Why Tim Keller thought suffering doesn't disprove God

[@bltwegmann8431]

Appreciate the video on this interesting philosophical topic. But it's a huge leap to assume that just because we don't understand the full nature of reality, there must be the Christian god (or any other). I'll never understand why so many humans insist on finding "meaning" in the world. Maybe there just isn't any...and why should that bother anyone? Certainly doesn't bother me.

[@sigurdholbarki8268]

It's not a huge leap though, that's dealt with elsewhere through Christian exergesis of Greek Philosophy and Church theologians from the Early Church Fathers through to Thomas Aquinas to modern apologists Like C.S. Lewis. You can only do so much in a 10 minute video, but I hope your appetite is whetted

[@amyc.peters1064]

I was raised by atheists and that the world is chaos, without meaning. But Im a person who has always stepped back and observed, noticing patterns, chains of "happenstance" and what they lead to. Not just in my life but in others, ripple effects. I'm also a person who has suffered in various ways. I have never turned my eyes from other's sufferings, either. After over 40 decades, I've had plenty of a-ha moments, and those revelations have accumulated into an enourmous faith in God!

[@rightpa]

Under the auspices of a tri-omni god all suffering is pointless.

[@jansustar4565]

It doesn't need to be the case that suffering is decreed by the laws of the universe to be bad. It can just be a very good strategy for the prosperity of a civilization. Let me explain on a simpler example: why we think murder is wrong. The same logic cam be extended to reason why we perceive suffering to be wrong. Suppose you have two tribes, one which condones murder and another which doesn't. Part 1: The one which doesn't do anything about it will likely have to spend more time dealing with blood feuds, wasting time, resources and energy on "meaningless" cycles of revenge, which may grow and affect a lot of people. The other stops the cycle of revenge dead in its tracks, preventing it from spiraling out of control, or at least heavily discouraging it. The second tribe has more available resources, which would speed up their growth. Over time, it would overshadow the first tribe, either killing or converting them. Summary of part 1: If you say that murder is wrong, you have less energy and can spread your ideology to others, experiencing exponential growth. Part 2: My argument so far proves that thinking murder is wrong is in most cases a good "strategy". So part 2 talks about how this starts: Ethics are just vague societal rules. And we have been taught these rules from young, embracing them. The thing is, these rules imposed on us can be arbitrary. Adding rules is a process of trial and error, coupled with natural selection, which weeds out the bad ones, leaving the neutral and beneficial ones behind. Given enough time, just by chance, good rules aka good "strategies" spread. So ethics is just a collection of guidelines, which benefit the functioning of a society. The larger the society, the better defined ethics must be to hold the system from collapsing.

[@jansustar4565]

I'd be happy to discuss this further with anyone willing. Helps me train my rhetoric skills, which I lack, as been by the awkward wording in my comment.

[@Publius-24]

Job 1:20-22 Then Job arose and tore his cloak and cut off his hair. He fell to the ground and worshiped. He said, “Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I go back there. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD!” In all this Job did not sin, nor did he charge God with wrong.

[@Publius-24]

​​@@Roman-Labrador Why? If it is just a story it is no different than a horror movie with a pleasant ending. If it is a parable, teaching that man cannot see all ends, that only God can, it is still just a story. If it is describing historical facts, then God has ways that man cannot completely comprehend, which is true.

[@jameskowanko7574]

I think that God wants us to have freedom and free will. And so suffering exists because if people did not have the freedom to do evil, they wouldn’t have the freedom to choose good. Free will is something everyone experiences and senses, but that cannot be understood through materialism. As the natural world does what it does through forces and reactions to them. And I think God put evil in the natural world so that good people could try to alleviate or fight evil. Without evil, there would be no way to prove our merit. Idk that’s just my explanation I’m not a theologian

[@TheddunTOSS]

"I think that God wants us to have freedom and free will." Okay, but many things in nature are arranged in a way that they cause suffering that has nothing to do with free will.

[@TheddunTOSS]

"Free will is something everyone experiences and senses," People experience and fee a lot, many things of which are logically and empirically shown to be wrong. Actually there is quite the evidence that free will does not exist, but is a psychological projection.

[@TheddunTOSS]

"And I think God put evil in the natural world so that good people could try to alleviate or fight evil. " That would make that god, in a sense, evil.

[@rosemarietolentino3218]

Suffering is when we draw closer to God. Don’t let Satan steal your Crowns 👑👑👑👑👑 you can consider it pure joy in Jesus mighty name. John 6:28-29. Don’t forget the Works of God.

[@shreddedhominid1629]

@jameskowanko7574 so many problems with your comment. First of all, God could make humans without any desire for evil, morally infalliable, and still preserve free will. Secondly, why does an all powerful all knowing God need us to prove our merit? He already knows everything.

[@excancerpoik]

if anyone asks me how God can allow pointless suffering i anwser he doesnt not becasue there isnt suffering but because its not pointless

[@sigurdholbarki8268]

This is really good. I enjoy your videos, its a shame that people who claim not to think anything matters choose to come into your comments without trying to understand the arguments you're illustrating. There are however some atheists/skeptics who are trying to understand honestly, and God Bless them

[@VictorBush-cx7sj]

I already determined Lewis and Plantinga to be hacks. Now maybe I'll Keller. In view of the astonishing amount of suffering we see in this world, your claiming that maybe god had a reason is not enough to sway us to your theology. That suffering can also have a positive outcome doesn't explain the huge number of times the suffering just ends in suffering, sometimes with the sufferer becoming a disillusioned angry person who ends up causing more suffering. Unless you can show that suffering always works, your point fails. Also, Lewis' line about needing a standard setter for us to even have an idea of right and wrong is bunk. If I get punched in the face or have my home burn down or stub my toe, I need no philosophy about a standard giver to know these are bad. The only issue is whether someone else should care. You posit the existence of an all-powerful being who supposedly does care yet allows so much suffering anyway. You are still deep in a hole however much you think you've climbed out.

