellilng them all the same theology, and they don't know why some of them are hearing god incorrectly.  LOL. 

Suffice to say, for now, the Bible suggests that human beings hold some degree of free agency. That is, human beings choose to act to at least some degree. God’s call on people to repent is sufficient to show the ability of people to freely act to at least some degree. Jesus called on people to repent, saying, “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as well” (Lk. 13:3). Peter picked up this theme and said, “Repent and be baptized, each of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).

A 5-Point Calvinist will call that "heresy".  And yet you think a spiritually dead skeptic should figure out which of you got the bible "right". LOL

Truth #3: God desires to save humanity.
God desires to save humanity from their sin and themselves.

Not everybody.  Romans 9:18-23.  And Calvinists assure me that the first agent to do the heart-hardening is god.  We reject the gospel because God wanted us to reject the gospel.  And yet you think a spiritually dead skeptic should figure out which of you got the bible "right". LOL 

Jesus lamented Jerusalem’s refusal to repent in Matthew 23:37.

Because the bible is inconsistent in its portrayal of how god is.

God expressed his desire to save people rather than to bring judgment in Ezekiel 18.

He also expressed "delight" to cause rape and parental cannibalism in Deuteronomy 28:63. 

The chapter ends with God lamenting, “For I take no pleasure in anyone’s death … so repent and live” (Ezek. 18:32). It is when a person and society turn from God that evil increases.

It's also when God sends an evil spirit from heaven that evil increases:

 19 Micaiah said, "Therefore, hear the word of the LORD. I saw the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right and on His left.

 20 "The LORD said, 'Who will entice Ahab to go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?' And one said this while another said that.

 21 "Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD and said, 'I will entice him.'

 22 "The LORD said to him, 'How?' And he said, 'I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.' Then He said, 'You are to entice him and also prevail. Go and do so.'

 23 "Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you." (1 Ki. 22:19-23 NAU)

Throughout the book of Judges, one finds an example of what happens as a nation further slips into depravity as they continue to reject the loving will of God.

Which is curious since you assume they had much better evidence for their god's existence than we have today.  They were descendants of the Exodus generation....and you think ancient Hebrew oral tradition "reliably" reported true history, right?

Truth #4: God holds each person accountable for their actions.

No, God can free somebody from responsibility for sin by simply waiving his magic wand.  God's law reqired David to be killed for adultery and murder, but God was capable of exempting David from this mandatory death penalty in 2nd Samuel 12:13.

Lastly, the Scripture teaches that God holds each person accountable for their actions. This is not only true for unbelievers, but it is also true for believers. Paul speaks on the Judgment Seat of Christ in 1 Corinthians 9:4–27; 2 Corinthians 5:10–11; and Romans 14:10. The writer of Hebrews adds, “And just as it is appointed for people to die once—and after this, judgment—so also Christ, having been offered only once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him” (Heb. 9:27–28). Thus, each person will have to give an account for their deeds.

Have fun trying to "prove" that any of that crap "applies to" any modern-day person.  That would require you to venture outside the bible itself, and make use of evidence that is not divinely inspired.  

Conclusion
Christianity holds the best answer for why a loving God allows evil deeds to occur.

Maybe that explains why so many Christians apostatize? 

Could he stop every evil act? Well, he could and sometimes has. But if God were to intervene in every act of evil, he would remove the free agency of humanity.

Then you necessarily admit that when cops chase down and capture a suspect, they are removing the free agency of the suspect.  Is it god's desire that today's police force criminal against their wills into jail?  If so, then your god does not respect human freewill as much as you pretend.

Remember that God allowed himself to become victimized by the depraved nature of humanity.

LOL. 

He allowed himself to be crucified on a cross at the hands of evil men to provide the ultimate good—a way for humanity to be reconciled to himself. This opened a pathway into an eternity with him.

He was stupid, since he could easily forgive those who do not seek it (Luke 23:34), he can exempt anybody from the otherwise mandatory penalty of the law without needing to "sacrifice" anything (2nd Samuel 12:13, if you claim god's torture and killing of David's baby was the sacrifice, then you believe YHWH is just as bad as the Canaanites, whom you credit with "child sacrifice").  God could force himself upon anti-Christian bigots and provide forceful evidence guaranteed to produce a change of mind (Acts 9, 22, 26, Paul's conversion).

Granted, the solution that Christianity offers does not always bring immediate gratification. We often want justice now for atrocious acts committed. If you find yourself in that situation, then rest assured that you are in good company. The prophet Habakkuk contemplated the same. Yet God answered the prophet much as he does us.

No, you think Habakkuk was "inspired by God" to write inerrantly.  You deny that any person today has that level of access to the divine intent. 

Justice is coming. God will weigh the actions of each person and will judge accordingly. But know this, only a covenant relationship with God through Christ will grant you access into his kingdom. Make sure that your heart is right with him. To allow anyone into heaven, God must extend grace rather than judgment. Personally, I am thankful for God’s loving grace. Nonetheless, evil will not win in the end. Instead, the love of God wins for eternity.

Then apparently you never read the last chapter of Revelation.  Evil is going to continue even after this alleged "day of "judgment":

 15 Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying. (Rev. 22:15 NAU)

 

Here is my initial reply to that article:

I don’t understand why you think subjective morality is somehow defective or insufficient to explain morality. Your god is the most complex imaginable thing, assuring you that under Occam’s Razor he stays as the most unlikely candidate, since all non-god explanations are necessarily less complex than “god”.

I have blasted to bits many times in the past Frank Turek’s argument to god from morality, an argument you now imitate here when you pretend that atheism logically leads to pitiless indifference.

I don’t understand why you think getting pitiless indifference out of “atheism” is supposed to be some sort of rebuttal to atheism. Are you not aware of just exactly how pitilessly indifferent most educated adults are toward the plight of the less fortunate? One minute after the radio host speaks in hushed tone about the recent Texas school massacre, she is speaking all excitedly in congratulating some caller for solving a puzzle-game.

Furthermore, most people are hardwired by evolution against pitiless indifference, we are mammals, we by nature do have some care and concern for others like us, even if we are indifferent to unfairness we see happening elsewhere.

I sure wish you’d allow substantive reply, because allowing only minimal reply gives the reader the false impression that nobody is able to “refute” you comprehensively. I request a formal written debate with you at any location of your choosing.

Here is Chilton's response to my reply...which was a problem because with such response Chilton disabled the 'reply' function to make sure that his comments could not be rebutted in the place that rebuttal would be most effective (his own website):  I reply to those comments respectively:

Author
Brian Chilton
23 minutes ago

Reply to barry
Barry, evolution cannot account for anything unless it is guided by intelligence.

And then he disables the reply-function, as if his opinion were the end of the matter! 

If you logically follow the atheist line of thought, then it only stands to reason that nothing matters in a world where God does not exist.

No, purely naturalistic processes sufficiently account for altruism and the lack of nihilism among most atheists. 

No justice will be ultimately found.

And if people were not so mired in fallacious theology, they would not desire for a justice that transcends space and time...whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean. 

You may say, “That’s where we need to step in and provide justice.” Well and good. However, there are many crimes that go unpunished.

