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Byron Belitsos on Integral Theodicy and Why God Allows Evil to Exist · Urantia Radio

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  Welcome to another great episode of the Rancho Radio podcast.
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  I am very excited to have on the program Byron, boletos who has
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  written a great new book, which I've had the pleasure of
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  reading, and it's entitled truths about evil sin.
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  And the Demonic toward an intrical theodicy, Byron boletos
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  joining us. Don't forget.
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  You can always check us out online.
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  Your aunt, your radio dotnet, and we appreciate you sharing
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  these podcast with your friends and thanks for joining us.
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  Byron Millet says is my guest and he has written a seminal
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  book, will talk about called truths about evil sin, and the
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  Demonic Byron has been with us. Numerous times also wrote your
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  evolving Soul, which I highly recommend it also delves into
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  the evil concept original sin. But today, we're going to talk
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  about something called The Odyssey, which is the ongoing
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  philosophical and Theological debate over God's influence on
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  Humanity. Why evil is allowed to exist at
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  all and Questions that theologians through the ages of
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  grappled with. Why does God allow evil is evil?
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  A real construct, all of which Byron addresses in his latest
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  book Byron has also been reading the ranch of look for decades
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  and continues to give lectures and seminars pertaining to the
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  revelations teachings. And we are honored to have Byron
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  on the program in this very candid interview, five years,
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  huh? Five years, Carla fought about
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  five years ago when I decided to leave the west coast and go to A
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  seminary, I was 2018, and I sort of knew that this would be the
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  issue for me to studying theology, since I just grew up,
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  so sensitive to, you know, the problem of evil.
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  So, yeah, it's five years. So, I started writing little
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  papers, little kind of parts of the book were papers.
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  I wrote for classes and and so I was getting a getting some
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  momentum with it in these small papers and then suddenly it came
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  together that, oh, yeah. The you be Really addresses the
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  key issues that theology has been grappling with in this
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  regard and I vaguely. I mean, I knew that but once you
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  read these things, like st. St.
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  Augustine, or Aquinas, or the modern theologians.
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  They're dealing with the same issues that the Urantia book
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  does when it talks about evil and good.
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  So it's not like, you know, the ranch which is popped out of
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  nowhere. You know, it's in a big con.
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  For Sation with this huge tradition and you take us
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  through this history. It's cuz it did it all come
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  together naturally or how long did it take you to write it and
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  then how many times did you rewrite it?
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  Right. Well, you're cute.
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  I had to write a master's thesis to do so after the second year
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  or you write the thesis, so I took maybe three months to write
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  it and was a short version of this book, The, but it Delia You
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  write something like that. And you think, well, I still
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  got, you know, 50 other books I wanted to read and I still want
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  to, you know, drill down on this issue or that issue, and it's
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  just lingered around. And so, it really, you know,
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  people, when I had an opening was in a kind of a contract job
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  with a non-profit one that ran out, I just took the time to try
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  to rewrite everything about Ten times.
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  Yeah so let's dig into that a little bit.
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  So first of all we since you were so eloquent, tell us about
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  the theodicy and why it's so important to this discussion
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  that we have about God and freedom of Will and an evil and
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  horrendous evil, tell us how theodicy sort of intertwines
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  these three further mind when I said theodicy thought I was
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  talking about home. Or, you know, the Odyssey and
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  The Iliad, so it's not Homer, it's see, Odyssey and the D.
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  I see why in the end is sort of making god making Gower
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  exonerating God in the face of evil, and it is pretty much
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  common sense, right? It's it's whatever.
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  But every person of faith is mainly struggling with is in a,
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  why do I have so much anguish and so much, you know, sort of
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  perpetration that You see why is God allowing all of this?
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  And is God really there for me and for us and so I mean we all
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  have that mean even children and so he wasn't really handled in a
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  systematic way until really later in the 17th century when
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  the term was coined by a philosopher wideness of things
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  lost for at the time but it was already in.
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  Suitably there in all of the early writings and even in the
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  Bible, even in Paul, in st. Paul specially is, you know,
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  what do we do? How do we grapple with this, you
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  know, this this demonic least in the biblical sense, you know,
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  the Demonic presence and what why is God?
