This pretty much sums up Francis Collins and Karl Gibersons attempt to solve the problem of evil with theistic evolution: Giberson provides an explanation how theistic evolution makes a positive contribution to the problem of evil. “The problem of evil has . . . no satisfactory answer. . . . Humans . . . have free will, (and) cause a lot of evil, but not all evil can be attributed to man’s actions. Yet, for the world to have meaning, free will is essential. For God ‘to stop all evil in the world caused by humans, our freedom would have to be removed and with it our capacity to truly and genuinely love. God . . . cannot give us free will while at the same time restraining [sic] us from evil acts.” According to Giberson, he says that we can’t blame human sin, Satan or God for sinister designs in nature. These are the result of evolution. Since God has created humans with freedom, and since it is humans, and not God who is responsible for evil human deeds, God is not responsible for evil. Likewise, God has created nature with creative freedom, analogous to human freedom. Thus, when nature’s freedom results in things like the black plague, God remains blameless. ======== Honestly, if this is their best answer to the problem of evil, theistic evolution is in serious trouble. He writes a book attempting to solve the problem of evil with theistic evolution, but ends off with the conclusion that “The problem of evil has . . . no satisfactory answer. He appeals to the idea that man has free will which God cannot remove without humans losing our capacity to love, and then equivocally use that term free will and apply it to nature, where God cannot interfere with the free will of nature (Dont ask me how nature can be conceived as having a mind, much less free will). And God is not able (not that he does not want to) to prevent natural evil. In other words, this is nothing more than deism. More importantly, if God is the one who creates all things and he is not able to stop the free will of nature which caused natural evil, then not only is God not omniscient, but more importantly, the necessary conclusion would be that such a God cannot be absolved from the charge of evil even if he tries his best. And he calls this theistic evolutions solution to the problem of evil. That is the conclusion of his book: “The problem of evil has . . . no satisfactory answer. I would say that more than having no satisfactory answer, he has no way out of the problem of evil. He has just compounded his problem, and in the process, demonstrates that he is not a Christian having taken a Deistic approach rather than one of Christian Theism (He also said that Jesus and Paul taught a literal Young Earth Creation but concluded that they were wrong. That is heresy). Can you believe it? The leader of Biologos. *Facepalm*.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 22:15:32 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015