So?  Our hatred of the notion of guilty criminals not being caught doesn't imply there is a level of justice beyond the human level. 

Additionally, many innocent parties have been imprisoned for crimes they never committed. What of all the supremacists who unjustly lynched young black men in the streets in the late 1800s and early 1900s? Where is justice found for those poor souls?

They were denied justice.  How does that begin to express or imply they will endure some higher-than-human justice?  You are clearing employing the fallacy of appeal to emotion. 

Atheism offers nothing to account for morality and justice.

And fingernails offer nothing to account for stale taco shells.

Atheism is merely denial of, or lack of belief in, a god.  "Atheism" is not a word connoting any specific philosophy beyond the non-existence of gods.   Your not understanding how atheists could possibly care about anything is not a testament to the problems of atheism, but a testament to your own ignorance of how sufficiently naturalistic realities account for mammalian altruism.

It offers no sense of justice for shooters who cowardly take their own lives or who were executed in an exchange of fire with the authorities.

Neither does any philosophy that says God caused the shooter to commit the murders, like Deuteronomy 32:39. 

If evolution is your go-to response, then how can we trust anything we think as we are nothing more than molecules set in motion by chemical responses?

Well first, Christianity doesn't have a solution to that problem, because Christians disagree on how to interpret the bible, so that not even a very confident belief that "god is guiding me" constitutes the least bit of dependable justification to believe you have the "truth".  Too many fundamentalists have become liberals or atheists later in life, to pretend that the way you currently feel in your fundamentalist dogmatism is "truth".  How often do Christians find out that doctrines they held for decades, were false?

Second, you are fallaciously assuming without evidence that  "molecules set in motion by chemical responses" are insufficient to enable us to detect truth.  You would agree that bacteria and bugs lack soul and spirit, and are therefore purely physical creatures, and yet their purely chemical brains somehow enable them to detect truth sufficiently to prevent them from going extinct.  They can tell, even if only imperfectly, that danger is near.

Atheism has nothing to offer, except for deluding ourselves to think that we are our own gods and will never give an account to anyone but ourselves.

You are just preaching to the choir, this is not "argument". 

That, my friend, is what makes atheism so dangerous–not so much dangerous for society, but dangerous to those who delude themselves with such a notion.

You have not shown any "danger".  You have simply brandished your ignorance of the sufficiency of the naturalistic explanations.

Pertaining to the Occam’s Razor argument, I would argue the opposite. It is far simpler to envision a universe stemming from an uncaused Cause (being God) than a series of physical events occurring in the past.

But that doesn't explain anything, because "uncaused cause" and "God" are plagued by ceaseless hosts of philosophical defects.  In short, in the adult world, you cannot explain how the book got on the table by positing the existence of fairies. 

For a good scientific argument for the case for God, see Stephen C. Meyer’s book Return of the God Hypothesis.

I'm not seeing the relevance of atheism being false:  you have not, and never will, make a convincing case that there is any "danger" in atheism, nor will you make the case that anything in the bible "applies to" modern day people.  

I would happily debate you if you were willing to listen to the points that were being made. But as it stands right now, you have not shown that you are willing to listen to the other side. As such, an exercise of this nature would be futile, as both of us would simply be talking over the other.

You are obviously stupid and bigoted: this post shows that I have a habit of responding point by point.

Second, the only reason you think I wasn't willing to listen to the other side, is because of your dogshit posting rule that disallows criticial replies unless they are limited to just a few lines.

Your excuse for declining my debate challenge was transparently dishonest, and the real reason you won't debate me is because I've hit you in the past with arguments you haven't dealt with and cannot deal with in any sustained fashion. You are afraid that when your critic is allowed more than a few lines to criticize you, you won't be able to keep up.  Yes, most Christians in apologetics are infested by the sin of pride.  They wouldn't truthfully admit their ignorance and fright of debating if their lives depended on it.  You are no exception. 

Greg Welty says nothing that embarrasses bible critics

James Anderson has a post about Greg Welty's book Why Is There Evil In The World (And So Much Of It?) (Christian Focus Publications, 2018).  I reply to this review:

Why Is There Evil In The World (And So Much Of It)?

Posted on 8 June 2018  

Having been closely involved in the editing process, I’m thrilled to see this book finally in print. The title reflects what may be the most common reason people give for rejecting the Christian faith and doubting the existence of God. It is indeed a critical question that demands an answer.

If you know any atheists who cite God's allegedly evil acts as reason to think he doesn't exist, count me out.  Being evil hardly implies non-existence.  There is an exception for the god that is hawked by specifically Christianity, since the god of the bible is defined with logically incompatible properties (i.e., he calls himself good, but does things that qualify as evil under any other definition, and the "his mysterious ways" and the "as, creator he has the right to do whatever he wants" excuses, pretending that God is always the special exception to human reasoning whenever you think it convenient to say so, do not suffice.

The appeal to mysterious ways is not accepted when the Christian hears it from a Christian 'heretic' or "heterodox brother",  so fairness demands they be consistent, and not expect us atheists to find the excuse very compelling either.  The appeal to God's rights as creator is fallacious, as we would not hesitate to call a man evil if he exercised his "right" to throw away all of his 17 year old son's possessions merely because yes, he had the right to do so.  As father he had the "right", but if he didn't explain himself and show that doing so was necessary to preeempt evil or achieve a greater good, and if the possesions were typical things like clothes, radio, bed, etc, the mere fact that he had the "right" to toss them out would not stop us from concluding such father is an asshole (one of modern America's many euphemisms for "you are evil").  You will say God is the special exception to the rules of human reasoning whenever you deem it expedient to carpt that way, but in doing so you a) aren't showing atheists to be fools and b) you foist no intellectual obligation upon the atheist to agree that "god" is indeed an exception to all reasoning that would otherwise make him look evil.

But isn’t it one Christians have been answering for centuries? Yes, of course.

No, they have simply appealed to God's mysterious ways, and Frank Turek pushes the ripple-effect answer, not realizing that in moral analysis, anything at all that helped create a moral good is therefore also "good", or at least logically qualifies as such whether we wish it so or not.  I'm pretty sure America's general stupidity in the moral department means they are still a long way from being willing to be consistent and honestly admit where moral relativism logically leads.   Nobody said typical American morality was the least bit consistent.

There are many fine works already available on this issue, both ancient and modern, and Welty acknowledges his debt to them. But I think this book fills a particular niche at this time. So many contemporary books on the problem of evil fall down in one or more of the following areas:
 They don’t pay close attention to what the Bible actually says about the nature and origin of evil and suffering in the world, and how they fit into God’s purposes for his creation.

The only mystery in the problem of evil is how so many Christians can read their bibles for decades and still miss what's obviously implied by God causing horrific evils in Deuteronomy 28:15-63.  Moses sure doesn't talk about God's relation to evil the way your local Christian pastor does, amen?

They end up taking positions that aren’t theologically orthodox (e.g., denying God’s omnipotence or omniscience).

