Pain, Suffering, and Purpose

The Emotional Problem of Evil

This past weekend the On Guard conference was held in Oklahoma, which gave me the opportunity to go. William Lane Craig was speaking on the problem of evil- both the intellectual version and the emotional version. He did an incredible job demonstrating how the intellectual problem has been overcome and that even atheists recognize that. The emotional problem of evil is where he stated that the problem is still quite persuasive.

In my notes on this talk I wrote down three initials. They represents a powerful and popular resource that I wanted to highlight for the apologetic community. I have been dealing with apologetics for several years now, and I cannot remember seeing this resource come up a single time. It seems to be left untapped, yet I'm not certain why.

Creation and the Scientific Method

An Atheist's Argument
A couple years ago I was presented with an argument against theism that appealed to the trustworthiness of the scientific method. It goes like this:

1. The scientific method relies on the constancy of the natural laws for its trustworthiness
2. In order for God to create, He must act in a way that breaks the constancy of the natural laws
3. Therefore, God creating and the trustworthiness of the scientific method are incompatible

The atheist believed that he had me pinned down because I believe that the scientific method is trustworthy. I explained to him the problem with his argument and why I reject his conclusion (I'll explain that later). I haven't really heard this argument presented much lately. But I did come across it again a couple days ago, not from an atheist but a fellow Christian.

Antitheism and Krauss' Wager

Lawrence Krauss- The Antitheist
Recently in a discussion with Justin Brierly (Unbelievable?) and Rodney Holder, Lawrence Krauss made an interesting statement (podcast: 58:01):

"You talk about this god of love and everything else. But somehow if you don't believe in him, you don't get any of the benefits, so you have to believe. And then if you do anything wrong, you're going to be judged for it. I don't want to be judged by god; that's the bottom line."

Earlier in the program, Krauss also described himself as an antitheist and made a distinction from being called an atheist. Taken in the context of the quote above this distinction and title makes a lot of sense. As apologists, it is not enough to address a worldview as a whole, we must look into the specific views of an individual to appeal to them on both an intellectual level and an emotional level. I have a few thoughts that I would like to draw out of this.

Has The "God Particle" Finally Been Discovered?

There has been tremendous excitement in the scientific community over the last week. Research being done at the Large Hadron Collider indicates that another fundamental particle has been detected- the Higgs Boson (a.k.a. "The God Particle"). If verified, this will be one more step to finding a unifying theory for all the quantum forces. You can see a summary of the announcement from Science Daily. and CNN.

For responses from those in the Christian community, see these:



2019 Update: Articles from particle physicist and Large Hadron Collider researcher Dr. Michael G. Strauss:

• Probing The God Particle
• Looking for (the) God (Particle) In All The Wrong Places
• The God Particle...and God

For more from Dr. Strauss, check out his blog, YouTube Channel, Book, and my favorite quotes from his book.

Responses from the original 2012 post: 

• Astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink from Reasons to Believe explains the Higgs Boson (Audio, Article #1 and Article #2)
• Philosopher William Lane Craig from Reasonable Faith responds to the announcement (Audio#1, Audio #2 and Article)
• Nuclear Physicist Jay Wile comments on the appropriateness of the name "God Particle" (Article)
• Philosopher Glenn Peoples examines the implications on God's existence (Article)
• Christian apologist J. Warner Wallace from Please Convince Me examines the discovery (Audio)
• Astrophysicist Hugh Ross from Reasons to Believe explains the Higgs Boson in a four-part series from 2011 (Articles- Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) 
• Christian apologist Sandra Dimas blogs (Take Two) about the meaning of the discovery and includes several extra links to resources from Reasons to Believe (Article) 
• Christian apologist Alan Anderson examines the theistic implications (Article)

🤔The God Paradox: Debunking the 'Who Created God?' Challenge💥

The Question/Challenge

A fairly common question that I hear many atheists raise against any form of theism is "Who created God?" I've noticed that this question often comes around after a theist has presented the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA):

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe had a cause.

Even though the KCA merely concludes that the universe had a cause, the atheist wishes to undermine the theist when they use other arguments (such as the moral argument or teleological argument) to identify the cause as God. The question is designed to show that even God has a cause, and His cause had a cause, which also had a cause, etc. This could go on forever, thus requiring an infinite regress of causes. If, this challenge holds up, then it is a powerful argument against God's existence. So it does warrant a close examination. I have a couple of observations that I wish to bring to light about this challenge.