Truth Unites - The Problem of Evil with Dr. Josh Rasmussen

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Here I talk with Dr. Josh Rasmussen about the problem of evil, and a few other topics in the philosophy of religion. Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

Hey everyone, welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. Truth Unites is a place for theology and apologetics done in an ironic way. And I'm really excited to be talking about the problem of evil with Dr. Josh Rasmussen today. Josh, how you doing? Thanks for being here. Thank you. I'm great. Yeah, so I'll just introduce you briefly, although many people will already know of you, but Josh is an outstanding philosopher. He's an associate professor of philosophy at Azusa Pacific University. You can Google his CV and find all kinds of different topics that he's worked on. He has books out with Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press. He's done a book on the argument from reason for God with IVP, a book on that. So this is going to be a great opportunity. I'll link to some of his books, his YouTube channel, and his website in the video description. So check that out. But before we get to the problem of evil, I've got some rapid fire questions that are just for fun.

And this is kind of selfish because I'm just curious. what you would say about some of these things. But what is your favorite argument for God's existence and is it different from the argument you think is most effective? Ah, yeah. It maybe kind of varies in a way based on who I'm talking with and then also kind of what I've been thinking about most recently. And I will say that most recently I've been thinking about

the nature of consciousness and persons and how personal beings can exist out of cosmic debris like in the first place. So I would say like right now, that kind of argument for some kind of fundamental mentality is maybe most gripping on my mind. I think that the arguments that appeal to me the most maybe tend to be more kind of abstract and that oftentimes for others they need something more concrete. Like maybe an argument from fine-tuning of the universe or some kind of argument from design tends to appeal to others more. but for me it is the sort of abstract lines that I feel like I can sort of see them for myself most clearly math was always my favorite subject growing up till I discovered philosophy so I would

say yeah probably some kind of argument from consciousness and then a lot of people know me from my argument from contingency which I also think is a good argument yeah yeah so I was going to ask you about the argument from consciousness because I know that's been in where you've got a lot of work in do you give us just a brief overview of what that argument is so kind of a simplified outline would be something like this. Premise one, there are conscious beings. Premise two, if reality is fundamentally mindless, it doesn't have the sort of powers of a conscious mind. There would never be conscious beings. Therefore, reality is not fundamentally mindless, and it has some kind of power of a conscious mind. And it's interesting, Gavin, how many philosophers actually accept the second premise in the argument

that basically from the mindless foundations, you would never get conscious beings, but then reject the first premise in the argument, that there are conscious beings. And I mean, I discovered this when I was in graduate school, but even recently I've been discovering more and more philosophers who take this line. And to me, that does highlight sort of the challenge of explaining how conscious beings could arise in principle from molecules changing shape. And I will say that in my recent work on this, the more I zoom into this problem of how you get conscious beings out of sort of mindless matter, the more that I've looked at the different angles of this through both science, the latest developments in research on brain science, as well as about even just the nature of matter itself, which is very fascinating. And then thinking about puzzles that philosophers like to think about, this is one of those problems that doesn't like go away on inspection, but in my mind has only become more severe.

I think this is why maybe this is kind of my new and favorite argument, because it just, there are some things that can just start getting really. really clear on inspection, the clarity of the problem. But let me just say because it's such a deep question that connects to so much part of, so many parts of life, many different philosophers come to many different views on this. So it's not like I don't think it's an easy argument to develop. I just point to that rough outline of the argument. Right. Yeah, I remember reading Thomas Nagel a few years ago and it was just so encouraging in a way how much he is a more secular philosopher was just emphasizing this point that consciousness is a real problem it's a real mystery like we don't understand how there can be consciousness from physical reality and it was kind of the same thing

I found when I was doing my work with the problem of or the the argument for God for math and the argument for God from music. I was very skeptical you could ever make any kind of argument, but what gave me confidence is all of these atheist philosophers puzzling over the fundamental mysteriousness of math and music. So I wonder if... Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is one of my discoveries when I was entering the field of consciousness.

It's like this is not a Sunday school argument that pastors are coming up with to sort of help people to believe in God or something. Like the arguments from consciousness are being spearheaded by philosophers who are struggling to understand how conscious beings could exist on any worldview, right? And I've read philosopher after philosopher who changed their thinking on this through studying these questions. There's a philosopher Peter Unger in his early career. He speculated that he himself might not exist. He was wondering whether he could exist if he's purely physical. Then later in his career, he writes a book, argument.

against a physicalist. And here I'm using the term physical and the way that he would where the physical includes fundamental mindlessness. So maybe you can have a broader notion of physical where you could have fundamental mentality that's also physical. But he ends up changing his mind and arguing from his existence to some kind of fundamental mentality that it's not sort of mindless at the base of reality. And, you know, there are others.

Philip Gough, a philosopher that I've had a wonderful time I'm connecting with, who he also cites a similar journey, like wondering, like, how could there be any consciousness at all? And then sort of finding a path to, oh, consciousness must sort of seep to the bottom of reality for there to be any consciousness at all. Bernardo Castro, another one, David Chalmers is very well known for his discussion of the hard problem of consciousness, this problem of how you explain consciousness. And I remember him describing also a kind of transition in this thinking from thinking that the problem of consciousness was just a matter of maybe getting the right kind of brain structure, the right kind of complexity. And then we could explain consciousness, but then realizing, no, it's a category problem.

It's the kind of thing that doesn't seem like we could explain even in principle in terms of chemical reactions. And so I'm totally with you on that observation. And I don't think it's just like a coincidence that you would see that. I think there's even something of a trend where philosophers to their own surprise, I talk about this at the beginning of my book, to their own surprise, they're discovering these problems that just, they don't go away on inspection. And so they invite the philosophers to try to grapple with them. And they're not easy problems.

I don't want to suggest, well, you know, this is just you have to believe one thing versus another thing or one solution over another. These are deep and difficult problems. But I think that's the point is that no matter what, worldview you're coming to, you can see and appreciate the problem of understanding how conscious beings like ourselves could come to exist in the world. And it's not the kind of thing that people who already believe in a foundational mind or fundamental reality that's personal come to this view about these problems. It's actually being, the problems are spearheaded, I think,

in their strongest form by philosophers who distance themselves from religion very much. Yeah. So Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating. Okay, so let me ask about the ontological argument. This is an area you've done work as well. Now, that's my favorite argument. But I ask, you know, what's your favorite versus most effective? Because I would acknowledge, probably not the most effective for everyday evangelism, but it's also a really interesting argument. Do you tell us what is the ontological argument, and do you think it works? So you can think of it as an argument from the sort of the concept or nature of God. So you think of God as like this great being. And he's so great, in fact, like the greatest conceivable being. that he couldn't just be contained in one reality. You'd have to be contained in all realities, not just in your imagination, but an actual reality. So there's this argument from the concept of God to the reality of God, and then this argument has many different forms.