I would advise Christians to worry whether a theological proposition is biblically justified, not whether it happens to harmonize with "orthodoxy".  As open-theist Christians have shown, there are biblical texts that contradict the "orthodox" doctrines of God's omnipotence and omniscience.  This notion you carry aaround that you "need" to reject any interpretation of a bible verse that would cause it to contradict something else in the bible, merely arises from your belief that the bible is inerrant.  Since even most Christian scholars deny bible inerrancy, and since needing to harmonize anything a person said with everything else they said is not even considered a justifiable hermeneutic by anybody outside those involved in funamentalist religious, I have intellectual justification to accept Deuteronomy 28:15-63 on its own terms, deny the interpretation that harmonizes it with anything Jesus taught, and conclude that such passage really does contradict other biblical teachings.

And don't even get me started on how Copan and Flannagan's "semitic exaggeration" excuse (to get away from God's commanding his people to kill "everybody"), opens the door to the genuine possibility that the tendency of Semitic exaggeration also infects those bible verses that declare God to be omnipotent.  How do you know, admitting the ancient Semitic mind exaggerated things, whether their statements about God were also somewhat exaggerated from what they truly believed?  Perhaps the laudatory nature of the Psalms on God's wonderfulness was never meant to be taken any more literally than the husband's expression that his wife is the most beautiful woman in the world.  Well gee, classical theism requires all such biblical phrases to be taken in a plain literal sense.  Are you quite sure these ancient Semitic biblical authors weren't speaking in an exaggerated sense when extolling god's alleged virtues?  Do you have criteria for knowing when an ancient semitic author is speaking in exaggerated terms about his god and when he isn't?  NO.

They engage in philosophical speculations that aren’t tethered to (and sometimes go against) the teachings of the Bible and the creeds of the Christian church.

That can only be a good thing.  Get out while you can, fool, especially given that christianity's "danger" alarm can be proven to be about as dangerous as kittens playing with bubbles in Candyland.  Why put yourself through the torture of fundamentalism when there is no compelling reason to?

They lack clarity and precision at the very points where clarity and precision are needed. They serve up a big fat waffle-burger instead of a lean filet.

No doubt having something to do with the fact that they are genuinely born-again and sincerely ask God to guide them as they research biblical theology, right?  In other words, not even being born-again and sincerely seeking god's will, is any guarantee that you will avoid drawing heretical conclusions.  You'll excuse me if I don't want to be employed with a game-playing asshole boss like that.

They’re written by authors who lack theological and philosophical training, and who aren’t conversant with the vast scholarly literature on the problem of evil.

No brain-training needed.  See Luke 12:11-12. Just start babbling, and the Holy Spirit will move through thee.

They’re preaching to the choir: helpful for those who already believe, but failing to grapple with real concerns of skeptics.

And whether Christians have any divine obligation to worry about answering "skeptics" is fairly debatable, since because nobody in the NT is debating a "skeptic" or "atheist", it could very well be that Jude 3 carries an implicit qualification, consistent with the rest of the NT, that you are only obligated to defend the faith from other false "believers".  Paul's blind presumption of the divine nature of scripture is all over the NT, and gives the impression he never had anything of a scholarly nature to argue in front of 'skeptics' or "atheists".  I dare you to try and refute me from Acts 17.  Gee, I never knew that running away from a debate challenge after you give your first speech (Acts 17:33) constituted giving "scholarly" argument.   Nothing in Paul's Acts 17 speeches would qualify as scholarly; but they certainly qualifies as preaching to the choir.  You either agree with Paul's presumptions, or he moves on to other people.  Going back and forth would likely create a dispute about the meaning of words, and thus is probably what he would consider "word-wrangling" which he forbade (2nd Timothy 2:14).

They’re either too long-winded to keep the reader’s attention or too cursory to satisfy the reader’s concerns.

Blame it on the Holy Spirit, who can allegedly "cause" any Christian believer to pay attention to anything He thinks they need to pay attention to.  See God exercising similar overriding power in Ezra 1:1. Blame it on God.

And I'm sorry that you appear to believe that the modern Christian's ADHD is something that cannot be solved by anybody except Christian authors employing attention-getting methods of discourse and other known psycholoical tricks intended to keep one's attention.  One wonders how Christians before the age of electricity manged to be edified by those long boring sermons we see in the church fathers.  They couldn't watch it YouTube, so apparently, all hope was lost.

They’re too dry and technical for the layperson.

same answer

Why Is There Evil In The World? avoids all these pitfalls.

You could have simply directed the reader to Deuteronomy 28:15-63, that's the end of the debate about why your kids get kidnapped, or you suffer a mental abnormality, or you become so hungry you start viewing your kids as tasty treats.  This idea you have in your head about how God cries his eyes out because you got lost in the forest and can't find your way home, is total bullshit.  The god who might be planning to let your daughter be raped to death next week, has no plans to tell you in advance, and wants you to continue being happy about him in the present.  What would you do if god gave you an inspired glimpse into his infallible foreknowledge, and you saw that rape happening (i.e., because it is "infallible", what you foresaw is "incapable of failing", see dictionary)?  Would you try to thwart it when that day and time finally arrive, and therefore attempt the logically impossible feat of surprising god, yes or no?  Something tell sme the ONLY reason you love god is because you DON'T know about the evil that he knows you are going to experience in the future.  Keeping you ignorant is apparently the key to keeping you obedient.

Moreover, Greg is ideally qualified to have written this book. He wasn’t raised in a Christian home, so he knows what it’s like to be a skeptical unbeliever. He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of California, an MDiv degree from Westminster Seminary California, and MPhil and DPhil degrees in philosophical theology from the University of Oxford, and he has taught seminary courses in Christian apologetics and philosophy of religion for 15 years. He also serves as one of the pastors at Grace Baptist Church in Wake Forest, so he doesn’t live up in the ivory tower!
 Here’s the table of contents for the book, which should give you a good idea of how Welty tackles the issue:
 1. What is the Problem of Evil?

Easy:  God instructed his people to burn to death the girl who has sex before marriage in her fathers house.  Leviticus 21:9.  Since even spiritually alive people cringe at this thought, there is a very good probability, assuming Christianity is true, that this cringing arises from the Spirit's witness to their heart, not their environmental conditioning, and therefore, it is God himself in the present who is encouraging Christians to hate and despite most of the absurd Mosaic laws.  And if you carp that spiritually alive people can be decieved on this, you are a fool to pretend spiritually dead people can understand this dreck any better, and we have a rational excuse, under your own theology, to dismiss your arguments from consideration.

2. The Greater-Good Theodicy: A Threefold Argument for Three Biblical Themes

Nah, that's merely a Nazi, who, having concluded Hitler can do no wrong, therefore trifles that the holocaust it only bad when seen from a temporal perspective...an argument that would not convince those outside of Nazism.  But probably deemed a clever argument anyway by the Nazis.

3. Licensing the Greater-Good Theodicy: God’s Sovereignty over Evil

Deuteronomy 28:15-63.  he is not merely "sovereign over" evil.  He "CAUSES" evil.

4. Limiting the Greater-Good Theodicy: The Inscrutability of God’s Purposes

You don't know everything about Hitler, so you cannot really say for sure whether he might have had a greater moral good in mind in slaughtering the Jews.

