Latest / Paulogia / Why Did God Create Satan and Hell? Their “Brilliant” Answer (David Wood/Frank Turek response)

Transcript

Why Did God Create Satan and Hell? Their “Brilliant” Answer (David Wood/Frank Turek response) · Paulogia

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, okay, if you're wrong, do you want to know it?
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, but I'm not wrong.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: He said, okay, and that's not what I asked.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: I said, if you were wrong, would you want to know it?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: More than anything, how about you?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's a that's a good question.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, you don't.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think we're out of time.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Pologia, where a former Christian takes a look at the claims of Christians.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: You can only trust the non-Christian sources to tell you what's really going on.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're listening in on a QA session hosted by Christian apologists Frank Turk and David Wood.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: This segment really got to me as The Father Asking wasn't a debate bro looking to score points for or against Christianity, but rather he was a heartbroken father who, out of genuine love, was desperately hoping to find a way to, at least in his mind, save his child from an eternity of torture.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: Evening, thanks so much for being here.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_03: My name's Brian.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_03: Hey Brian.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: I've got uh an adult child who is really struggling with something that I'm hoping you all can can shed some light on.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: So God is omnif uh omnipotent, all-loving, yet he created Lucifer knowing he would fall, knowing he would cause extreme pain to humanity, knowing that hell would now need to be created, and that millions and millions and millions and millions of people who refuse to listen to the truth will now pay an eternal price for that.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: He's really struggling with how you could have a loving God who knew that would happen and yet still created that.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is a man who's doing his best to remember and articulate an objection that is not his own.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: His son posed something like this to him, and he couldn't answer it.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Probably feeling frustrated or helpless, he took notes, saving it for the day he could speak to a professional apologist.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that day is finally here.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I've been on both sides of this conversation, and there are people who I care about deeply on both sides of these conversations to this day.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: I feel for Brian.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Sadly, Brian hasn't articulated the strongest version of this line of objection, but we'll work on that as we go.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: This general question is an internal critique of Christianity.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: If the Christian God is a loving God, behavior best understood as unloving would seem to be a contradiction and an argument against a loving God.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Such arguments have no force against the concept of an indifferent or a non-loving God.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Also, the objection is most forceful against versions of Christianity that posit eternal conscious torment.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: I have an answer, but I want to hear Dr.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Wood.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: I was 100% sure he was going to uh sin and do all sorts of bad things in his life before he was ever born, but still had him anyway.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's all that's all I was saying.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like like the crowd laughed, but Brian was right to just stare blankly at David's non-point.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Humans choosing to have children who they know will make mistakes, suffer natural pains, and engage in harmful actions is not inherently immoral, because there is reasonable expectation that the positive aspects of their earthly life and potential net societal contribution will, on balance, be greater than the negative downsides.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, everyone's scoring system here will vary, but intentional parents tend to be optimistic about this.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Even Christian parents, who believe that their children will ultimately deserve eternal conscious torment, can be morally justified to procreate.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: First, their God commands them to, so that's just a simple matter of obedience.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: One could legitimately argue that, were it not for this command, the moral choice for a Christian would be to not create more souls, but I digress.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Second, Christian parents have some control over training their children to one day accept the Christian plan of salvation, giving them a higher than average chance of avoiding the consequences.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: All that said, David's parent comparison is disanalogous on several fronts.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: While human parents can justify optimism, despite imperfect knowledge, an omniscient creator has no such excuse.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It knows with certainty which individuals will end up in eternal torment, and yet it chooses to create those individuals anyhow.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Also, human parents do not design or control the nature of the underlying universe, base human nature, the condition of the earth and society, or the rules by which eternal fates will be decided.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: They don't even control their child's initial genetic makeup.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: But an omnipotent creator God has control over all of these things.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it is choosing all of the initial factors that affect any given human.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like every person who is having a child knows that child is going to sin, going to rebel, and so on.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably worth a quick clarification of what we mean by words like sin, evil, and bad.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: In Christian circles, sin is generally best thought of as the gap between one's thoughts or actions and the will of the Christian God.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: So by definition, if one doesn't believe in God, then they can't believe in a situation where one is outside the will of the non-existent God.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So sin is entirely an internal critique measure.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Most humans have an intuition about moral good and bad.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Though if you listen carefully, you'll find that despite framing such things in objective or absolute terms, in casual conversation, most people use bad as a label for actions or outcomes they do not prefer, and good as a label for actions or outcomes they do prefer.