And let me just say this argument is one where I had a friend earlier in graduate school who he likes the analogical argument, and I remember thinking about him that that just kind of shows that he's too zealous about his theistic arguments. he likes theistic arguments too easily. And I just remember just being in great resistance to that argument. It's like one of those arguments that you don't really get points as an academic philosopher for liking that argument because it feels like a sort of a trick of logic.

And there are many different forms of the argument. But I will say that recently I've come to see certain lines, certain pathways of reason from the concept of God, that I think they're very interesting to me. And I think that there is a pathway there to explore. and this is leading me to be more optimistic about this kind of argument. But like you said, it doesn't seem to be the first argument that people go to in terms of maybe persuading people, but I think for those who are sort of interested in abstract lines of reason, it can be like very interesting kind of argument. Yeah. Yeah. I've often felt if nothing else, it just helps you think about the nature of God.

The nature of God. Yeah. It kind of expands your mind a little bit to see the uniqueness of God. and yeah okay um okay two more quick questions uh top three or four books in the philosophy of religion you've ever read now i'm putting you on the spot with that so if you can't think of exactly three four but um i wanted to ask you that because i'm always on the hunt for kind of what are the clearest most helpful texts in this area i thought william rose book on the cosmological argument was first rate very clear and you know we're going to be talking about talking about the problem of evil. William Rowe is well known for his work on the problem of evil.

He's less known for his work on the cosmological argument, but his book on the cosmological argument be top tier. Anything by Alvin Plantinga is very special. I would say you've probably read some of this, but like his work in epistemology that connects to thinking about God. So, warrant and proper function, for example, it's an epistemology book, but he connects it to, you know, how we develop faculties that can actually be tracking truth in a proper way, how we can get knowledge. And so he kind of in a way implicitly has an argument from our ability to have these properly functioning systems that give us knowledge to a kind of design plan. I'd say that's one of the top ones. That's two.

Richard Swinburne's book, The Existence of God, I would say, is a very good one. commend that one, very clear-minded. And I'll just add one more in here, J.L. Mackey's book, The Miracle of Theism. I remember reading that when I was in college, actually, and being very impressed by the quality of his argumentation there. And I felt like he did a good job. He's arguing in a way defending atheism, but I thought he did a good job representing different theistic arguments as he analyzed those. So those will be a few. Okay, fascinating. Okay. So the last one will set us up here to get into the problem of evil and that's why should non philosophers care about the problem of evil and just to preface it a little bit you know we already talked a little bit before we started recording just that

we're not going to keep this interview just at a strictly academic level it's not just for people who have an academic interest in the problem of evil but it'll also be applying to real life and the real struggles of life so in view of that why should this topic of problem of evil be of interest for people if they're not a philosopher. Yeah, I mean, it's very personal. I mentioned to you before the show. My wife and I, two years ago, we had a stillbirth, completely unexpected. We went to the hospital. She was going in labor. We had, you know, we just thought we're going to have a baby. And then they didn't find a heartbeat. And that was very difficult. I remember, we both processed that in different ways, and we continue to process that. But I remember immediately

at that time, just being really confronted with the reality of bad things happening and thinking specifically about that child in my wife's womb and thinking, if God loves that child is even half as much as my wife does. Because I was like, my wife would not allow the child to accidentally get caught up in the umbilical cord, which is what apparently happened. It's like as soon as you see the child's neck coming into the biblical cord, you stop that. Like, you know, if you love the child, you're able to do it. You've got the power and the desire. You love the job. Why wouldn't you do? And I just remember just like pondering that and like thinking about that. And it was very personal. And I think one thing that sometimes happens is in these philosophical contexts, people get into almost like this debate mode where we're

going to sort of debate whether God exists or, you know, whether the problem of evil shows that God does not exist. But I think it can be often more helpful to think in terms of first, taking, taking seriously the reality of evil and then thinking about who God is if he does exist, what does this tell us about who God is? Even if you are convinced that God exists, I mean, this is I think probably the greatest result in my own thinking reflecting on the problem of evil. It's just like thinking more about how God interacts with us. And then what does that mean for how we interact with others and thinking about the nature of God's personality and the greatness of God's love and what that looks like. And I think that it's so personal

and that it's not just something that, you know, academic philosophers are trying to figure out sitting in their armchairs. It touches every area of life. So I mean, this is really one of probably the most important questions anybody can ever think about. Yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate your approach, not only on this topic, but just your approach to philosophy and discussion, public engagement, in general. I appreciate the work you do. And the way you're kind of approaching this, I'll share at the end of this interview, I'll too share a little bit of just in a 60-second synopsis, my own personal testimony of how I've worked through the problem of evil, and then I'll let you interact with that. But your comments are a good setup for us both to kind of encourage people watching

this if they are believers dealing with the problem of evil to have a sensitivity to it in this way of not being trite and not being triumphalistic and acting like, oh, it isn't really a problem. Because I think, like, for me, I'm a Christian and I'm a pastor, but I'd be very quick to say, this is a real problem. This is a real challenge. This is not something to be too lightly dismissed. And so that could be an encouragement for people as we start off here. If I could just jump in right here on that, is that in my experience, you get the most wisdom. If you face the tension, you face the problem the most. I think psychologically, when we feel a pain, Whether it's an intellectual pain or an emotional pain, we want to run from it as fast as we can.

And I think this leads us to minimizing the reality of the pains. But what I've discovered is if I actually sit with the pains and I focus on them and think about them, there's just minds of wisdom that can flow out of that. And so I think that's another reason to, yeah, as you said, you know, to take it seriously and not just brush over it lightly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, fantastic. Okay, let me ask you to give us what is the problem of evil and could you give an overview of the current state in academic literature on this to any degree? And the reason I ask that is back when I was an undergrad, this was a really fun interview to prepare for because I went back and I pulled out some of my old textbooks from college when I was a philosophy major reading through. And it was I love philosophy, so it was fun to get back into it.

And back then, my perception was that the evidential problem of evil was more of the focus because philosophers like Alvin Plantinca had really undermined to a degree the logical problem of evil. Is that still how it is? Can you give us an overview of the academic state of the question? Yeah, I like how you put that because I would maybe describe it broadly in like three steps or three stages over the last, let's say, 60 to 80 years of philosophers thinking about the problem of evil. And I want to say, I feel like a lot of progress has happened as philosophers from different

perspectives have drilled in deeply and made careful distinctions thinking about different forms of problem of evil. You could think of the problem of evil just roughly as sort of the problem of understanding how a perfectly loving and wise being and all-powerful being could exist. It could exist if there's also all this bad stuff. And sometimes I'll tell my students that that word evil and the problem of evil, it just means bad stuff. Like, it doesn't mean that it has to be like evil in some deep metaphysical way. It could just be some like pain. Just anything bad, things that go wrong, how does that fit in a world if God is at the foundation of the world? I would say maybe three sort of stages. So I think in the beginning stage, you have maybe some initial kind of statements about

evil and God just being logically incompatible. And I mentioned J.L. Mackey, you mean, he's sort of famous for describing the sort of challenge of how God and evil could sort of possibly go together. And one sort of story that philosophers of religion have sometimes told, I think, the reality is more complex than this. But one kind of story is that Planica came along and other theist philosophers and worked out in more careful detail how God and evil could be at least logically possible. Like there's no just contradiction between God exists and evil exists. And part of this project involved being more careful in spelling out a kind of free will defense where you describe how God might value freedom and creatures and then that freedom and creatures

could possibly allow for various kinds of evils and suffering. And then this leads to the sort of evidential problem of evil, which is an argument from evil against God, not so much from the impossibility of evil and God going together, but from the sort of improbability of God and evil going together, or God and even certain kinds of evil going together. And I would say that, so you could say maybe there's this sort of second stage where people are kind of drilling into the evidential problem.