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  But but then well, okay, so God sent his only son, you know, the
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  early Christians said, you know, and that that's kind of a
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  theodicy because God is guessing the problem he's sending his,
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  his son to sort of wage spiritual war against these
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  forces demonic forces as the early Christians thought and he
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  confronted Satan and he deposed him, you know, so these kind of
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  activities are this very enactment of theodicy that early
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  cringed Christian sort of saw that that you know, God's God's
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  got our back, you know, against these forces because they were
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  dealing with this, Really pretty violent and dark power.
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  You know, the Roman Empire that was a basically enslaved them
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  the Jews. So, you know, they're reaching
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  out for a for an answer. Is it going to be a messiah that
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  will lead us, you know, into a new new world or World.
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  It will be something else, right?
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  So so, you know, the so we get the sort of the first theodicy
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  is what we read in the Bible, and I think exemplified in the
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  Gospel of John. John and, but it's based on this
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  notion of a kind of a conflict and have it a war in heaven, and
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  that's the first of seven or eight distinct versions.
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  That I trace all the way up to Modern theology there, different
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  Renditions of good versus evil and how good prevails, and how
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  God is sort of defended, you know, defending God's
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  omnipotent. So this is this this issue of
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  omnipotence Zero critical to this because you know God is
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  all-powerful. So you know what?
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  Come on. God had come and pull us out of
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  This calamity. There were in the middle of if
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  your all-powerful and if you really love us show us that you
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  care and the you know providential care you but just a
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  lot of ways to to to address it and and there are at least three
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  distinct ways that ancient Christianity began to do
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  theodicy as he we here today, as you mentioned, you Do many
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  people refuse to believe in God, especially post-holocaust
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  because they ask themselves this.
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  Very integral question is, if there is a God, why does he
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  allow evil to happen? A loving God would prevent and
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  that's when you get into the theodicy, that's when you're
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  trying to like you say, exonerate God for the evil, that
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  is for some reason allowed to happen.
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  Why do we suffer all of these questions?
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  That could come into every moral person's head and what your
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  book? Did so eloquently, is it?
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  It it took the various theodicies of the people down
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  Through the Ages and how it in each generation.
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  It was almost like everybody had their, their well-thought-out
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  opinion of what they what they thought of the Odyssey.
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  What does what is God's relationship?
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  Do we really have free will is everything predetermined?
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  If everything is predetermined? Maybe we don't have free will
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  and that is that is the the the ongoing debate in theodicy.
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  Well said Jim. Yeah, I think that's pretty good
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  that, that if you see the issue of predetermination or
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  predestination is really comes up in a huge way as another
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  answer to this, which is that God is in control even of evil.
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  I mean, so evil is not really evil.
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  It appears to be, but God is harvesting these apparently bad
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  experiences for the good for greater good actually.
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  And so, you know, that's, that's Not a bad concept on the surface
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  and that Christians come up with that and they utilize that and
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  it still is the in a way the central teaching of, you know,
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  main lines least parts of Mainline protestantism or
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  certainly fundamentalist protestantism.
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  For example, let's go back to the the enlightenment, the
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  so-called Age of Reason and and maybe even perhaps the
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  introduction of humanism as its own theodicy because sort of
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  where I see the the modernized secular world today.
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  But this really had its roots during that period of cons and
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  other philosophers of that era who were trying to debate the
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  existence of deity and played into, you know, the ideas of
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  being endowed by our creator. And those are the things that
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  some of the things that you bring up in your book.
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  It's analogous to what happened in the 20th.
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  Century also happened in the 17th century 20th.
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  We do deal with the world wars. Hiroshima will back then.
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  They had a really, really great Calamity which was the war that
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  was set off by the Protestant revolt.
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  And you know, a lot of us, don't really get enough instruction
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  about that and high school college, but it was a really
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  great disaster for the Continental Europe that which
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  then moved over in England in the Civil War there. 17th
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  century. It was it really made Theology
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  and religion and the church look really bad.
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  So there was a Revolt of intellectuals as you just
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  indicated and it's the same kind of Revolt that we have today,
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  the secular revolt and back then it was well at least we have
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  human reason and reasonable people with never countenance in
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  a religious Warfare and and Slaughter of you know, a
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  Protestant Spike Catholics and vice versa.
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  So let's get rid of that and come back to the material basis
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  of our life, you know. So then you get science and you
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  get the sort of the basic principles of Enlightenment
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  philosophy, which is real law, natural law.