5. Can Free Will or the Laws of Nature Solve the Problem of Evil?

No, for since there is no evidence the will is "free" from the laws of physics, and efforts to show otherwise are absurd trifles motivated by absolutely nothing but blind commitment to just anything and everything the bible might say.  (i.e., if you have no problem saying the purely physical nature of muscles is why damage to the muscle inhibits the muscle's power, why do you have a problem saying the purely physical nature of the brain is why damage to the brain inhibits the mind?  oh, I forgot...the bible doesn't say muscular power comes into the muscle from another dimension, therefore, you don't really care whether muscular power is purely physical or otherwise.  But if the bible says the mind can be separate from the brain, you will go the rest of your life insisting the mind can be separate from the brain, despite the fact that you violate Occam's Razor with that theory more than the naturalistic theory because you now have to allege further absurdities like other dimensions, and words like "spirit" whose definitions tie to nothing physical and are thus forced to remain in fantasyland.

When you have a thought, where do you perceive it taking place?  In your elbow, or inside your skull?  Gee, only fools would ever say the mind and brain are equal, amen?

Nice Try, Glenn: God's creation of carnivores makes him bi-polar, at least

I've decided to do a series of blog responses to Glenn M. Miller, a Christian apologist who, IMO, has far more justification to believe his Christianity than probably any 1000 Christians combined.  His website is here.

Miller's comments are often appealed to by lesser apologists in their effort to show that the Christian or biblical viewpoint on a matter is reasonable and the atheist or skeptical perspective is irrational.

The purpose of the series (all articles will begin with "Nice try, Glenn..." is to demonstrate that even the more "scholarly" apologists fail to demonstrate the unreasonableness or irrationality of atheist bible critics.  Our basic problems with the bible-god and miracles continue standing as more than sufficient rational warrants for rejecting theism in general and Christianity in particular.

In this first article, I respond to Miller's article wherein he tries to reconcile the sadistic suffering inflicted by carnivores, with the idea that the god who created them is somehow still "loving" to create such beasts.

This is my reply to an article by Glenn Miller entitled

Good question...

...does the savagery of predation in nature show that God either isn't, or at least isn't good-hearted?

 [original piece: July 6, 1999  updated: July 18/1999]

 Introduction and Table of Contents

The biotic food-chain of the natural world, with its savage predation and suffering is often given as evidence against the God of the bible.

Perhaps only by lesser informed skeptics.  The truly smart skeptics, like me, recognize that how cruel somebody is, doesn't help inform questions of whether they exist.  However, because the bible teaches both an apathetically cruel deity AND a compassionate loving deity, we are reasonable to insist that if the bible-god exists, he is, without a doubt, bi-polar.  He can immediately turn from being compassionate to being heartlessly sadistic very quickly, and for reasons that cause even today's Christians a certain bit of unease.

The problem Miller doesn't deal with is that skeptics who bemoan the divine atrocities of the bible are indeed legitimately refuting the idiot-fundie notion that God "cares" about living things.  That might not be enough to justify saying such god doesn't exist, but the contention that this god is bi-polar is well founded.

For now, point by point analysis of these types of articles witten by "apologists" is hardly "necessary" for the atheist to be "reasonable" in their rejection of the bible and theism, as there are very powerful atheist arguments that aren't disturbed by trifles about whether god can be loving to create carnivores:

1 - God is an incoherent concept.
2 - Some gospel data, which has better claim to historical truth than most other data, justify saying Jesus died and never came back to life.
3 - Bible inerrancy is false doctrine, thus, I do not use it as a hermeneutic.  I will not give up a contextually and grammatically justified interpretation of a bible verse merely beause it would contradict reality or some other part of the bible.
4 - There are powerful biblical arguements against classical theism, hence, Miller's controlling presupposition (i.e., forever looking for just anything anywhere that might possibly protect bible inerrancy from falsification) is not anything remotely obligatory on the skeptic.
5 - Contrary to popular opinion, reasonableness isn't dependent upon actual accuracy.  Therefore, even if somebody finds Miller's trifles more convincing than my rebuttals, that hardly demonstrates that I'm "unreasonable".   Which then means the atheist can still be reasonable, within normative definitions of the word, to reject theism and Christianity.

I'm fair and consistent in this too:  I believe Christianity is "false", but I don't say the vast majority of Christians are "unreasonable", because reasonableness doesn't necessarily hinge upon accuracy.  I usually reserve the accusation of unreasonableness for special cases where certain Christians act in shocking defiance of common sense.  For example, James Patrick Holding is unreasonable, with his intentionally committing the sins of slander and gossip for more than 20 years, as abundantly documented at this blog. 

So this precise question of whether god is evil for creating carnivores, might be fun to toss around on a boring rainy day, but is ultimately about as relevant as whether somebody's interpretation of a passage in the Book of Mormon was "correct".  It isn't like a person's giving the "incorrect" answer to such a question puts them in any danger.  The vast bulk of Miller's arguments in his numerous articles are, like the bast bulk of all apologetics arguments produced by Christians, nothing more than trifles, or what court judges refer to as "purely academic" questions (i.e., questions whose correct resolution changes precisely nothing in the real world).

Miller continues:

Let me start the analysis of this by citing some different wordings/aspects of this problem (not all with theological conclusions in them):

    First, a juicy one from John Stuart Mill:

"If there are any marks of all special design in creation, one of the things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of all animals should pass their existence in tormenting and devouring other animals" (J.S. Mill, 1874).

And as we'll see, since the old-earth creationists have more biblical justification than young-earth creationism, that ends up requiring that God positively willed from eternity that some animals inflict horrific suffering on others.  The popular fundie Christian notion that the molars of the vegetarian tigers in the Garden of Eden suddenly morphed into fangs after sin entered the world, and degraded their brain cells sufficiently so that they started seeing other animals as food, is not biblical.  Hence, carnivores did not start existing after sin entered the world, the bible teaches they existed by God's positive decree from the beginning.

Hence, causing this god to be reasonably categorized as on the level of a 4 year old toddler who like to inflict cruelty on small animals.  If God is omnipotent, he could have achieved the goal the carnivores ostensibly fulfill, in other ways.  Just like if you are short of rent money, you can probably come up with the money in ways other than by robbing a bank.

    Then, a quote from a popular book on predation:

"Most animals are either eaten or eat other animals. Plants, too, are often consumed by animals. Consequently the chances of being devoured, or of eating some other organism in order to survive, are exceedingly high." [NS:PAP:3]

    Then, a quote from a deep-thinking, good-hearted seeker friend of mine:

"Let's face it: our life cannot exist without the *agonising* death of another breathing, feeling entity. The second law of thermodynamics is just another one, *demonstrating* (as the theories of self-organising energy fail to do) that deterioration is inherent in this universe.

"Charles Darwin wrote about the Ichneumon spider and the nightmarish sort of manner in which its very existence depends on the impregnation of its paralysed victims with its eggs so the hatchlings can have fresh, *live* meat when they hatch (kinda like the Aliens movie). Dawkins, Pinker, and pretty much the ridiculously vast majority of the scientific community keep offering demonstrable evidence of how God cannot fit in a universe where an ichneumon may be so "designed."