I would say the kind of the more recent stage is maybe this third stage is a kind of increased complexification of both the, logical problem and the evidential problem. So there are forms of logical problem that are back. James Sturba recently wrote a book defending the logical problem of evil. Very well thought out book. And then there's also sort of a lot of meta questions about like how you even can describe the problem of evil or like how to characterize probability, whether the evidential problem

sort of reduces to the logical problems. There's a lot of kind of like framework debates that are very deep. like how to think about probability. So I would say that that's kind of where we're at now and this kind of very like, I want to say, messy land of complexity. But in that messy land of complexity, I do feel like there's been a lot of development and progress in getting to more foundational concepts in probability theory, for example. That's been helpful. So yeah, that's just my rough sketch. Good. Okay, that's helpful. So what are the, talk us through the main theodyses that are on the table. What does the word theodicy mean? And maybe you can just throw out some of the categories as we're

going to be getting into them. So you can think about theodicy roughly as some kind of reason or account of why God might allow some suffering or evil. And one thing I like to sort of illustrate the odysseys is I'll bring in a jar with some red liquid. And the red liquid represents all the bad stuff that's ever happened, right? So tigers eating, you know, it's like other creatures and causing suffering and like when I stub my thumb and all this stuff. So, and then I have these cups and each cup represents a particular reason that God might have for allowing suffering. And so then I begin to pour the bad stuff, the liquid of the bad stuff into these different reasons. And I'll mention a few in just a minute. And then the question is whether you can come up with reasons that can explain all the bad

stuff or whether there's some bad stuff left over. Now, I can just speak for myself. There's always some bad stuff left over for me. So I've been able to explain a lot more than I initially imagine, just kind of thinking through things and having more life experience. But then there's bad stuff left over. And so then the next question we can come back to this is like, what do you do with evil for which, like, you don't really see any good reason for allowing that. Should that be sort of evidence against God? Or is that actually maybe expected if God does exist? So come back to that idea, but just a few theodices that I like to point to in terms of

what I call the great story theodicy. Have you seen my discussion of a great story of the odyssey by chance? I don't think I have. Okay. So I talk about this in my book, How Reason Can Lead to God? reason why I like this is it organizes many different kinds of theodices like from free will, character development, the value of natural laws into this concept of story. So one thing that I've noticed, and I'll ask my students, is sometimes I'll say, like, you know, what are the greatest

stories that you like the most? And I've noticed that there are some themes that students pick out. There's themes that I would pick out in stories that you like. One theme is that there's like some kind of conflict in the story. And then what's the point of the conflict? Well, I think what the conflict does is it displays the characters in the story, and it develops the characters in the story. And so in the greatest stories that we pick out, there are these themes involving character development,

choices, dilemmas that characters have. And let me just say right here, I used to sort of think of the story theodicy as almost like maybe this reason that God would allow evil. But I think it's more helpful, and I've thought about this, especially after the stillbirth, to think not so much in terms of like the souls or the characters serving the story, but that the story is serving the characters. The story is drawing out jewels of understanding in the characters.

It's drawing out opportunities for heroic love, opportunities to forge relationships that just you can't forge those specific kinds of special bonds in any other way. And even though it's painful to go through trials and situations that you don't understand, coming through that forging those relationships, having those connections of love, it can create things in the beings that can then last forever. And so it's kind of like your present momentary sufferings can reap for you an everlasting glory that like far outweighs it okay that's based on a bible verse right um and so i talk about that in my story the odyssey as a way of sort of organizing many different kinds of theodices so the story theodicy is kind of like an umbrella theodicy that organizes like free will

character development uh the value of having um laws and so it's not just random so you have to have some kind of constraints and then but if there's laws and constraints that means not everybody can have what they want because there's limitations with that they want because there's limitations within those constraints. So that's kind of a taste of some of those things. Fascinating. Okay, well, some of the time we'll have to talk more about story as a framework because I find that so helpful myself.

We seem to think alike in some of these areas. So in my book, I'm trying to take four arguments for God's existence and cast them as part of a story. So I'm doing kind of narrative, but not for problem of evil, but just for theistic proofs. And so anyway, it'd be fun to talk more about that. But let me ask you about the free will, a little bit. You mentioned J.L. Mackey earlier. I got a quote from him that's a common response to a free will defense. So let me throw the quote out and see how you'd interact with this. He says, if God has made men such that in their free choices, they sometimes prefer what is good and sometimes what is evil, why could he not have made men such that they always freely choose the good? How would you respond? Yeah. So on one level, initially, you might think, sort of easy response.

God couldn't possibly make somebody do something freely, kind of by definition of free choice. I mean, you might think by definition, free choice means you are the one who does it without anybody making you do it. If somebody makes you do it, that violates what some philosophers call the source condition, a free choice, that you are the source of your action, not somebody else. And you might also think that the only way God could sort of make you do something is if he precludes the alternative option. And so some philosophers think that freedom also implies a kind of alternative. You know, if I freely raise my hand, I had the alternative to not freely raise my hand. So I think there is something to that kind of initial response, but I do think that there is a bit more complexity as you think about, well, you know, what could an omnipotent perfectly knowledgeable being do if he could create a world and he could think, for example, that, hey, you know what, Gavin, I know that you have. free choice, but I also know with my foreknowledge that if I put you in situation A,

you're going to freely do bad. If I put you in situation B, you're going to freely do good. You could have done otherwise. I'm not going to be the one who makes you do what you do. But you know what I can do is I can choose which situation to put you in. And I can put you in to the situations in which I know you'll always do what's good. And then that way, maybe I'm sort of like making you freely do what's right, but not by taking away your free will. So there can be sort of more complex ways sort of in defense of Mackey for seeing how maybe God could create a world that sort of guarantees that everybody freely does what's good. And so then this leads to sort of a more complex analysis. One of the sort of early, I think this is my first publication was actually

on this question. And I was exploring whether God, if he knows all possible people in all possible circumstances, whether he could always sort of find some people who would always freely do what's right in whatever world he creates them, as long as he doesn't put them into situations in which he knows he'll do bad. And I remember actually asked Alvin Plantinga about this argument, because Plantinga, you know, he's well known for his defense of the, you know, the free will defense that we have free choice and not even God could sort of make us freely do what we do. And his answer to me was kind of interesting. So he suggested to me that, well, you know, maybe, you know, maybe God, his plan is to make all possible persons.

