AMA-4. Dr. Michael Shermer — The Problem of Evil

In this Ask Me Anything, Dr. Shermer performs a postmortem on his debate/dialogue on with Dr. Brian Huffling at the Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday February 23, 2019. The specific topic was: “Is the Reality of Evil Good Evidence Against the Christian God?” Watch the video of the debate.

This is an exercise in the difference in thinking between a Christian philosopher/theologian/apologist and a secular scientist/humanist/atheist. Dr. Huffling focused on purely philosophical arguments about the nature of God, evil, omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection, whereas Dr. Shermer concentrated on specific examples of evil in the world and challenged Dr. Huffling to explain why God fails to do anything about them. In the end (literally at the end of the debate), when Dr. Shermer pushed him to explain why God allows childhood leukemia and the attendant suffering by children and their loving parents, Dr. Huffling’s answer was “I don’t know.”

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