FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Too Much Evil – Continued

We humans are different from all other species. Both anthropology and theology attest to our uniqueness as spiritual creatures. Our spirit component gives us a powerful capacity both for expressing goodness and for expressing evil. Unlike other species, we can inflict suffering on others for a variety of motives from revenge to perverse pleasure. Unlike other species, we kill for sport, and we tend to kill the best, the trophy animals, rather than the sick and weak, as the animal kingdom is prone to do. As for killing our own species, Leninist and Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, Maoist China, revolutionary France, Inquisitionist Spain and countless other modern societies (as well as ancient civilizations) show that we willingly slaughter and torture others.

How much of the injury and death and even disease-promoting behavior perpetrated by humans does anything to enhance the survival or well-being of the race of mankind? A reality check quickly informs us that we cannot chalk up the evil and suffering in our world simply to natural processes and survival instincts. Rather than proving the nonexistence of a spiritual realm and of a Creator-God, evil and suffering, even by our recognition of their repugnance, provide evidence for a good God opposed by some supernatural enemy, a God who for good reasons, some revealed in Scripture, is currently restraining the exercise of His almighty wrath against evil.

Return to Eden

How often we hear God’s critics boast, “If I were in charge, I could have designed the world in such a way as to eliminate evil and suffering.” Whether they admit it or not, such individuals see themselves as wiser and more righteous than God. If we are daring enough to ask for an explanation of what this human-designed, perfect world would be like, we may receive no answer. Or, most likely (in the experience of many spiritual leaders, at least), we will hear a description that closely resembles Eden: a beautiful and pleasant paradise in which we would be protected from all harm for all time. Evil, if it did arise, would be snuffed out immediately so as not to afflict anyone but its own source.

The Garden of Eden indeed was a wonderful place. Given what we know of the universe to this point in time, and its laws of physics, no better environment for the human race could be constructed. Consider what Genesis says of our original parents’ original environment:

• The garden, designed and planted by the wisest and most loving of all beings, was perfectly beautiful, perfectly watered and fertilized, and perfectly free of weeds and pests.
• The plants of the garden pleased not only the eye but also the palate.
• The garden was full of treasures of all kinds, including gold, aromatic resin, and onyx.
• Adam and Eve had access to perfect health and unlimited longevity.
• Adam and Eve were given the capacity and the freedom to enjoy all the riches that abounded around them.
• They lived in perfect peace, harmony, and fellowship with all the animals.
• Adam and Eve enjoyed perfect peace, harmony, and fellowship with one another.
• They both enjoyed perfect peace, harmony, and fellowship with God.
• There was a complete absence of shame.

The biblical description of Eden reveals a human habitat unexcelled in human comprehension, at least not within our current reality’s limits. Eden represents the best environment possible for the human race within the boundaries of the natural reality we know now. We long for Eden because we long for the best our limited experience can suggest to our imagination. But God is not limited. His scope of operation exceeds by far our imaginative capacity. His plans for blessing humanity match His capacity to give above and beyond our current, limited capacity to receive.

How many of us would rather return to Eden, to something good we can visualize, than to move beyond it to the new creation, which God says is better and yet which none of us can visualize? Atheists and agnostics are not the only ones who would rather stick with the familiar realm. Believers and unbelievers alike share this tendency. Many religious systems portray heaven as an Eden-like paradise often embellished with humans’ sexual fantasies.

To Be Continued

Adapted and modified from the book by: Hugh Ross, Beyond the Cosmos: What Recent Discoveries in Astrophysics Reveal about the Glory and Love of God; chapter 15.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV © 2011 by Biblica, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Too Much Evil

Though the words sound shocking, we can reasonably say that the quantity of evil expressed on earth exceeds by far what atheistic evolutionary explanations can account for. Only the real existence of God and of His adversary, Satan, and the biblical account of God’s purpose for this life, make sense of evil and suffering.

In case the ensuing discussion leads to assertions that “evolution” itself negates God and is solidly grounded in fact (as opposed to the flawed theory that it truly is), we may want to be ready with a brief citation of some real facts, which evolutionary biologists admit (some willingly, others reluctantly) contradict a non-theistic (that is, a materialistic) thesis.

Some Scientific Evidences Contradicting a Non-Theistic or Materialistic Interpretation of Speciation and Life’s Origin as Compared to God Created.

These evidences listed are taken from several books written by Hugh Ross, PH.D. including The Creator and the Cosmos and Creation and Time,  plus shorter articles.