And since his plans to make all possible persons, and God doesn't have control over what the possible persons would freely do, unless he just takes away their free choice, God might sort of see that every possible person would go astray. And so because of that, God isn't actually able to guarantee that everybody does what's right if he wants to also create all the possible persons. So, like, in other words, he could maybe make one or two people or ten people, or maybe some large finite number of people that always do.

It's right. But God has this greater desire to make all the people, all the possible people. And, yeah, so then he had this idea that God wouldn't be able to do that by the logical constraints. There's more one could say about this because the defense that I gave of Mackey depends on a certain view of God's foreknowledge. and a number of philosophers, Christian philosophers, wouldn't hold to that view of God's foreknowledge. There are other options like a kind of simple foreknowledge view where God just sort of sees the future.

Maybe that's sort of logically posterior to his decision of who to create or a kind of open theist view where God, it's sort of logically impossible to see ahead of time what free creatures would do. So he wouldn't be able to sort of make these kinds of plans to guarantee that everybody freely does what's right. Okay. I need to just stop there because there's just many more options in play.

But I think my short answer would be that it might not be possible for God to do that without violating the nature of free will. Right, right, right. Now, how would you respond if someone says this? They say, look, you Christians, you believe that in the Eschaton, on the New Earth, at the final resurrection, the saints and the angels will be incapable of sinning. You know, there's no risk that 1,000 years into heaven, there's going to be a second fall, you know? So you think that you could be, it seems like it's possible logically, for creatures to be sort of perfected in righteousness in some way.

So someone can just say, look, why didn't God just set it up like that back at the Garden of Eden? Why, you know, if you can do it then, why didn't he do it back here? How would you interact with a concern like that? I love that question. Have you actually seen I have a paper on this? It's about the value of the freedom to do evil. Have you by chance seen that paper? I think I've seen it, but I have not read through it yet.

Okay. Yeah, it's about this exact question. And the question is, you know, if freedom is so valuable, then do people in heaven still have that freedom, like, to do evil? And if they do, then does that mean that heaven is going to include evil in it? And now you might say, well, heaven by definition is the place where there's no evil. So if anybody, like, does bad in heaven, then they sort of leave heaven. They become, like, fallen beings, right?

like fallen angels, you might think, we're in heaven, then they sort of left heaven. But, you know, isn't there supposed to be the state where you're not sort of worried about leaving heaven? Like, you're sort of, you're going to be guaranteed to continue to have sort of a happy state forever without sin. And it's interesting because some philosophers, James Senate, for example, and I also developed this in an article, had made the article of the argument that it might be that certain future states depend on certain free will states. So it's like, it might be that part of what makes a heavenly place good is that it's populated with beings who made certain free will choices earlier. In fact, actually, Alvin Planooga was also telling me about this idea one time in his office hours because I was asking him about this question. And he said that he thought, you know, maybe there's this value and choosing to sort of be on the side of good.

And then, you know, once you make that choice, you don't have to like keep remaking that choice forever and ever. there's like a point where you can sort of be fixed into that choice. And maybe there's something actually special about living in a reality with people who have chosen good rather than sort of being forced like robots to be good. And then you can sort of experience that goodness, that good state of having chosen the good being on this good side through choice forever and ever and ever. So that might be one idea. Yeah, yeah.

Fascinating. That's really cool. Okay. You mentioned William Rose. earlier let me I was going to mention a problem that he brings up this is a metaphor that he's used I remember when I first read about this in college it stayed with my mind and imagination to this day and it's an exam so he distinguishes between natural evil and moral evil and so he's talking about natural evil as and

this for me is the most poignant part of the problem of evil and the one I've wrestled with the most so you know animal suffering before the human fall for example. Really tough aspect of this problem. So his example is a, or even after the human fall, but totally seemingly not related to human beings in some way might be another part of it. But his example is of a deer, I think he even says a baby deer. Baby deer, yeah. Ratchet up the emotional impact. A forest fire is caused by lightning. The deer is trapped, badly wounded, and dies slowly. Okay. We won't do. describe it any more than that. But obviously, it's kind of like this gripping, vivid presentation of natural evil.

How would you interact with the concern that, you know, some of these the odysseys, they seem like they're more squared for human suffering, and aspects of natural evil just are not touched by them? How would you respond to that and what answers can we give to the problem of natural evil? Yeah. So this is a problem that does touch me quite a bit. You know, if I'm addressing someone's concern, it might be just even my own concern, like what I think about this. Actually, just a few weeks ago, my wife, this is after we had given birth to our newborn, who's about a month old. So this is like pretty soon after. And she was looking outside the window and there were some baby birds. And then there was like this big bird that was coming in and like attacking the baby birds.

And so this mother protective bird was trying to protect the baby birds. And so this mother protective bird was trying to protect the baby birds from this bigger bird. And the bigger bird just persisted and attacked and then began to just tear those babies apart and meddling. And this led Rachel to cry and even I welled up in tears because like I said, you know, we also lost a child. And it was just like in our four-year-old, because Rachel was talking about that, she's like, Josh, those birds, those birds. And our four-year-old just said, that's too evil. That's what he said. And I asked him, like, well, why do you, I actually just asked him this.

Like, well, why do you think, you know, if God is there and God loves those birds? Like, why do you think God wanted that to happen? He was like, no. Like, do, well, why do you think God didn't stop it? And he just said, as a four-year-old, he said, he couldn't. God couldn't stop it. And then I asked him, well, why? Why couldn't he stop it?

And then our seven-year-old, he said, you know, we said, he didn't. And our seven-year-old was there, too. And she had some ideas about those birds. I'm trying to remember exactly what she said, but it connected to something about, you know, their own development as beings, which we will probably talk more about here. But I thought actually my four-year-old's answer was kind of interesting because, you know, you might wonder, well, why wouldn't God be able to intervene if he's all powerful? And one thing that I've thought a lot about in the last few years, just thinking about our own child being lost, is both the value and the reality of having contexts where God himself agrees with beings.