And if the source-book for this deity sometimes says he has compassion and other times expresses his sadism toward others, we are perfectly reasonable to say such contradictory properties mean this particular type of god doesn't exist, or is at least bi-polar.

    Lastly, a heartfelt question from a Christian:

"I think some people, Christians or not, will think this question is a little on the soft side. Never the less, in my attempt to reconcile myself to the concept of a merciful loving God in the face of tragedy and pain, I am left with some very unanswered questions. So, here goes

"How should we deal with animal suffering? Not just the idea of, for example, willful human torture of an animal. I am thinking of the whole animal kingdom suffering. Perhaps it is ruefully ironic that only a conscious mind could truly appreciate the suffering of an animal. I pray that animals are not conscious of their pain. They certainly respond to what looks like pain. Am I empathizing with the animal's pain because part of my fallen nature is in a way, animal?

"In the past I tried to take a very mechanistic approach. Animals were beautifully created machines. A pain impulse would simply go to the brain as any other external signal. The brain would route the signal to provide the appropriate response, etc.

"I cannot make myself believe this. I have a dog now, which has changed things. I do not have children, but I imagine the experience would further change my views. I feel a horror for the future death of my dog.

Nature is often called "red in tooth and claw" and the quotes above point out the emotional difficulty this creates for humans. We seen the vivid cases of a lion biting the neck of a Thompson gazelle, or the Ichneumon spider example given above (which is technically incorrect--the Ichneumon is an insect order of wasps, not spiders), or the diagrams of big-bigger-biggest fish eating one another in a food chain lesson. We see chimpanzees (often portrayed as emotionally deep) tear the arm out of its socket of a captured bonobo money (and then eat it with the bonobo screaming there) [PH:GN:84]. We see killer whales, playing with their seal pup food, throwing it back and forth like a beach ball (while the terrified pup is still alive) [NS:DNNHE:xii]. We know that foxes will chase and capture the same shrew, just to let it go and repeat the process [CS:AM:60], and we use the 'cat playing with the mouse' image as a metaphor.

And we also know how tight of a grip bible inerrancy can have on the mind of its devoted disciples.

The quotes above intimate that this situation is radically inconsistent with the existence of the Christian God.

Not really, the "Christian" god as defined in the bible is bi-polar.  But the "Christian" god believed in by most Christians today is little more than a compassionate Santa.  I'm more interested in showing the problems with the biblical data.  The question of why most Christians have a higher moral view of God than the bible teaches, is not very important to me.

There are many, many issues involved in this question, so let me begin by listing some of these:

    Question One: To what extent is the existing predatory situation created by God, and to what extent does God 'endorse' it now? (In other words, has it always been like this, or to what extent is this the result of the Fall or of the Flood?)

    This question will require some basic study of what the biblical data is, and what range of options might exist for how we 'fit' predation into our view of creation, providence, etc. So the data for this will be primarily biblical.

 Jesus made clear that God is the one who feeds the birds:

 26 "Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? (Matt. 6:26 NAU)

So when we see a hawk, which is a "bird of the air",  sadistically tormenting a cuckoo bird that is still alive in the effort to eat (video here, warning: graphic, not intended for children), Jesus thinks this is what the "heavenly father" intended.

    Question Two: How extensive is 'painful predation'? (In other words, DO all things REALLY live only at the expense of agonizing death by those lower on the food chain?)

 Dismissed.  No, obviously, not all food is acquired by lesser animals in a brutal fashion.

    This question will be answered by biological data. We will need to survey the food chain, and ask questions of scope of predation (as opposed to the other possible ecosystem relationships, such as parasitism or commensalism) as well as to what extent each of the creatures involved in a prey-predator relationship actually "feel agony" in a meaningful sense.

No, if your god is omnipotent, he could have created life forms that don't need to inflict misery on others.  he could cause grass to grow by creative decree, cause all life forms to eat this grass, and there you go, no "need" for god to "sustain" the food chain in ways that make predatory behavior sound "necessary".

    Question Three: Where exactly in the act of predation is the theological/moral problem?

The general consensus of modern humanity, including most Christians, that "love" is not sufficiently broad as to be part of anything that displays a level of cruelty that appears arbitrary.  Therefore, the more the bible says god is "loving", the more the existence of carnivores refutes that doctrine.  That is, reality requires either that the bible is wrong and this contradictory loving/sadistic god doesn't exist for the same reason anything else with contradictory properties cannot exist, or, the bible errs in ascribing infinite love to this god.  Sure, we can always trifle that an infinite intelligence might have higher mysterious reasons, in conformity to "love", for allowing sadism in nature, but then again, the bible doesn't consistently support classical theism, the bible god often makes mistakes, and the "anthropomorphism" excuse to get away from these passages, are never grounded in their grammar, immediate context, larger context, cultural context, or genre.  

Is there a moral problem with carrion beetles that eat the dead carcass of an animal (who obviously doesn't feel any pain)?

No, because it is be the admission of most other Christians that infliction of unnecessary pain is the opposite of love. Your trifle that maybe god wished to create a greater good by wanting carnivores to inflict misery on other animals, is easy to dismiss:  under your own classical theism, your god was not required by circumstances to use that method to achieve this unproven higher mysterious good.  If your god could maintain humans with nothing more than manna for 40 years in the wilderness (Exodus 16:35, Numbers 11:4-7), he could also just as magically supply food to all life forms, so that life can sustain itself without there needing to be any food chain involving bacteria or carnivores.

To what extent is there a problem with a gazelle having to avoid a predator every day (or every week) for decades--does this somehow cause "painful stress" for the gazelle that is radically worse (and to the point of "cruel, immoral suffering") than that of having to make a living every day by humans?

To what extent is there a problem with YOU having to avoid a predator every day?  Would you say there was a "problem" if every day you went outside your house, you couldn't stay alive unless you ran faster than the other humans chasing you with intent to kill you?   Live like that for a while, and I'm not so sure you'd continue thinking as highly about god as you currently do.

Is it in the "destructive" experience of the prey (perhaps painful)

What do you mean "perhaps"?  Gee, when the gazelle is screaming as it is being eaten alive, maybe we'd have to debate whether the gazelle was experiencing pain?

as it is being killed by the predator, implying that prey animals that feel no pain (such as zooplankton) as they are eaten are not "included" in this problem?

I'm not seeing the angle, Miller:  gazelles obviously do feel pain, and as an creationist, you are forced to credit their innate desire to avoid the predator to god, who surely is the only reasonable explanation for the gazelle's "intelligence"...right?

Is it in the fact that something dies at the mouth of another, instead of living forever, or only dying "of old age, in its sleep." Does dying of starvation (because some other animal group ate all the grass) count as predation?

 No, but I notice that you are avoiding the real issue by pretending you need to devote time to other questions that allow you to walk away from the problem at hand:  carnivores inflict sadistic misery on other animals, a reality inconsistent with any rational definition of "love".

Does dying of disease (because some very small life-forms attacked it) count?