1. Severe limits have been established on what changes and rates of change are possible via natural selection and mutations.
2. Natural selection leads much more often to stasis than to divergence.
3. Some species’ populations are limited much less by starvation and predation than by instinctively controlled breeding or other behavior.
4. Only species with extremely large populations and short generation times can change significantly through mutations and natural selection. Only a few such species exist.
5. Speciation of animals since the appearance of humans (when God ceased creating) has dropped to a virtual zero by contrast with the abundant speciation before that time.
6. For the vast majority of animal species, change in the chemical makeup of the genes is so slow that, if it does occur, it cannot be observed.
7. While the fossil record indicates that certain genes must have changed very rapidly, chemical experiments document the impossibility of such rapid changes occurring under natural conditions.
8. Chemical differences within specific modern species are too small and between species too great for such species to be descended from a common ancestor by natural processes.
9. Regardless of their theological or philosophical preferences, most researchers admit that the universe’s maximum age, even if it were twenty billion years, is insufficient by countless orders of magnitude to account for life’s origin by any strictly natural explanation.
10. The geophysical record establishes that life arose on Earth in a time span briefer than ten million years under chemical conditions impossible for the assembly of life molecules by natural processes.
11. In a five-million-year window about 540 million years ago, a hundred new phyla appeared. No new phyla have appeared since. In fact, only thirty remain.
12. RNA and DNA molecules and all their nucleotide building blocks are chemically unstable outside of the protective environment of living cells. That is, these molecules cannot survive under inorganic conditions.
13. Transitional forms in the fossil record are most evident for those species like horses and whales that have the least probability for natural evolution and the highest probability for natural extinction. Transitional forms, then, are powerful evidence for divine replacement of extinct species.
14. For some mass extinction events in the fossil record, the replacement of exterminated species by new and different species occurs far too rapidly for any kind of naturalistic explanation.
15. Comparing DNA of living humans with living primates and DNA recovered from bipedal primate fossils falsifies the natural-descent-of-man theory.
16. Blue-green unicellular algae fossils that are 2.5 billion years old are identical in their size, shape, structure, and the way they assemble themselves into colonies as blue-green unicellular algae alive today, indicating that the evolution of such species has been static for billions of years.
17. The minimum genome to support cell function and reproduction has been calculated to be 256 genes. This establishes that the complexity necessary for the simplest possible life is far higher than previously thought.
18. The nucleotide building blocks for RNA molecules require such radically different chemical conditions (two need freezing environments, while the other two require boiling conditions) that it would be impossible for all of them to form in the same location.

However, because of the depth of many of these scientific facts it is sometimes a more effective approach to stick with the assertion that biological processes alone cannot be the source of the behavior patterns we see among humans down through the ages. Time and “evolution” do not explain why human nature itself does not seem to change. If survival of the fittest were the dominant force shaping humanity, we might see some chaos and randomness, but not the kind of evil and suffering that fills our headlines daily.

To Be Continued

Adapted and modified from the book by: Hugh Ross, Beyond the Cosmos: What Recent Discoveries in Astrophysics Reveal about the Glory and Love of God; chapter 15.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV © 2011 by Biblica, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

If a non-Christian were to ask us about any of the controversial topics that face many non-believers today, we probably would be ready to converse. Many, if not most of us, would be thrilled at the chance to discuss our beliefs on some of these subjects and the basis for them. Yet there is one issue, the one we are about to explore, that seems to tie our tongues more than any other, even among ourselves. This is the issue most frequently raised by atheists and other skeptics. They view it as our Achilles heel; no other reason has been more widely offered for rejecting the God of the Bible. That subject is why there is so much evil and suffering.

Einstein was neither the first nor the last to discover that the “problem of evil and suffering” is typically treated by Christians and adherents to other religions as an unanswerable problem, a mystery we can never in this life understand or explain.

Few have been so bold as C. S. Lewis in delivering public lectures on it. Some books and essays have been written about it, but in general, our silence is deafening. Reasons for this silence abound. Experience tells us that the person asking why a loving, all-powerful God would allow evil and suffering may have faced some horrific tragedy themselves. Our hesitancy to respond comes from recognition that a glib answer will only intensify their anguish and confusion. The person asking may also be seeking an argument or an occasion to try and embarrass us. Given the emotional charge attached to this issue, no wonder it proves daunting, even to the most learned students of Scripture.

A reply affirming that a good answer does exist may be the most helpful response when the question comes up, especially when the occasion does not permit a lengthy discussion. At least this reply opens the door for future dialogue and expresses the conviction that God did shed some light on this subject. His Word does address it from many angles, including head on, and we are able to see this if we step back a bit from the text to take a wide-angle look at God’s message. Where does it start? Where does it end?

The challenge we can take up ourselves and pass along to inquirers calls for a reading (or rereading) of the first few chapters of the Bible and the last few. This review of “initial conditions” and “final conditions” can give us a fresh perspective on what unfolds in between and can help us discover some good and necessary purposes for the evil and suffering God allows in this world. Not that such a view offers a comprehensive response to such a difficult question. But it does provide us with an important context to consider a more complete answer. A place to start, as it were.

First, one great irony must be exposed. Many who argue that the existence of evil and suffering proves the nonexistence of an all-powerful, all-loving Creator have no idea that it proves just the opposite. Naturalistic materialism, the notion that the natural world accounts for itself and needs no outside explanation, cannot account for the evil and cruelty we see among humans. Survival of the fittest does not result in the behavior humans exhibit all over the planet toward the land itself and toward plants, animals, and especially to fellow humans.

To Be Continued

Adapted and modified from the book by: Hugh Ross, Beyond the Cosmos: What Recent Discoveries in Astrophysics Reveal about the Glory and Love of God; chapter 15.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV © 2011 by Biblica, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.