Maybe the beings even have some kind of, either a kind of pre-birth contract with God to agree or God knows what they would have agreed to. and there's a kind of an agreement for there to be a certain kind of state of limitation where those beings can go through experiences that contribute to the development of their soul, contribute to their understanding of life and their experiences of love and heroism and courage and things that can actually continue with them. Now, people listening to this or watching this might think, well, how can this work for animals? Do animals have souls? like what are you saying Josh right and let me just say that so the animal suffering always seemed like

the hardest problem of people for me but I've realized now that I think a lot of the reason why it was such a hard problem was because I had certain theological views about God that were sort of limiting my awareness of the options and I've just changed my view on whether animals have souls and whether those souls can continue so I would say for me it's it's beyond even just like 50-50 like I feel pretty sure that animals have, well, I think of a soul as the kind of substance that can have consciousness. I think animals do have consciousness. And that, so therefore they have that kind of substance that can have consciousness. And that all the experiences that contribute to their development can etch within them jewels of understanding jewels of character, jewels of just beautiful

qualities that then they can carry with them. And so I don't believe that a soul is limited to this life. I think animal souls can continue. I mean, the Bible talks about animals and other places, right? So I think that it's not sort of anti-biblical idea, but just thinking about sort of the nature of conscious beings. And I would even argue maybe from that sort of story theodicy, like what I would expect if God exists, I would expect there to be soul-building story adventures for all beings, and wouldn't just be limited to human beings, be for angelic beings, beings large and small. And so I think that can help maybe to clear away the feeling that it's impossible

and maybe even the feeling that there couldn't even probably be a good reason for some of those things, that in fact actually very existence of soul-building adventures where those things can happen just probably wouldn't happen from sort of mindless matter. would never produce any story at all, you know, but that if there is a soul building story, that actually fits better with a kind of broadly the theistic view of the world, it seems to me. Yeah, yeah, fascinating. Okay, so in this interview, we're kind of doing a big overview of problem of evil, all the different angles of it.

I would love if we could talk again sometimes specifically about this issue, animal suffering, because your thoughts about animals having souls, and then there's just so much there that'd be fun to explore. And by the way, it's amazing that you can think this lucidly when you've got a one-month-old. We're having a baby in one month. Oh, nice. Congratulations. Yeah, thanks.

Yeah, I probably won't be thinking about philosophy this clearly and how it is with sleep afterwards. But anyway, so I appreciate you doing this. But let me ask you another question. So John Hick, for the philosopher, he has this basic conceptual distinction that I've always found really helpful in. And so he distinguishes between Augustinian backward-looking theodices and Irian-forward-looking theodices. So he's drawing from Augustine and I'm saying, you know, so in one of these, and this is very broad, but one of these were saying something is bad because it got broken. It fell. That's Augustine's way of thinking.

In Irenaeus, this way of thinking something is bad because it's in development. It's in process. Now, obviously they're not mutually exclusive, you know, but I found that basic distinction so helpful. And for him, he's wanting to push in the Iranian direction with, and I think you've alluded to this already, with a soul-making theodic. And he says, quote, the very mystery of natural evil, the very fact that disasters afflict human beings in contingent, undirected, and haphazard ways is itself a necessary feature of a world that calls forth mutual. aid and builds up mutual caring and love. How do you assess his proposal? No, that resonates very much with me.

In fact, I was actually thinking about how we voluntarily come into states of conflict. Like, we'll play video games. And it's not just states of conflict on screens. We'll go and box each other. Or, you know, like, it'll get violent. And, you know, we try to have controlled versions of these states. But we do that. Why?

because there's something about the experience of challenge, of conflict, of opportunities for us to go against each other. I was actually just reading recently that the Cambrian explosion in the animal kingdom followed the development of the meat eaters. The meat eaters, they were scavengers. They would eat the dead carcasses that would help clean up the environment. But then they would eat each other. And that actually led to this arms race of the bodies, you know, improving through the selection practices. And I just think about that, you know, I mean, people might say, oh, well, you know, isn't there sort of another way to build bodies apart from the sort of evolutionary experience? But the thing is, if we can understand that we aren't just bodies, we're conscious beings, we are beings that have the capacity to grow in character, to grow in awareness of kinds of relationships. And if you think about this sort of conflict and the challenge that we experience in our states of limitation, that they actually can then develop a sort of in the Aranesian soul-building sense of virtues,

that you can't just sort of calculate through manipulation of bodies. It really comes through the conflict and through the challenge. Now, that isn't to say that the reason that God sort of plans the challenge is so that you can build your soul. It could be that sort of backward-looking Augustinian way in which there's also indeterminacy and free will baked into the natural order, which then creates the risk of things just going wrong. And so I like to sort of combine these. It's like so God and his wisdom can see how in the context where things go wrong, he can work those for good, even though he's not like a chess master calculating.

I'm going to have you experience this so that you can develop this character. It's like, well, maybe he could do that. But it could be that God creates a world where there's risk and interminacy and free will, knowing that if things go wrong this way and that way, those things that go wrong can still be worked out for everlasting goods that are unique to the nature of the problem. So it's not just that he could get those goods in another way. Those goods are unique to the nature of that experience, the nature of the problem. And so then that would far outweigh the problem. And so that might be a way of sort of combining the sort of soulmaking with this sort of fallen,

indeterministic aspect of reality. That makes sense? I don't know. Yeah, totally makes sense. Yeah, I've always thought, you know, that it feels like these two different instincts for approaching it, the Augustinian and the Iranian really can support one another. And where one of them might fall short, maybe the other end can come into help and they can play tag team at times, as I've thought about. Because if you put all your cards in one or the other, it seems like it's a much weaker argument overall. I agree. Yeah. So, yeah.

Let me ask you about greater goods theodices. So Jonathan Edwards has a quote where he says, when God permits evil, it is always for the sake of the good of which it will be an occasion. And this is one of the possible responses you find in Augustine and others as well. It's kind of like in a painting, there's the dark and the light, and they both have to be there for the composite beauty of the whole. And so evil is serving the greater good in the bigger picture and so forth. And the question I want to ask about that idea is, some people find these logically possible but emotionally unsatisfying.

And that's sort of how I feel about these. Given the scope of evil, the nature of evil, it seems like some evil at least is gratuitous or is seemingly gratuitous. How do you feel about greater goods, the odysseys? Yeah, here again, I think a lot like you. So I remember Alvin Planigo one time he told me that he didn't think that like any particular theodicy or answer to evil really explains all evils. But maybe like many of them working together can explain a lot, can sort of answer a lot. But then even then, this goes back to the metaphor of having this or liquid of bad stuff and you're

sort of pouring it out into the different cups of theodices that you can think of. And then you sort of run out and you're like, you know what, this evil over here, I just don't even. understand how it could exist at all. And here, I think it's important, very important to distinguish between that looks gratuitous because I see no good reason versus this is going to sound the same, but it's like logically importantly different. That doesn't look to have a point. It's different than it looks to not have a point. Those are different because if it looks to not have a point, that's like you have the appearance of the pointlessness. If it doesn't look to have a point, a point. That might be sort of like right now there might be a spider in this room. It doesn't

look like there's a spider in this room. It doesn't look like there isn't a spider in this room, but spiders are too small either way. I can't really see either way. It doesn't look like there's an elephant in this room. But hey, that's different because it also looks like there's not an elephant in this room. If there were an elephant, I would see it. So I often think that like some of God's reasons might be God-sized in the sense that they take into account a complexity that I wouldn't expect to see if God were real, right? Like, if there's this infinite mind that takes an account all the possibilities and all the goods, I actually think I would expect there to be some things in the world that would happen for reasons that I'm not seeing. So this is kind of a weird way of

actually arguing that if there's some liquid left, you know, so the greater goods the odyssey doesn't really explain some of this bad stuff over here. That doesn't seem like God would allow this just for some greater good. There's got to be something else that that isn't like that. I mean, it's weird because you could almost think that it is a greater good to allow there to be free will. But I think of that as being sort of looking to the past, like God already made free will that can result in this kind of a thing, right?