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's as simple as that.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Having thought about this a lot, I personally attempt to be more intentional and adjudicate actualized and potential actions by how much harm they will cause or prevent.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: By bad, I mean an action that causes more harm or decreases flourishing.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: You may rightfully say, hey Paul, that's a subjective measure.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I will agree.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes it is.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: But if you agree with me in advance that good and bad has something to do with harm, then we will subjectively chosen a compatible standard, and we can carry forward in good faith conversation and make compatible objective observations.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you don't think that the goodness or badness of an action has something to do with the harm it causes, then we will not be on the same page, and you might as well stop the video now.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: So what you'd have to say is, yeah, but it's reaching like a certain if you knew it was going to reach a certain threshold and it's gonna be really, really, really bad, do you do you do it anyway?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: For example, one could posit the question, what if you knew with absolute certainty that your child would one day murder you?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Would you still have them then?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's a more complicated question.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: But the stakes are much higher for a Christian god's decision to create.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: If we agree that morality has something to do with flourishing and harm, then while non-creation is morally neutral, creation crosses the immoral threshold if it leads directly or predictably to infinite, non-rehabilitative suffering for finite actions.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: No finite temporal good can balance this.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, according to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said about Judas that it would be better for him if he had not been born, which is an acknowledgement of this principle.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: For some, arguably for most, it would be better if they had not existed in light of eternal punishment.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'm talking about the creation of hell.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's like that.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry, I'm not seeing the not seeing that linkage at all with you're not alone, Brian.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: That was a non-helpful, non-answer.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna create Lucifer, who's going to if I didn't create Lucifer, I didn't create any of this, an entire human race would not need to face hell as a as a punishment.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: How do we know that's yeah, why why would you think that?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: You don't you don't think that I can't sin without Satan telling me to or something?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Brian can be forgiven for being unclear on the role of Lucifer, because the Bible itself is unclear, and only later Christian scaffolding holds the narrative together.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: The name Lucifer comes from Isaiah 14, 12, where the Hebrew phrase Helel ben Shahar means shining one, son of the dawn.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Centuries later, the Latin Vulgate rendered it Lucifer, the morning star, and it morphed into a proper name for a fallen angel.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: But in the original context, this was meant as a sarcastic taunt aimed at the king of Babylon, a moral ruler who imagined he could climb above the stars and is mocked as he tumbles into the grave.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Similarly, the Hebrew noun Satan or Hasetan originally meant adversary or accuser.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: In texts like Job and Zechariah, Hasatan is an official title or rule, like the prosecuting attorney within God's divine counsel who worked for God.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's not a rebellious evil deity.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Connecting the serpent of Eden to this figure is also found nowhere in the Hebrew Bible, but instead comes from extra canonical works like the Apocalypse of Abraham and Wisdom of Solomon.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And Christians find reinforcement for this in Revelation 12, 9 and 22, which speak of that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: But even when Christians conflate the serpent and Satan, Genesis 3 is clear that the figure was an outside tempter only, and that Adam and Eve were the guilty parties.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Presumably they or one of their descendants would have eaten the forbidden fruit eventually with no outside help, because God chose to create humans seemingly incapable of resisting.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: James 1.14 affirms each of us is tempted when dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Per Christian lore, we don't need supernatural tempters to sin.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: As a methodological naturalist, I don't need to posit anything supernatural to account for some actions causing harm.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's possible that Brian's son was including Satan as one of the creatures destined for hell that a loving God shouldn't create, but ultimately it's probably a distraction here, as it brings in extra point of Christian disagreement they can obfuscate the issue with.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, David expressed something much closer to the actual objection.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: If sin necessarily demands eternal conscious torment for even one, let alone most, then not creating is the more moral choice where we agree that morality has to do with reducing harm.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Eternal conscious torment, or whatever hell is, is designed to be the greatest possible harm.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: This problem is even worse if you acknowledge that God could have made the punishment for sin something else, but chose eternal conscious torment anyhow.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: David is glad God created because he assumes he's one of the lucky few who will escape the torture and doesn't care that the consequence of his happiness is infinite harm for billions of others.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: His good outcome is worth my bad outcome.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_03: I must not be stating this correctly.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: I see so many of these sessions where the question asked nods along when Frank completely avoids the question.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I love how sincere Brian is here.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: He's not getting a straight answer, and he's not pretending that he's getting one.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: He's honestly just terrified for his son, not looking for placation for an already held position.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's there's a whole family of kind of objections that are sort of uh revolving around what you're saying.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: So we're not it's not like so.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: You'll have like, why didn't God create us all so that we didn't sin and so on?