Irrelevant.

    This, strangely enough, is a philosophical and theological question. How would we decide that it was wrong for a cockroach to die (instead of live forever)?

You'd stay more on track if you confined you analysis to the sadism in the animal world that you yourself mentioned earlier in this article (stuff like "We see chimpanzees (often portrayed as emotionally deep) tear the arm out of its socket of a captured bonobo money (and then eat it with the bonobo screaming there)"

You start losing the debate the more the life forms approach the level of human and are still subject to carnivores.

How would we decide that it was wrong for a cockroach to die suddenly by ingestion by a bird (instead of suddenly by an end-of-life(?) failure of some internal biological function, such as the heart)?

Easy: unless you simply play with words as expediency dictates, birds eating cockroaches "alive" doesn't sound very "loving", even granting that the cockroach is a mere insect with far less self-awareness or pain-receptors than humans have.  So the more you credit such unloving circle of life to your god, the more justified we are to say he is either unloving, or his ideas of love are completely opposite to most of his own people understand "love" to be.  Do I eat hamburger?  yes.  Does that mean I think I can reconcile cattle-slaughter with "love"?  No.  I happily admit not everything about me is "loving".  Your god doesn't have that excuse, unless you become an open-theist.

How would we decide that the suffering of a zebra for 3-5 minutes at the fangs of a cheetah morally "outweighed" the previous 20 years of growing, reproducing, not being eaten or mauled by a predator (being mauling by a predator generally reduced mobility and results in capture quickly thereafter), and community life for some 20+ years?

Easy, under your own creationism, you are forced to blame god solely for the zebra's desire to struggle against the cheetah and attempt escape.  Why does your god want the zebra to struggle against the cheetah, if your god intended for the cheetah to get food that way?

What, is your god like a child with toy soldiers, deliberately setting up circumstances intended to cause life forms to clash and inflict misery on each other?       

Is it "wrong" for my white blood cells to attack and devour bacteria that is harmful to me?

Only if you think the killed bacteria were able to experience as much pain and conscious suffering as the zebra does in the mouth of a cheetah.

    About all we can do with this question is expose the value assumptions that are inherent in the question, and how they are being "used" by the objection.

Then you didn't do a very good job of it.  bonobos that scream while their arms are ripped off by chimpanzees obviously reveal a far bigger contradiction between god's "love" and nature, than what you might find when bacteria are killed by white blood cells.

And once again, there would be no "need" for your god to create such a sadistically interdependent food chain, if the bible is correct in saying he could create ex nihilo and feed humans for 40 years solely on manna.  Under those assumptions, God's choice to feed carnivores by giving them the instinct to hurt other animals is about as arbitrary as the child who throws 15 different insects into a small jar just to watch them tear each other apart.  You don't want to say your god takes pleasure in sadistic shows, but that's your problem.  When you are capable of earning money to pay the rent, but you instead choose to solve the rent problem by robbing a bank, nobody really gives a shit as you testify in court about how your killing of the bank teller achieved the higher good of causing her immediate family to grow closer to Jesus.  Your higher mysterious goals do not transform an evil act into a good act.  Therefore, that also holds in the case of your god's actions in causing suffering.  It doesn't matter if he has higher mysterious reasons for doing this.  The fact that he could achieve his same goals without needing to employ such sadistic measures, shows him to be unloving by any reasonable definition.

I think this is the part where you suddenly discover how biblical open-theism is.

We might also be able to subject these assumptions to some more rigorous philosophical analysis, by examining implications of those assumptions.

Something you'd never do if you came home and found out Rover ate the cat.

    Question Four: How exactly would the predatory situation count as evidence against the Christian God, given the actual details of the food chain/web interrelationships?

Already explained that:  the more you identify the Christian god as the god of "classical theism" (i.e., your god is all-powerful, etc) the more your god could have caused life on earth to sustain itself by means other than carnivorous.  Sort of like if you have a decent education and could easily get a job to pay the bills, the jury will not listen very long as you try to explain how the larger good achieved when you murdered the bank teller (her family grieved and started going to church more) overrides the smaller good you'd have achieved by simply earning your own money.  Where you could have achieved your purpose without inflicting misery, your choice to inflict misery anyway reasonably demonstrates apathy and sadism.  Since the classical-theist god hardly "needed" to create carnivores merely for living things to stay alive, his choice to achieve that system by more sadistic means, demonstrates his apathy and sadism.

    Here we are in another philosophical arena--this is NOT a biological issue!-- and we will have to examine (1) the general evidentialist argument from evil, (2) how the biologists mentioned in the quotes (e.g., Dawkins) are using biological data in philosophical arguments to reach theological conclusions (and how trustworthy such an approach might be); and (3) what alternative scenarios for biodiversity (e.g., all creatures use photosynthesis instead of biomass consumption, all carnivores are scavengers) might be feasible and/or "more moral".

How moral was God's limiting people to eating manna for 40 years?  How moral was it for god to cause grass to grow without the aid of carnivores? How moral was it for god to limit the diet of cattle to grass?

And you wish to pretend that god "needed" carnivores"?  Sure, maybe like a kidnapper "needs" victims.

    Question Five: Are there elements in the existing predatory and/or larger ecological situation that might support the Christian claim that "God is good to all He has made"?

Only if you could, in good conscience, say "God is good to all He had made" to the bonobo while its arms are being ripped off by the chimpanzee.  And yes, I'm thinking bible inerrancy has its grip on your mind that tightly.  

Bible inerrancy caused Hank Hanegraaff (Bible Answerman of CRI) to foolishly argue in the 90's that conscious eternal torment in basically literal hell fire is "loving" of god, so there really aren't any meaningful controls here on the depths to which you are capable of sinking, where you feel doing so will rescue bible inerrancy.  Never mind that Hank eventually found fundie-evangelicalism to be bullshit and joined the Greek Orthodox church.  We have to wonder whether the passing of time will also similarly alert him to the unbiblical and sadistic nature of fire-torture.

    Here we are in another philosophical arena. Can the data of predation as it exists today be interpreted in such a way as to support the proposition that "God arranges matters such as to minimize pain in the life of non-human creatures, in the context of His overall purposes and designs?" (or similar propositions).

No.  As explained previously, the fact that God limited Israel to manna for 40 years proves that he not only can, but sometimes even does, think just magically creating food out of thin air is a legitimate way to solve the food problem, in which case he could have caused all creatures to be limited to eating such ex nihilo food, and we wouldn't be having this debate today.

Or, God have been satisfied with limiting life forms to the immaterial realm, mooting their need to eat, which means all the misery inherent in the physical food chain is avoided.

 You admit in one of your pushbacks:

Without trying to decide this issue here, let me simply point out that Dr. Ross' argument only actually applies to consumption of meat, not to the killing of it. In other words, all carnivores could have been scavengers and only eaten meat dead of 'natural causes'--predation itself is not required to solve the 'energy problem' for active creatures.

 Precisely.  God could have made any life system he wished, including one that involved no carnivore activity. Once again, if you could have solved the rent problem by getting a job, but no, you instead chose to solve it by robbing a bank and killing one of the tellers, nobody will listen to you as you insist that the greater good of the teller's family growing closer to Jesus through their grief, outweighed your evil in murdering her.