But it might be that you just can't think of anything. There's just nothing you can think of. And what I'm suggesting is like you might actually expect if God were real that now everything would make sense. And so in a weird way, having some things you still don't understand doesn't necessarily mean that you have evidence against the existence of God. It can. It can, but it doesn't necessarily have to mean that. So I think those are just some of my thoughts about that. I mean, I definitely share the feeling that some things, as far as I can tell, it just doesn't seem like that's something that God would plan, you know, that God would allow even on purpose

if he was aware of that. But then I think, you know, well, maybe there is some kind of an agreement where God and creatures actually agreed. Like, don't interfere because I want to experience this life story, this life purpose. And I want to experience the courage of all that. You know, and whether that means that God and creature makes that agreement before the creature is born or whether it's a kind of a hypothetical agreement where God knows the creature would agree to it. Swinburne talks about this idea. Either way, the sort of the logic of the point is the same is that

you know, it might be that actually the reason God is sort of alarming this and the reason this looks gratuitous is precisely because this is part of the challenge that you signed up for. It's part of the hero-making challenge. And I guess I don't find that so implausible if God exists. And, Gavin, this is the thing, this is where I start thinking about it, because I think if God doesn't exist, and if instead reality is fundamentally just mindless noise or even a mind that's sort of neutral and uninterested in positive unfoldings of things, then I don't really have any expectation that there would be any soul-making adventures of any kind. I wouldn't expect there

to even be any evolution of beings, to be honest. I would just expect there to be just, I guess, random motions or maybe that being, if it has no sort of goodness to it, it might sort of entertain itself in certain ways. But I wouldn't expect the kinds of relationship building adventures that we find ourselves in. And let me be careful. I'm not trying to say this answers all the problems or that people wouldn't have good reason to be puzzled about certain things.

But just that when I think about it from my perspective, I actually find that even the very puzzling nature of reality, the very questions, seems like they wouldn't even arise if reality is just fundamentally mindless or indifferent. Seems like questions are the kinds of things that arise in a good movie

in a hero building story as designed to draw out your greatness. You know, that's how it looks to me. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, so we're back to the power of narrative, which, you're right. It is such a helpful framework. Let me ask you a few final questions nearing the end here of a pastoral and practical nature for, like, let's see, you're talking to a real person about this. And so starting off with the 20th century, lots of suffering in the 20th century.

lots of suffering in the 20th century we've got the Holocaust for example unfathomable evil and suffering and we can mention other examples as well suppose you're talking and i think i sent you a quote of somebody who the quote is basically somebody saying um you can't look at the holocaust and still believe in god anyone who's good is going to intervene um how so someone's response to these challenges and i've been surprised how many people i've known i've had a lot of friends who've deconstructed their faith. One of, like, fully deconstructed, you know, and one of the things, so I've tried to listen very carefully to them.

Part of that, that's one of the ingredients in my own interest in apologetics. And one of the things I've heard more frequently than I expected is people who say, I don't disbelieve in God. I just disbelieve in his goodness. He may be out there. I just don't think he's, I just don't think I like him. because of things like whether it's the Holocaust or a historical event like that or something personal and local in one's own life.

If someone is saying that, maybe God is out there, but he's just not good. How would you interact with a person in real life to try to help them in a circumstance like that? I'm going to be curious to hear your answer to the same question. But this is a very personal question because, yeah, I mean, people very close to me. Well, I mean, everybody deals with them. everybody deals with who is God and how can God be good in this circumstance. And people very close to me have expressed this worry. As a philosopher, for whatever reason, my greatest sort of worry, I guess, has always been about whether reality has sort of any fundamental intelligence or not. And that seems like,

well, if it has fundamental intelligence then seems like, well, intelligence sort of implies a kind of in terms of goodness, and I think that you can't have fundamental reality being bad because I think badness depends on goodness. So I've never really been as worried about the sort of problem of like how could God be good. But I mean, but I have close friends that that is their worry. You know, they're not worried about how reality could have a mental structure. In fact, for them, the idea that mind comes out of mindless grains of reality is just crazy to them. So they think mind is fundamental, but then they have a hard time understanding how God could be good. in a way that's like meaningful to us,

in a way that can make us feel safe. Like maybe God's good in some abstract way, but it's not in a way that makes us feel safe. And I mean, I feel like, you know, this is kind of a pastor's question, but I feel like first and foremost, like I can't be treating that conversation as like a project where I'm trying

to like solve somebody's problem. I feel like all that I can really do is just like treat it as, okay, I need to listen, I need to connect. I need to understand what you're feeling, and maybe feel that with you and just sort of sit in that with you. And then if we can move into the sort of philosophy talk

about, well, how can this make sense? Then I'm going to start making some of these distinctions. You know, I might come back to, okay, well, what is the nature of good? What's the nature of bad? Could the foundational reality be bad? What does that really mean that it's bad? Is it departing from some standard of goodness

or some prior state of good? Because I tend to think of bad as sort of a destruction of the good. Like what makes it bad for me to rip your face apart is that your face is so beautiful, you know. And so ripping it apart, that would be tragic, right? I saw a car, I was driving home today. I saw a car and part of it was just smashed. And there's like my mind just saw like negativity there.

It's like, well, why? Because it's a departure from something that's beautiful, right? But if there's, at the foundation of reality, if that's just bad, well, then that can't be a departure from something prior that's good. It doesn't even make sense, right? So, I mean, so those are some of the things that I think about just sort of on a logical level. Yeah. I'm curious, like, how do you sort of interact in those sorts of conversations? Yeah.

I think what you were sharing at the beginning about looking to connect is a lot of wisdom in it. Because my experience in dealing with people pastorally has been that most of the time, the logical answer is a small piece of the pie for what they're really needing. It's usually something. I mean, I don't want to minimize that aspect of it, but a lot of times I've just been amazed at how much you don't try to solve the problem for them. When they ask you, you give helpful resources and possibilities for them to explore, but you're journeying alongside them as a friend and you're showing love, compassion, understanding. It almost, in some ways, people can make it worse for somebody if they try to give too glib of an answer. because then the person feels misunderstood and alienated and if nothing else, just to cry with the person.