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then the response to that is like it's actually good for people to have free will, because then they're not just being programmed to do certain things like that.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably good to define a few things again.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Presumably, David is talking about libertarian free will, the idea that an action is free only if the agent could have chosen otherwise, including choosing evil.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: But the Christian God is believed to be inherently good and incapable of sinning.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thereby he does not have libertarian free will under those definitions.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: If God can genuinely love without being able to sin, the ability to sin cannot be a necessary precondition for love.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Christian narrative says that in heaven, people will retain their free will, which Frank has affirmed.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's going to be a difference when we get to heaven.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And while we will have free will, we need free will to love.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: We will never use our free will to disobey God because we won't have anything that we lack in heaven.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: We won't have those conditions in heaven.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: We will be in the very presence of God and all of our needs will be met.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: So there will be no need to sin.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: We will have free will and yet we won't sin.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously, God could have created humans, or at least the subset of humans that he pre-knew would accept him, straight in heaven conditions.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Since in that environment, people will have free will and yet won't sin.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: So again, there is no logical necessity that God create people whom he knows in advance will end up in eternal conscious torment.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: If it's not a logical necessity, then God willingly chose to create people who will be tortured forever.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if morality has anything to do with reducing harm, then this choice by God is immoral.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if morality isn't associated with reducing harm, then you and I are not talking about the same thing when we say morality.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: So there are kind of things like that.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: But then you have the whole, you know, why is God creating people that are going to need to be judged and things like that?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: Those are all those are all like kind of connected.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Clay Jones pointed me, Clay Jones had me watch a movie called the uh The Stepford Wives, uh, which they they did two versions of it.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: The original was a horror movie, and then the uh second version was like a comedy, but it was Just look at poor Brian.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's here earnestly trying to get a straight answer to take back to his lost son.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: And instead, David was up there talking about movies.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Brian can't believe where he is right now.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: If you're not happy with your wife, you take her to this town, and then they they re-reprogram her to be like everything, uh everything you want in a wife.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: The original was a horror movie.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: They would have they make the robot version of your wife, and then she would kill your real wife, and then you have like this perfect robot wife, and uh and then a new one they just put things in your things in her brain to make her like do exactly what you want.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that both versions were satirical horror, but your mileage may vary.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: For me, the idea of being killed and replaced is less awful than continuing to live with an altered mind.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Going forward, I think the better example will be the recent 2026 horror film Obsession, which actually has Oscar buzz at this point in the race.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you're unfamiliar with the premise, a character named Bear acquires a magical object called the One Wish Willow, and wishes upon it that his friend Nikki would love him more than anyone else in the world.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: His wish comes true, but it soon turns obsessive, possessive, and violent, as Nikki's free will is erased by the wish.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: The shocking scenes are all well and good, but the real horror for me is that unlike the Stepford wives, who are blissfully unaware of their alteration, Nikki knows what's happening to her.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's the most horrifying scenario.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is a better example for apologists to use in the future.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: I actually, uh one of my first debates, I debated John Loftus, not sure you're familiar with them, but I debated atheist John Loftus, and I was bringing that up because that was a big uh issue that he had, like, why would God why wouldn't God just create us so that we only always did the right thing?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I brought up his movie, the Stepford Wise, where you know you could make someone always do the right things.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is that better?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I just asked the audience, I said, hey guys in the audience, how many uh how many of you, if you can have your wife programmed to be exactly what you want all the time and do exactly what you want, would prefer that over your actual wife who's not always going to do um everything you want?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: How many people would prefer the Stepford wife?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: And the only hand that went up was John Loftus, and his wife was sitting right in front of you.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't love that the atheist was wishing for a Stepford wife, though I hope it was done in jest, given the context.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I'm not convinced we can trust this survey where one had to publicly admit, possibly in front of their spouse, what they would prefer.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Hardly a scientific methodology.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Still, it's probably best that we'll never know.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, this is all distraction.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because, purely as an internal critique, if God could have created free will without eternal conscious torment, then the idea of free will doesn't affect the question at hand.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: If God could not create free will without eternal conscious torment, then the harm avoidance moral thing to do would be to not create at all.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: So why not just let the people who don't want it, the people who say, you know, I don't want this, they just don't get anything good.