Us atheists don't listen to such excuses, even when they are applied to "god".

We would have to conclude that a very basic (low-carnivory, low dietary restrictions, "CNS non-violent") food-chain was created by God, but that the eco-dynamics of the system were substantially modified at/after the Fall and the Flood. 

 That's irrelevant, life didn't suck after the Fall merely because of the Fall, as if the original sin automatically degraded nature.  Life sucked thereafter because God chose to curse the creation:

 14 The LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, Cursed are you more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you will go, And dust you will eat All the days of your life;
 15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel."
 16 To the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children; Yet your desire will be for your husband, And he will rule over you."
 17 Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.
 18 "Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field;
 19 By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return."
 20 Now the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living. (Gen. 3:14-20 NAU)

 Miller continues:

Nevertheless, the modifications allowed to be introduced were calculated, designed, and are regulated in order to preserve bio-diversity and life on the earth, and still achieve overall "more good than bad" in the system. 

 You've never shown that the current system produces more good than bad.  In fact your own bible characterizes the entire world as evil (1st John 5:19), and that the world does little more than give its creatures a reason to groan (Romans 8:22).

Thus the predator-prey relationships (broadly considered) that we see today will have more elements that are "positive" (e.g., defensive modifications, poisons that eliminate feeling/pain as they kill, underdeveloped nervous systems of the largest number of prey) than elements that are "negative" (e.g., violent death involving actual suffering for long periods of time in higher mammals). 

 And since god's merely producing manna by magic and limiting all life forms to eating this would completely eliminate any "need" for carnivores, your god's refusal to do it that way was arbitrary:  he created the carnivore system because he enjoys watching life forms endure horrific misery, not because he couldn't think of a better plan.  

We are also told that God is only 'tolerating' and 'regulating' this situation at the present,

 Implying everything that is implied when a parent doesn't endorse, but only "tolerates" and "regulates" the times in which the babysitter is allowed to sexually molest the child. Yet the more "holy" you pretend god is, the less likely such a fantastical being would "tolerate" or "regulate" anything unholy.  Sort of like the more homophobic the neighbor is, the less likely they would "tolerate" or "regulate" gay men acting gay within their own house.  It just goes without saying.

 and that His purpose in history of rich bio-diversity, in community balance, in loving affirmation, and in the harmony of peace and companionship will eventually be achieved. 

 The hope of the hopeless. 

And then the "lion will lay down with the lamb."

Not sure whether I'll bother to answer Miller's "pushback" commentary, since my arguments against his main points here are powerful and not disturbed by the pushbacks.  The observation that God can approve of a feeding system for life that involves no pain (i.e., creating manna ex nihilo), does a pretty powerful job of demonstrating the evil of a god who chooses to create a painful circle of life anyway.  Trifles about "god's ways are mysterious" are never accepted by Christians when such trifle is is used by 'heretics', so fairness dictates that Christians likewise be prohibited from hiding behind this excuse.

Cold Case Christianity: How God Doesn't Use Hardship, but just laughs at you

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

 

Cold Case Christianity:

Lessons from Law Enforcement: How God Uses Hardship 

Posted: 11 Mar 2019 01:15 AM PDT

One night, officers working the north end of our city were investigating a call of a suspicious person when they saw a suspect run from them and start hopping fences in a residential neighborhood. My trainee and I were working the adjoining beat area and we rolled up to assist them as they looked for the suspect. Once my trainee and I were in the neighborhood, I could see someone run across the street several blocks ahead of us. Unfortunately, once we got to the area, he was nowhere to be seen. We knew the suspect was nearby, so we started canvassing the area trying to see if he was hiding somewhere.

 And because your infinitely just god limits your police work to just empirical evidence, no miracles, sounds like your own god wishes for you to believe that the only hope anybody has in any situation is in looking to the empirical evidence.  How did you discover the Mormon church was heretical?  Prayer?  Or did you look at the empirical evidence?

snip

Have you ever felt like God treated you the way I treat my trainees?

 Once again, you clearly aren't doing apologetics, you are only pandering to those who come to you with their god-presupposition already firmly in place.

Ever felt like God has been unduly harsh, or that He responded to your requests for help with silence, answering your prayer requests with a “No,” or at least a “Not yet?”

 One wonders how the Babylonian women would have answered that after God said he would stir up the Medes to go rape them:

 15 Anyone who is found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold. (Isa. 13:15-17 NAU)

 Maybe you should ask the baby born to David and Bathsheba, a baby your god tortured unnecessarily for 7 days with a painful sickness before finally killing it:

 13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD also has taken away your sin; you shall not die.
 14 "However, because by this deed you have given occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born to you shall surely die."
 15 So Nathan went to his house. Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick.
 16 David therefore inquired of God for the child; and David fasted and went and lay all night on the ground.
 17 The elders of his household stood beside him in order to raise him up from the ground, but he was unwilling and would not eat food with them.
 18 Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they said, "Behold, while the child was still alive, we spoke to him and he did not listen to our voice. How the (2 Sam. 12:13-18 NAU)

Wallace continues:

I don’t know if “love” is an appropriate way to talk about my feeling toward my trainees, but I can say that I honestly want to see them succeed and grow into the police officers I know they need to be.

 Then you are spiritually immature. Your religion requires that you put in less effort to achieve worldly goals, and more effort toward getting people saved.  If you train a trainee, they will have to split their time between work and church stuff, but the trainee who gives up the police academy and pursues ministry full time can do more for the Lord.  See the exact same rationalization from apostle Paul:

  32 But I want you to be free from concern. One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord;
 33 but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife,
 34 and his interests are divided. The woman who is unmarried, and the virgin, is concerned about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband.
 35 This I say for your own benefit; not to put a restraint upon you, but to promote what is appropriate and to secure undistracted devotion to the Lord. (1 Cor. 7:32-35 NAU)

 I predict that Wallace is the most likely of all internet "apologists" to become "liberal" in his Christianity

If I, an imperfect FTO who knows only a little about each of my trainees, am willing to push them beyond their comfort to help them succeed, how much more would God, who truly loves you and knows everything there is to know about you, be willing to push you?

 Irrelevant, your god can wave his magic wand and get even an idolatrous pagan king Cyrus to do whatever god wants him to do, Ezra 1:1.  With such ability, we do good to stop our ears when idiots like you come along and assure us that god allowed our little daughter to be raped to death, for the sake of some greater unfathomable good. 

No, when you have the ability and opportunity to prevent evil, and and you can do so without causing a greater evil, and yet you just sit around doing nothing, this is called "neglect", and according to the moral opinion of most mature Christian and non-Christian adults, such neglect makes you culpable.

If you insist the case is different with your mysterious invisible 'god', then you need to stop pretending it can be beneficial to "reason" about him.  Every time a human analogy makes your god look good, you scream out praise.  Every time a human analogy makes your god look like a sadistic lunatic, you remind everybody that human analogies are too limited to place much confidence in.  Well FUCK YOU.