If they've been to a personal tragedy, I would say, actually this is maybe something good for us to emphasize that may be useful for our viewers, maybe more so than any other things we're getting into because it's a practical piece of advice of just probably don't give any answers whatsoever in any way to someone if they're in the midst of traumatic suffering. they probably just cry with them, weep with those who weep and just wait a little bit of time before anything and wait until they're asking questions because sometimes that can make things worse. I mean, the one thing Jokes comforters do right, I think, at the beginning is they're just silent for a while. Yeah. They're not too quick to jump the gun with answers. Yeah. I think there's a, I'll give an anecdote about this and then I'll pause for you to interact with this if you want. there's a man he wrote a book called I think it the book was called the view from a hearse

I think if I recall correctly he'd lost three of his children you know one of those horrible forms of suffering and he said some people would come to me with with their Bible verses and they would share with me you know here's why you should have hope and they would give me reasons to keep hoping and I couldn't couldn't wait for them to leave some people would come and they would just sit and cry and I couldn't bear to bear it when they left and I just think there's a lot of human wisdom in that I mean it's wonderful to think at the logical level as well but boy sometimes people just need you to suffer with them and enter into the suffering and because sometimes our answers can even be a form of emotional distance from the person and if we enter into even their confusion

with them to just say gosh I'm really perplexed too I have no clue Why this is happening? That might be like oxygen to the sufferer. So that, I mean, I don't want to be too legalistic with that counsel. You know, sometimes people, different people are different needs. But it's something maybe to think about. I don't know. And I felt that helpful myself.

You know, when we lost our child, it seemed like when people came to us and just said, you know, I'm so sorry for your loss. And, you know, one of the most meaningful things that somebody shared with me, and this was related to my own questions about like, well, why would God allow this? It wasn't a direct answer to the question, but she said, well, first she asked me, what were you doing a week ago at this time? So she didn't know that, she didn't know the details, but she didn't know, you know, like when he died. And so I didn't want to fill her in with the idea. So I asked her, why do you ask? And she said, it's because she felt like the Lord woke her up in the

morning and told her that we were saying our goodbyes. And then she said, a second witness, she said at the same time her friend like texted her or called her and said the same thing that that we were saying our goodbyes that morning like five in the morning well it turns out that at exactly that time we were videotaping saying goodbye to elijah james our baby and at that time it was interesting too because the night before we were praying no heartbeat and i felt like its soul was like there it's like i can't really describe it but i just felt like it was there next morning felt like it was completely lifeless. And so I felt maybe kind of relieved by that because it was just lifeless. But I remember feeling very touched by what she said because it gave me the feeling

that whatever sort of the explanation is, it wasn't just invisible to God. Like it seemed very specific that there was information transferred to her to two people that we were saying goodbye. And, you know, and there's no other way that she could know that. Now, you know, as a philosopher, thinking, you know, it could be coincidence or whatever, but I took it as evidence that, you know, God was there. It was real.

Like, I felt like the soul was there. I felt like the soul was there. I felt like there was a purpose in that soul being connected to us in that experience. I felt like it maybe even understood what it was doing with God's permission, you know, to come and connect. And, I mean, this is personal.

I think I can share this as well. One of the things that was kind of confusing, was Rachel, my wife, she felt like before she even had the baby, she felt like God asked her if she would have another baby. This would be baby number five. And she said yes. At the same time, I had a dream that she was pregnant. And I kind of joked with Rachel. It's like, well, you know, God never asked me if you could get pregnant again. He just showed me that you were going to, you know. So it seemed like there was almost like this sort of evidence that to us, we kind of took a sort of personal evidence that this was something God wanted.

And it's like, well, wait a minute, God, if this is something you want and you're powerful enough to keep the baby alive, why would the baby go away so quick? But the thing is, it's true, though, that she gave birth. It wasn't like, you know, do you want this baby? Oh, you don't have the baby. She did have the baby. You know, it wasn't a miscarriage even. I mean, it was just like a full, you know, we held the baby.

Just wasn't with us very long, right? And so when our friends gave the indication of God seeing us, and I think this kind of goes to what you're saying, Gavin, because it was actually helpful to feel like we were seen and known, even without an explanation. And it's almost like an explanation would almost like trivialize it, make it almost not as serious as it was or significant. But it was just like, you know what, actually you are seeing, you are known,

there is a higher purpose in this. And that I think, well, you know, maybe part of the purpose, is to not know what the purpose is. How do you respond in the soil of uncertainty? How do you love people? What does love look like when there's questions? How do relationships form specifically in the context of tough questions? And I think there are special things there. But you don't have to know those things. So yeah, I just really appreciate what you're saying. I feel like it connects with my own experience. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I know that will be encouraging and helpful for people watching this.

So do you have five children now? Is that right? Yeah, we do. Yeah, because we had Caleb as a month ago. Yep. Okay. So in one month, we will also have five. So we're definitely thinking on the same wavelength. That's right. Multiple levels here. Let me ask you this. A couple of questions to finish off with. Your narrative structure is so helpful. It fits with something I've thought about, and that's some people say there's no logical answer to the problem of evil that can be articulated. There is only an answer that can be eventually experienced. And these approaches sometimes appeal to the idea of all theodicy is eschatology, which means talking to the last things.

How does that strike you? Well, you reminded me of, I guess there was some research. about stories and it was mining like all the different stories like this computer that was collecting all the different stories and analyzing their structures and they found that there were like six common structures of all the different stories and some of the top three I don't remember exactly what order they were but it was like you have a character experience a kind of a rise so they they experience you know success and then they fall so there's some problem that was like a tragedy. But another common one was a rise, a fall, and a rise. That's even like more common.

And I think one of the most common ones was rise, fall, then you, no, no, I'm going the wrong way. You fall, you fall from something high, then you rise, then you fall again. And it's like, this is like, because you think, oh, this is typical. You fall and then you rise. The story's going to end. Then you fall again. You think, oh, no, it's a tragedy. And then you rise again at the And it's like you hold on, you don't know if it's going to be a tragedy or not, you sort of hold on to it. It's in the next episode. You don't really know, right, how it's going to work. And apparently that's one of the most common structures of narrative that human beings like.

That's what we like. Consciousness likes this, right? I don't think it's just a human thing. I think it's a consciousness thing. I think beings are very fascinated by the structure of story. And I'm thinking about how this connects back to your question. question, but you reminded me of that. I think there is just something about the narrative structure of reality that develops our souls in the process of discovering truths. And I think there's

just something about like conscious beings, like we like to experience. Oh yeah, because you're making the point that it's not just something you figure out logically, it's something that you experience. You experience the theodicy. And then it seems like, oh, that makes sense. Like you go through the tragedy. and then you have a level of empathy and compassion. I mean, I will just tell you, like, after our stillbirth, I had so many connections with my students where it was unreal. Like, I'm, like, crying, they're crying, and we're going deep. Okay, we're not talking about my stillbirth.