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_03: Why do they have to be in eternal damnation, eternal suffering, no relief?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_03: Why does it have to be so extreme?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is a debate going on right now about the nature of hell.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Is it conditional or is it eternal?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: When Frank says there's a debate going on right now, he's referring to the aftermath of this year's so-called Hellgate, where child doctor Kirk Cameron went public with his leanings that he thinks scripture teaches that sinners are annihilated rather than living forever in torment.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: I did a video on that, which you can check out if you want to hear the arguments, the reactions from Christians on all sides, and an atheist perspective.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: But this debate is not new.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: It goes back to at least the third century, with Origins Universalism and Arnobius' annihilationism around 300 CE.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't originate with Kirk Cameron.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as an outsider, this isn't my fight.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: But also as an outsider, pragmatism forces me to assume the worst case scenario in my deliberations.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: There will be no consolation on judgment day if I protest to God that Kirk Cameron said hell isn't real.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'll still be sent there.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if one of the more merciful options turns out to be true, then great.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not in a position to make such a call.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the scriptures point out it's eternal, but again, if God is just, and he is, hell is perfect justice.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: People are going to get the right level of punishment given their sin.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you say so, Frank, but in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reportedly preached that insulting someone is the same as murder, and looking at a woman lustfully is the same as adultery.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Again, as an outsider, I need to pragmatically assume the worst case, that all sins get the same punishment.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least that all sins earn one eternal conscious torment, even if someone else's torment is worse in some way.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And why is it eternal?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Couple of reasons.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because you've made a sin against an eternal God.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Famously in Exodus 21, it says, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: This theme of punishment should be proportional to the harm done is pervasive in the Hebrew Bible.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: So in the world of humans, this makes sense.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: All harms done to humans are finite, so all punishments are similarly finite.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: But Frank needs to create a new category of infinite harm done to an infinite God in order to justify infinite punishment.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: But can Christian God be harmed at all?
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Even a little?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: As far as I know, the omnipotent God cannot be harmed.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: So how could we conceivably cause God infinite harm?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's no harm at all.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: So this proposal is the opposite of proportionality.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Secondly, you continue to sin in hell.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's where weeping and gnashing of teeth comes, is talking about.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: You continually to be at odds with the God of the universe, but you're not getting any more or less punishment than you deserve if you're in hell.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is an Aquinas idea popularized by C.S.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's not from the Bible.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Revelation 20, 12 and 13 says the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 5.10 says, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 2.6 says, God will repay each person according to what they have done.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: And even if Frank is correct, this does nothing to answer the question: why did God create creatures he knew would be tormented forever?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is just finger pointing, not talking about the morality of creating versus not creating.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: But notice in your son's objection, there's a moral standard that's implied.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: He's saying it's wrong for God to do this.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what standard is he using to judge the God of the universe who is the standard of justice?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, he's assuming that somehow hell is unjust.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: When in fact, since God is the standard of justice, by definition, it can't be unjust.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's alarming to hear Frank criticizing Brian's son for just assuming something is unjust, then straightface asserting God is the standard of justice based on, as far as I can tell, nothing but an assumption with extra steps.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you define goodness and justice as whatever expresses God's essential nature, then you are definitionally begging the question, assuming the conclusion in the premise.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: This circular reasoning allows no independent way to evaluate the claims that God is good or just or loving.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like Brian's son, I want to evaluate whether the God described by Christianity is doing unnecessary harm.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And Frank's response is that whenever God does harm, it is automatically.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Necessary, even if we don't understand why.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because I said so wasn't satisfying when your mom said it, and it's still not satisfying when Frank says it.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because I said so.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: My mentor, Dr.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Norman Geister, used to give several possibilities, like David just gave one of them.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: If God created a robot world, we're all robots.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we wouldn't have free will, we couldn't love.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Bad news, robots.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Frank has determined that you cannot love for some reason.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: No hot.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: No hot.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: In the philosophical free will debate, there's a few I haven't mentioned yet, even though it's the one I hold.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Determinism.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: In this view, every human decision is fully determined by prior causes and the laws of nature.