Tim Stratton - Natural Evil and God

Jordan Apodaca's Podcast

In this episode I get into a fun conversation with Tim Stratton about how a perfectly loving being like God could allow such awful evils as tornadoes ripping through entire villages. Oftentimes we appeal to arguments about free will to explain evil. If there is a murder, we can at least point to a murderer. There's a person behind that evil. But how can we explain natural disasters, events with no person behind them? That's what we tackle in this episode! Some fun stuff to check out: Tim's website: https://freethinkingministries.com/ My website: https://www.jordanapo.com/ Josh Rasmussen's book "How Reason Can Lead to God": https://amzn.to/33PE408 Note: this is an affiliate link with Amazon And here are the specific questions I ask Tim in this episode! These were my own personal question-asking notes: INTRO QUESTIONS — Who are you and what is your ministry about? — What were you like as a kid? — What’s your favorite color and why? REAL QUESTIONS 1. What is the problem of evil? 2. Briefly explain how most Christians answer it with a free will defense. 3. But there’s another form of the problem of evil, called the problem of natural evil, and many philosophers think that the free will defense doesn’t work for it. Can you explain why not? 4. How do you respond to the problem of natural evil? 5. Based off the above article, you say the answer is so we can learn to be grateful. Do any Christians fully learn this lesson before we die? My intuition says the answer is "no." I don't think I can answer in the affirmative to all the above questions! So what confidence can I have that I have learned the lesson of suffering? Does something "zap me" into learning the lesson if I die as a Christian? If so, why is the suffering needed if the zap will do? Is the "zap" basically just a perfected perspective on the suffering of this life, which we gain when we behold God? (That's the best answer I can think of without sliding into the realm of purgatory-like reasoning.) OUTRO QUESTIONS — Where can people find more of your work? — What are you currently working on? — Is there anything in the word of apologetics that fascinates you that people should keep an eye on? --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/finding-freedom/support