God's Existence, Science and Faith, Suffering and Evil, Jesus' Resurrection, and Book Reviews

Atheism, Evil and Ultimate Justice

Tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America. This attack shook the world. It abruptly ended nearly 3000 valuable lives and destroyed countless others. It forced people to recognize evil, ask if justice could ever be served, and challenged our ability to move on.

As a Christian it pains me to see such evil in the world. It hurts worse to see atrocities committed in the name of a religion. Many atheists share my feelings and have even become militant against all forms of religion because of it. They claim that there is no way religion can possibly be true if it causes such needless pain and suffering in the world. I want to take a few moments to discuss evil, justice, and forgiveness in the context of the events from a decade ago within both the Christian and atheist worldviews.

Providing Alternative Explanations

There have been several times that someone provided me a phenomenon that supports a specific worldview. They implied that this support for their worldview demonstrated that my worldview was false. The most recent example that comes to mind is a debate that is inside Christianity. As many, both inside and outside the Church, know, Christians debate the age of the earth/universe, and along side that debate tends to be a lesser known debate about the geographical extent of Noah's Flood (whether the flood was worldwide or localized to a single geographical area).

I currently hold that Noah's Flood was a localized event. (I'm not going to go into a huge defense of this position here because the purpose of this post is just to make a quick point, which Noah's flood being local is not it.) A friend of mine gave me two pieces of evidence that he states can only be explained by a geographically world-wide flood. These two being the large amounts of sediment all over the land and aquatic fossils being found on top of many mountains. He told me that this was evidence that the whole world was covered by water, and further concluded that could only have been Noah's flood (worldwide).

Is Heaven Eternal?

A couple months ago, I was asked to give some quick pointers on responding to a person's issues with the existence of eternal punishment in hell. The answers I provided scratch the surface, but seem good enough to post here because they might get someone thinking about the denial of eternal punishment from both a Scriptural position (for the Christian) and a philosophical position (for the non-Christian). The person who was challenging is not a Christian but is willing to accept that Scripture is the source for orthodox Christian belief. The interesting implication that I point out is what inspired the odd title of this post.

Here is the email that I sent (I've edited it a bit for clarification):