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, if one could rewind time and revisit identical situations, the same decision would be made every time.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: If free will is defined loosely as the ability to do otherwise, under determinism, people don't actually have free will in that sense.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: People make choices, to be sure, but they are deterministically incapable of having made a different one under identical conditions.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there are plenty of objections to determinism, but even under determinism, it is agreed that people experience love.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's determinism, man.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: Deal with it.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: But the other option is why didn't God create a world where he gave people free will but they never sinned?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: The answer is while that's logically possible, it might not be actually achievable with free creatures.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because one thing God can't do is force free creatures to do what he wants because then they wouldn't be free.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's a contradiction.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: So any universe God creates, he's gonna have rebellion.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this already.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Frank insists there will be no rebellion in heaven.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: So by internal critique, Christian God can create a universe with free creatures without rebellion.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: So just don't create the creatures you know in advance will rebel, and we're all set.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: So what does he do?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: He creates a universe where the maximum number of people are saved, the minimum number of people are lost based on their own free will.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And those that are saved get grace, and those that do not want to be saved get justice.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing morally wrong about that at all.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: No human can know that this world maximizes the saved and minimizes the lost.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is not something we can check empirically, or philosophically, or even theologically, as the Bible doesn't directly support some kind of salvation actuarial table considerations.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: As we cannot inspect unactualized possible or feasible worlds, this is a non-falsifiable conjecture.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is an ad hoc hypothesis pulled out by apologists to insulate their god from obvious critique.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it does nothing to answer the main question.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't God instantiate only those individuals who would freely accept salvation while refraining from creating those who would reject it?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Frank didn't pull out his escape for this in this session, but he has one.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Then it is not as though everything else can go on unchanged.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: What that means is that you have a whole new possible world on your hands.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it may be that in a world lacking that person, that others would then freely reject God and be lost and not saved.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: This would be a different universe without unbelievers.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: It would be.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because that un what that unbeliever does can ripple into the rest of creation to affect how other people believe or don't believe, or can affect uh events here on the earth and even into the future and even into eternity.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the most obvious problem here is that Frank and William Lynn Craig are reducing damned individuals to mere pawns for the benefit of the saved individuals.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: This means that God didn't create those people out of love, but out of utility to service the ones he knew in advance would actually worship him.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Is that an answer?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm also concerned about this model of salvation, saying that certain individuals will be saved only in certain worlds.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Are there some possible worlds where I stay a believer and ultimately go to heaven?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: As opposed to this one, where I've apostated and will go to hell?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Is whatever it is about our character that will accept or reject Jesus' offer not consistent in all possible worlds?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: If that is correct, then I don't see how I'm culpable.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: When it was God who chose this universe and not one of the ones where I'm saved.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: How is that possibly on me?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: To be clear, Frank is saying that someone might be saved because of a ripple effect from me losing my faith.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to be created to be eternally damned, and that an all-knowing, all-powerful God had no other way to accomplish that lucky person's salvation.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: But if God knows what Pologia would do in every possible world, it's really the fact that God knows all counterfactuals.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: He knew if you were created in another universe what you would do, uh, or in another situation, what you would do and what I would do.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: God knows all possible counterfactuals.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then why bother actualizing me or any of us?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Just jump straight to heaven with those who would accept him in at least one possible world.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Going back to Frank's numbers game, surely the number of people who would accept God in at least one possible world is higher than the number of people who would accept God in the single actualized world that God happened to make.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: By my proposal, he would increase those saved, decrease those unsaved, and have done nothing at all to diminish free will.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you layer in the doctrine of age of accountability and infant salvation.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think when babies die, they go to heaven, according to uh this, it's not it doesn't state this directly, but David, after his baby dies in the Old Testament, says he stops mourning after the baby dies, and his assistants are going, why did you stop mourning?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: He says, The baby will not come back to me, but I will go to him.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: The implication is he's gonna see the baby in heaven.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: So no, I don't think God sends uh people who haven't reached the age of accountability to hell.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: If infants can reach heaven without a lifetime of character formation, why is that dangerous process indispensable for everyone else?