We're talking about philosophy, but we're going deep because I'm emotionally connecting with them in ways I had never connected with human beings before. And I don't think that I just could possibly. I mean, I think there's almost like on a metaphysical level, like experience unlocks possibilities that you can't get there in any other way apart from experience. And so I do think that there can be experiences in the context of tensions, rise and falls and then rise again that can unlock an understanding of relationships that you can't get there in any other way.

And then going back to the heaven question, you know, then maybe some of those relationships can then get fixed into that positive state, but it carries with it certain qualities that got it there. You know, it wasn't just that you could get to that kind of relationship apart from the means to that relationship. And you can enjoy that perpetually. Yeah, fascinating. Okay. Well, let me, I mentioned how I'll share my own, I don't want to take very long on 60 seconds or less, but just share my own personal resolution that I've come to on these things. that is very, very much resonant with kind of what we're talking about now.

So maybe I'll do that, and then I'll just pause after that and let you speak a final word based upon the kind of two principles I articulate here. But so for me, and as much as I love philosophy, it's been literature that has helped me the most. And again, you know, you mentioned narrative as a framework. But I, when we lived in Washington, D.C. about 12 years ago now, I listened to an audio version of the brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky and that has the most poignant heartrending articulation of the problem of evil that I've ever heard and it focuses on the suffering of children which makes it particularly impactful and I won't even go into it in any way because I'm pretty you know it's it's

very gripping and vivid so suffice to say but what I got from that book and I've written about this so I won't go to, basically, the narrative structure of that book itself is a kind of answer that unravels one of the character's conclusion from this suffering, namely that God cannot exist, even though there's no logical answer to that in the book. But the narrative itself shows that's not the right conclusion to draw from this, because look what that leads to. And what I, I'll never forget, we were about to leave DC. I was walking around. I came back home. I was like one of the most profound moments of my life finishing that book and moved me so deeply. And I just remember writing in the back cover like one or two sentences. And I just said the only, however difficult

faith in God may be in light of the terrible suffering of our world, the only alternative is an unlivable despair. And what I kind of came to personally is to say, the problem of evil is a real problem. Unresolved in the sense of having perfect understanding of it. And I would make a distinction between knowing the answer and knowing enough to trust that there will be an answer. You know, but unresolved, but the problem becomes an even greater problem if we reject God. That was my personal conclusion because I thought, you know, if you reject God, number one, I can't call it evil in the same robust sense. And number two, I don't have any hope now.

And so that's where I ultimately kind of come to on these questions is coming to the cross, the crucifixion of Jesus as well, where we see a God who suffered and we see the great paradigmatic expression of hope on the other side of that suffering with the resurrection. And I, you know, I'll just, so for me, that's kind of where I've come to on these things is that. that's ultimately where I land the plane and that informs how I think about them and then speak to others about them. What would you like to say kind of summatively in terms of how you land the plane and where you would ultimately find a sort of resolution on these questions? I think in sort of a similar way. It's interesting. I was thinking the other day about sort of the weirdness of mindless noise producing any kind of like meaningful story. And one way of kind of drawing this out is imagine you're watching a TV. It's like to stash,

TV and it's on no station. Okay. It's completely random static. There's no mind behind it, no purpose, no direction at all. And while you're watching the show, all of a sudden, out of the mind, out of the static, the pixels just sort of randomly form a picture of characters that begin to engage in a story. And it's a classic story of love, conflict. Let's say, you know, let's say it's one of those rise, fall.

rise, fall again, and then rise, right? It's just one of those beautiful, right? And at the end of that story, you know, you think, okay, actually, let me add this. Let's imagine this is a tragedy. It ends with tragedy, okay? And maybe there could be another episode, but it's invisible to you. So you just don't know. Then you think, well, you know what?

There's no way that there could be a benevolent intelligence behind that story. Well, I mean, what's the alternative? I mean, so one alternative is there's just no intelligence. It really was just a random static show, random molecules with no intelligence at all, and they just organized to produce a story where people are wondering, you know, about their existence, right? That, to me, does feel strange is just too mild of a word. But I'll use the word strange. And I like what you said about almost just the unlivability.

it's like so basically you have these hopes that there's more to life but then in the end it really was just all an accident that gave you the hope that it wasn't all an accident and then it just gets washed away and just into nothing forever like just this complete i mean that that would be like the ultimate tragedy but it's like that tragedy is too specifically a tragedy to be an accident it's like you'd have to have an intelligence behind that that story um and so yeah i mean i i guess it seems to me me that it's exactly what you said. It's like you can feel the pain of the problem of evil. If the conclusion is that there's not a benevolent being that works everything out is a master storyteller that can even allow a feeling of a tragedy for a moment to create the testing ground, to create the opportunities for certain kinds of experiences, but then to have the most ultimate victory in the end in the long term. Yeah, I mean, that is what the heart I think longs for. you know and and i always hate to make an argument from you know we hope this to be true or something i like i want to know what actually is true i mean that's part of the pain right it's the feeling that there

could be a conflict between what you hope to be true and what actually is true but i think there is a kind of almost like poetic experience of the conflict between what you hoped i mean this this is exactly what the heroes and stories face is the tension like should i go on should i actually try to go for what I want. Should I actually try to pursue that relationship in the face of the uncertainty? And I think that it really does come down to the sort of like the two options. Like, you know, either reality is sort of fundamentally mindless and ultimately tragic, or there's actually beauty that comes out of every tragedy. And it's fascinating to think that those two stories of reality,

are like everything kind of hangs on those stories of reality. I think we can all relate to that, that conflict between those stories. Yeah. Yeah. That's an awesome takeaway to kind of finish with is your comment there, that there's beauty that comes out of tragedy. Boy, and if that's not what the gospel does for us, then that's not a good way to sum it up.

I don't know what is. Josh, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for the great interview. I hope we can talk again sometime. Where can people go to learn more about you? So I know we're at the end. I just want to add one more line. And whether you cut this out or insert this,

leave it to you. But, you know, Jesus has that line about the one forgiven who sins. The one forgiven most is like who loves the most. You know, it's like if you're forgiven the most, you love the most because you realize what you're forgiven for. And I think there's something about like actually the greater the tragedy, the more intense the experience, the more intense the opportunity for something beautiful and glorious to come out of that in the long term. So I wanted just to put that in there because I think goodness and beauty and awesomeness come in degrees. You know, there's good days that are sort of boringly good and there's like spectacularly awesome days.

And I think that the most awesome good can spring out of the most sort of intense circumstances. So as far as my work, you can go to Joshua Alrasmiston.com, get free resources. And I do have that YouTube channel that I'm hoping to come back to. I plan to come back to working on that in time, but that's worldview design. Awesome. Fantastic. I will put a link to that in the video description so people who are watching this can click on that and access that easily.

For everyone watching this, may the Lord bless you. If anyone's watching this and they're personally suffering, may the Lord be with you and sustain you and give you hope through that. And don't give up. Keep going. That's it, everybody. Thank you so much for watching.