[@Beanbag777]

Love this channel . Keep up the good work

[@matwatson7947]

How is this good work? Is operating on complete logical fallacies. Those being that there is a God, it's his God and the Bible is factual. It's also cherry picking examples. What about when a child is born into bone Cancer and dies anyway? Bone Cancer in children is exactly what you'd expect in a world without a God or a God that isn't all loving, or all powerful, or all knowledge. The video answered nothing and only highlights the problem for Theists further by bringing it to peoples attention.

[@TheddunTOSS]

@@matwatson7947 those are good questions.

[@jeffmaehre7150]

This thread is basically a bunch of people revealing their IQs.

[@FragmentOfInfinity]

A God outside of anything isnt God. Everything in this universe is God, period. This is intrinsically uh understood only of you understand that all began as ONE consciousness, and nothing outside of it.

[@Dave_OGG]

That's pantheism and is contrary to Christian doctrine

[@FragmentOfInfinity]

@@Dave_OGG "Do you not know that Jesus Christ is WITHIN you? *Unless you fail to meet the test."* All came from the One. *All returns to the One. There are no exceptions.*

[@Dave_OGG]

@@FragmentOfInfinity God being within us does not equate God to being what He is within. There is a distinction between Creator and creation. If you say God is creation, you're claiming the Earth we live on and we ourselves are infinite. Only God is eternal. God is not within creation, but creation sits inside of Him

[@FragmentOfInfinity]

@@Dave_OGG In the beginning there was Source. And source, being infinite, desired a new experience. And thus it split itself into billions and billions of innumerable pieces of consciousness, across infinity and time and space, in order to experience itself. If I were divine infinite intelligence, and I desired to experience life as a fish, I must first *forget my divinity temporarily and take on the mantle of existence as a fish.* If I were to remember at any point that I was indeed NOT a fish, the experience would be ruined. No, we are infinity having a temporary dream. In the beginning was ONE consciousness, and in the end *we will all return to it.*

[@Dave_OGG]

@@FragmentOfInfinity "Infinity split itself into parts" is a contradiction. Stop taking mushrooms and turn to Christ

[@rogersacco4624]

Ok God exists. Now tell me that billions of people will be resurrected and live to infinity?Yikes !

[@jacobsutton9528]

This argument makes an even more egregious presupposition which is to assume that there is any reason or meaning for anything. You are presupposing that there is a greater mystery to support the argument that god is the answer to the great mystery. Whereas suffering in a chaotic universe would be exactly what you expect. The example of Daniel is also ridiculous. Justifying his suffering by saying that it prevented the later suffering of the famine. Couldn’t God have just prevented the famine? How is allowing Daniel to suffer so that he can maybe become prime minister a more efficient way to deal with the suffering of a famine than just preventing a famine?

[@ramonaflowrx]

hey i genuinely got interested in your reasoning. I wonder then, if God would've dealt with the famine Himself, what would you say the purpose of Him creating humans in the first place is, if let's say, all the suffering in the world is taken care of right away by God himself?

[@Tornadospeed10]

How do you possibly reason that life and evolution as a whole through “chaotic processes?” Why in the first place is there even a process in place that would result in life suddenly abandoning the “chaotic nature of the universe” and instead developing traits which deliberately try to keep itself alive. There is no scientific reasoning that even comes close to explaining how it makes even remote sense that we go from inanimate matter that just randomly and chaotically interacts to conscious matter which seems to have the innate drive to “survive.” We also have a glaring problem staring at us from the dawn of time. We know that at some point the universe as we know it, with all its laws and processes, all its specific elements and molecules, suddenly came into existence. Our universe has a start, which means there factually has to be something outside of our universe and greater than it to be able to start it and cause space time to come into existence. This alone honestly debunks you saying the “universe is chaotic.” Because it’s really not. There are fine tuned natural laws which prevent actual chaos from happening at all. These laws formed the universe since its creation. It’s not anywhere near “chaotic.”

[@neilw259]

You are a fine example of the nihilist who replaces God with his own inflated ego and self sufficient intellect, basically a know-all.

[@TheddunTOSS]

@@ramonaflowrx "what would you say the purpose of Him creating humans in the first place is" Actually we know quite well how you individually or we as a species came into being. No god is needed for that.

[@TheddunTOSS]

@@ramonaflowrx "if let's say, all the suffering in the world is taken care of right away by God himself?" Why create a world which with being in it that causes them suffering. If this is on purpose, then that being is ethically very questionable. If not on purpose that being is not all-powerful and/ or all-knowing.

[@williamoarlock8634]

Being a Christian/child of the Christian god is loving the father that is love of suffering.

[@rosemarietolentino3218]

You are more than conquerors don’t let Satan steal your Crowns to lay at Jesus feet. These Crowns will help you understand the joy beyond all understanding. 👑👑👑👑👑

[@rosemarietolentino3218]

Philippians 4. To be at peace even suffering needs. Hebrews 4. Enter into Jesus rest.

[@JuanManuel-ep8do]

Of course that doesn't disprove god, there's not even sufficient evidence for god, and that's enough to know that your imaginary friend is imaginary.

[@M_Ghiyas]

Well, from the start, we are in middle of the test of The Creator. And so, The Creator test us with all kinds of suffering and see if we will seek refuge to The Creator or we instead will blame The Creator. The ones who passed the test will go to Heaven and the ones who failed will go to Hell.

[@TheddunTOSS]

Handing out infinite punishment for limited evil is not an ethical thing to do.