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: There are obviously possible worlds where my mother or anyone's mother suffered a miscarriage, causing me to be conceived, but not born.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that version of me would go to heaven.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: So if we consider those possible worlds, that would bring the number of people saved in heaven up to 100%, without affecting anyone's free will.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: So again, the reason I will suffer eternal conscious torment is because of God's arbitrary decision to actualize a world where I am born, and not a world where I die before my age of accountability.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Does God share the responsibility with me when he chose the circumstances unfavorable to my salvation?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, a pardon illustration, a governor can pardon anyone, right?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, in the US, it depends on the state, and some governors can't pardon anyone at all.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Pardons tell us very little about justice.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's a perception, if not a reality, that pardons go to people with connections, people who can arrange favors, or people who are well known in the public eye.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, there are worthy uses of pardons, but the criteria are far from even-handed.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe that's just me being cynical.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Do carry on.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Suppose he pardons, there's two guys who are in jail, one for theft, another for murder.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he pardons both of them, but the guy who is the thief denies the pardon.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Whose fault is that?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's the thief's fault.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: The murderer got grace, the thief denied it.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose I'd want to know more about why the thief didn't accept the pardon.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Some pardons require the person to admit guilt first.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps there were strings attached that he didn't want to obligate himself to.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some states don't provide the option to refuse a pardon, and a presidential commutation of a sentence is automatic, with no input from the subject at all.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: If we're looking to make this more analogous, perhaps the thief was unconvinced this was a genuine offer, or that it came from a real person.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the offer was never made directly, but only through an old faded fax that someone found when they moved a filing cabinet.
• 30:22
  unknown: Just a fact.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: How many times were I told it is a special filing cabinet thing's made office?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but the white paper basket.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: If Jesus' blood paid the price for everyone, then all sentences could be immediately commuted by God and still have only those in heaven who would choose to go to heaven.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: All problems would be solved.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: But that is not the path Christian God chose.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: You say the murderer's a worse sinner.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he is, but he took the he took grace.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: The other guy didn't.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's on him, not on God, not on the governor.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Did the prisoner know beyond a reasonable doubt that the governor exists, possesses legitimate judicial authority, and has personally issued an actual pardon?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Was the offer communicated clearly and unambiguously?
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: Free from contradictory or unverifiable claims?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Did the representatives of the governor identify themselves?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or were they among a chorus of people merely claiming to represent the governor?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is the prisoner even aware of the laws he allegedly broke?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is he aware that he's a prisoner?
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Was the offer made without coercion?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or let's try this.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Was the pardon contingent upon genuine intellectual affirmation of a proposition that the prisoner was not convinced of?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Could the governor tell if the prisoner really believed or was just pretending?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: What if the prisoner was simply not presented with enough evidence to believe such proposition?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like the prisoner is control of what he's convinced of.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is any of that on the governor?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Would we call these the actions of a governor who wanted to free the most prisoners?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: The governor's offering them both freedom.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the guy with the worst sin takes it.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's grace, it's not justice.
• 31:58
  unknown: Thank you.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: I can't possibly know what he's thinking, but Brian's facial expressions do not indicate a man who has had his question answered to his satisfaction.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, and but by the way, what Frank was saying about, you know, God, um, you're not gonna be punished, you're not gonna be you're not gonna be punished unjustly.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so Jesus even says that.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: He says that to Pilate.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: The people who handed me over to you are gonna get a more strict judgment.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not all the same.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: On a strict fact-check basis, that's not what Jesus says.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: John 19, 11, you would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Greater sin, not stricter judgment or greater punishment.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: At least not in this passage.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: That aside, are these so-called lesser punishments still a form of eternal conscious torment?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: If so, then neither of you came within a hundred miles of even attempting to answer the question.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't answer my question!
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: I was hoping you wouldn't pick up on that.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: Why did God create beings that he knew for certain would suffer eternal conscious torment when he had the option of not creating them, or simply not creating at all?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: If morality has anything at all to do with reducing harm, then God has not done the moral thing by creating.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: Infinite joy for some, at the expense of infinite suffering for others, isn't an even trait.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: We are told that the Christian God was already perfect before creating, he had no deficiencies, no needs to be met.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: For such a being, creating can bring him no incremental benefit, but it can bring a lot of avoidable suffering, and the Christian God chose it.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't sound like something a loving God would do.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, sir.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that was all for Brian.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: He went home to think about how Frank and David gave him very little to think about.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: I hope he and his son are still having engaging conversations.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for watching.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a regular around here and appreciate the mission of this channel, and if you're willing and able, please check out the recently revamped tiers over at patreon.com slash polygia.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Without this support from the community, I simply couldn't keep making videos like this.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: For more of this former Christian taking a look at the claims of Christians, tap on the thumbnail on screen now, and I'll see you over there.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Later.