References:

(1) The problem of evil, like evil itself, has many faces. For example, it may be expressed as an “intellectual” problem of evil or the “emotional” problem of evil.

(2) The God which people object to is the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Christianity and Judaism, the God of POWER who created the universe, the God of LOVE who loves us so much that He sent His Son to be our substitute upon the cross.

(3) This God is a God of JUSTICE.

(4) Propitiation is a satisfying sacrifice; it satisfied God’s broken law; it satisfied His offended holiness; and I take it that the scripture Rom. 3:23-26 means that God’s justice is satisfied as well.

(5) The problem of evil is considered to be the “rock of atheism.”

(6) In the book “Making Sense Out of Suffering” Peter Kreeft suggests there are at least 15 arguments FOR God. Evil is evidence AGAINST God. But most of the evidence is FOR God.

(7) In the article “Evil and Omnipotence” by J. L. Mackie, in the journal Mind, 1955, pp. 200-212, Mackie provides a synopsis of the problem of evil.

(8) H. J. McCloskey gives a similar analysis of the problem of evil in his 1960 article entitled “God and Evil” in the Philosophical Quarterly.

(9) They both claim there is a contradiction in premise 1 and premise 2 in the typical argument.

(10) 2 versions of the intellectual problem: the logical version and the evidential/probabilistic version.

(11) There is no EXPLICIT contradiction between premise 1 and premise 2 simply because premise 2 is not the direct opposite of premise 1.

(12) So if the atheist thinks there is some hidden IMPLICIT contradiction between them, he must be making some hidden assumptions that would serve to bring out the contradiction and make it explicit.

(13) What are those hidden assumptions?

This is episode 99.