If I, an imperfect FTO who knows only a little about each of my trainees, am willing to push them beyond their comfort to help them succeed, how much more would God, who knows everything, be willing to push you?

The question is irrelevant to atheists about as much as "how much more would the tooth fairy, who knows everything, be willing to push you?" is irrelevant to those who deny the tooth fairy's existence.

By the way, you are once again merely coddling the classical theism of your followers (i.e, their belief that God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omni-max, all just, all merciful, blah blah blah).  But there are Christians who think the bible teaches that God makes mistakes.  These people are called "open-theists".  See here.

And the open-theists are correct:  God regrets his own prior decision to create man, Genesis 6:6-7, and nothing in the grammar, immediate context or larger context indicate the information in those verses is any less literal the the information in the immediate context.  The single SOLITARY reason you insist this is a mere "anthropomorphism" is because you know the bible elsewhere says God is perfect, and therefore, as a believer in bible inerrancy, you are forced to find a way to "reconcile" that passage with the others in the bible. But objectivity says that what Genesis 6:6 actually means in context, is more important than whether it can be "reconciled" with something else in the bible.

It’s hard to understand why God allows us to experience pain and hardship.

 Not when you deny his existence and affirm the obvious truth that we are nothing more than smart junkyard dogs on a damp dustball hurtling about lost in space.   Belief in a cozy afterlife might help the parents of the child who died in a fire, but your problem is that you try to push that comfort to be more than what it is, as if there's an actual reality behind it.  No. Heretical Christians and Mormons "feel" the Holy Spirit on Sunday morning, but because you insist they interpret the bible incorrectly, this "feeling" isn't from the Holy Spirit. 

So just because something feels good or "works" for you during your hour of need, doesn't mean it must be something more than wishful thinking.

I know I have often hoped God would simply intercede and take care of all my problems. But sometimes hindsight can hep us understand. Looking back at every challenge offered by an FTO, even when it felt like they were belittling me for the sake of being mean, I now recognize the skills l I developed as a result.

 So what you are saying is that if God stands by and allows your child to be abducted and raped to death, this will work the good of causing you to grow spiritually.  The last I checked, the responsible objective person includes ALL the benefits that any human act is likely to cause, before they determine whether such act is morally good or bad. 

Is fatal child rape bad because it degrades the child's earthly life?

Or is fatal child rape good because it causes the parents to cling so much closer to 'god'?

The more you talk about how evil can work a greater good, the more you justify calling an evil act good.  Indeed, it is whether the act produces more good or evil, that we decide whether it is a morally good or morally bad act.  Yeah sure, your bible tells you to avoid saying "let us do evil that good may come" (Romans 3:8), but to me that's nothing more than a stupid ancient author obviously unwilling to go where his own logic inevitably leads.  You may as well call "feeding kids nutritious food" as "evil", then automatically banning any attempt to show the goodness of such act.  Sorry, but if more good than harm is intended to result from the act, then the act is obviously morally "good". 


If we aren't justifying evil by showing some good can be learned from it, then the fact that good can come from evil also cannot be used to vindicate god and his allowing evil

Your obstinate presupposition that God is always "good" regardless of the evidence, is precisely what stands in the way here, and this stupidity on your part stems from little more than your obstinate committment to bible inerrnacy.  If the bible had said the clouds form from god sneezing, you'd be insisting that all weather-related science is a trick of the devil.  FUCK YOU.

In fact, I don’t think I would have developed those skills if I had been protected from the hardships of the job.

 Nice try at justifying evil, but FAIL.  If God can do what he is alleged to have done in Ezra 1:1, then he can simply infuse your mind with whatever skills he wants you to have.  Calvinists aren't wrong to view Proverbs 21:1 as the final nail in your Arminian coffin.  See also Acts 16:14, God opens the heart of a woman who sells purple, which in that culture meant she was a business woman intending to convince other people to indulge their hedonistic desires and waste money and expensive vanities.  So you cannot even argue that God cannot do this until you first make the freewill decision to seek after him.  No, God also turns the hearts of certain sinners while they are in the midst of their worldly passions.  So why doesn't he do to the entire world of sinners, what he does in Ezra 1:1?   Too busy watching HBO?

Is God like the stupid parent who notices the children playing with a loaded gun, but then instead of removing it, simply bitches about it, then later tells the jury in court how wise he is, since because one of his kids died from a gunshot, the rest of the family has, in their grief, grown closer to Jesus?  Well gee, I guess allowing kids to play with loaded guns isn't quite as evil as the non-Christian might have thought?

I am indebted to my FTOs for all the times they were… jerks.

 So when a little girl is raped to death, go tell her parents they should be thankful that God stepped aside and allowed evil to happen as this created for them the opportunity to grow spiritually, which would then, under your own convoluted reasoning, justify them to be joyful and happy.

Do you ever look back on the tough times of your life and see your own growth as a result of hardship?

Do women ever look back on the time when they were raped as children and see their own growth as a result of that hardship?

When I am going through a hard time, I ask God for his help, just like my trainees ask me.

 So do the Mormons.  But you'd insist that because they have a non-existent god, any comforting feeling Mormons get out of prayer, is purely naturalistic and deceptive.  Likewise, if you get a good feeling after prayer to god, that doesn't get rid of the stark possibility that such feeling is purely naturalistic. I suppose the practitioners of voodoo feel exuberant as they dance around slitting a chicken's throat and pouring its blood all over themselves, but us modern day atheists know full well how powerfully deceived these lunatics really are.

And I’m still upset when things don’t go my way.

 Then you need to grow up.  If your daughter is raped to death, this is just god working through his mysterious ways to make you more spiritually mature.  Don't worry, be happy.   The more you are upset at the death of a loved one, the more you are allowing Satan to control your desires.  Remember how Jesus rebuked Peter when Peter resisted Jesus' plan to get killed?

 31 And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
 32 And He was stating the matter plainly. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him.
 33 But turning around and seeing His disciples, He rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind Me, Satan; for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's."   (Mk. 8:31-33 NAU)

If God gave you a vision of his infallible foreknowledge, which showed that next Friday at 11 p.m. your time, your daughter will be kidnapped from her bedroom and raped to death...how would you respond?  In way that would cause Jesus to classify you as "Satan"?  Maybe you need to see how Jesus encouraged his followers to give up custody of their kids to free up more time to follow him around, so you can appreciate the fact that Jesus does not support the extremely powerful emotional bond between mother and child that typically characterizes the modern American Christian family.  Matthew 19:29.

But when I step back, I must acknowledge that God has always been good to me, even when he allowed hardship.

So God is being "good" to the little girl while she endures the hardship of rape?

Tell that to the little girls of the Congo whose only way to survive is as prostitutes in brutal trafficking rings.

I still struggle to feel “okay” through hardships, both professional and personal, but I have to acknowledge that a good God would not coddle me and prevent me from maturing.

 Correct, a good god would wave his magic wand, and cause you to suddenly have whatever level of spiritual maturity he wanted you to have, easy, done, no bloodshed, no pain, no rape, no need to rationalize lunacy.  Ezra 1:1.