For the religious believer and the atheist alike, the problem of evil and suffering is troubling. If there is a God, why does he allow so much evil? And if there isn’t a God, how can we say that anything is evil?
In this Forum event from 2014 at Harvard Medical School, Oxford mathematician John Lennox addresses one of the most challenging human questions: where is God in suffering?
If there is no good, there is no evil. That's it, and the problem of evil vanishes intellectually. But you say, "I'm not satisfied with that." Good, I'm not either.
As we approach the problem of suffering and evil, we have to ask ourselves: What do we believe ultimate reality to be? And how is the problem to be seen against the background of ultimate reality?
The trouble is that we're all too ready, or some people are too ready, to see the direct intervention of God, when of course it simply may be the indirect, but very painful outworking of us being stupid.
When it comes to tsunami or horrific diseases, you can't blame a person for it. So you say, "Okay, well, blame God for it," because after all, if this is God's universe, he is ultimately responsible. And that's true, absolutely true. You can't — I can't — avoid that point. There's no philosophical sophistry that gets you around that.