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  So, so rather than this spiritual law, which we get
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  these, you know, these priesthoods that are, you know,
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  telling us about these spiritual principles, but but we have now,
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  we have The ability to measure nature with reason and with
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  mathematics and, and, and what do we need these people there,
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  because we can create a better world through science really
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  through rationality. So that becomes in a way of
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  theodicy or a substitute for theodicy.
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  Yeah, tell me. Who is it Peckham the the
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  Contemporary philosopher religionist that you spoke of
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  who you mentioned came very close or has very similar.
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  Use on the Odyssey to the Urantia book, so who was Pepe?
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  Oh yeah, great, yeah, John Peckham, you know?
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  You when you when you look at the literature you find the
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  outstanding books on this and he was really perhaps the best I've
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  seen by few theodicy, cysts by philosophers of religion and he
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  is more on the conservative side is actually a Seventh-Day
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  Adventist. But they're very, very high
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  level of philosophically trained Theologian at the very Apex of
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  of fat of that church teaching their semin being Seminary.
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  So he really picked up a lot of threads to that the ranch a book
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  has put together already but he put it together through couple
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  decades of research that there must be.
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  You know, the Bible talks about, you know, the devil and the
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  devil's presence. But there's got to be these
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  mitigating factors that explains why Jesus did not really put an
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  end to the preface to this full. So rebellious, Angel presence,
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  and we have a Mythic framing of it in the Bible but let's do it.
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  Let's do a philosophic framing. Now that we're, you know, in the
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  postmodern age, how would we look at that as a philosopher?
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  It's a theologian. And so he shows basically what
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  the Rancher book feels. In which is there had to have
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  been this prior agreement with the satanic forces which allowed
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  them to remain on the planet, even after the Incarnation of
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  Christ and for them to operate in this kind of modify way and
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  and that that they would not be adjudicated immediately.
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  Although their powers had been had been stripped from them,
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  they still could operate. So it's basically a lot like
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  what the ranch ebook That and he's just inferring it logically
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  from from what we see. No, no way that he would have
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  had any connection with the Urantia book or anything like
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  that, right? Not aware of it.
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  No evidence that he did. He did.
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  In fact, I did write to him and, you know, praised his work and I
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  asked him if he would meet with me at the American Academy of
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  religion that we had at your Ranch a booth there last
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  November. And then there's also another
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  gentleman, you mentioned And you brought it up in your book.
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  But Whitehead was also, very revolutionary and taking the
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  religious argument and also talking about why evil exists,
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  can you share us a little bit about whiteheads?
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  Viewpoint in his theodicy Whitehead?
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  Alfred North Whitehead was a mathematician and genius who can
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  who moved over from mathematics at the very highest level in the
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  world really to philosophy and He and Bertrand Russell wrote
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  the primary text on mathematics in the night around 1910.
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  And so he then came in philosophy when he left England
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  and and I went to Harvard. So he wanted to Think Through
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  logically the prob these problems and problem of evil and
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  many other problems and came up with this notion that deity
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  evolves. And that's really kind of
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  unprecedented, but there was a sense of that Century earlier in
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  hegel's philosophy. And his school of thought has a
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  huge Wing that states that school.
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  Open theism was very interesting modern wing and kind of the
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  comes out of that white heady and view that says, well God
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  could do that, but God is self restraining and doesn't do that
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  and less there are, you know, very sort of cosmic and And
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  critical reasons which is basically the you the Urantia
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  Book View as well about that. So but but white heady and
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  reject the idea of omnipotence and you need to be an omnipotent
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  deity to really do interventions that are efficacious.
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  So they say that God is not controlling in that way.
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  But God is initiating. Why his agency known as
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  primordial deity. This part of the city that has
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  the ability to initiate. E8 Evolution.
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  And so in a way it's a commentary on darwinian Theory
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  but it's but it's a more philosophical theological to how
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  does this come into being? Well, there's a Creator deity,
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  that brings it into being, but the deity doesn't have powers
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  but the deity doesn't control it.
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  But rather is a deity of persuasion that the deity
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  provides ways of once rational hominid, hominids become
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  rational, they Or can be persuaded by various agencies of
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  deity, which which they, which are fairly limited for them.
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  For example, they don't really think of of an incarnation of
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  the second person of the Trinity that they don't see it that way,
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  that that it's some of them do, but, but Whitehead didn't than
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  that, it wasn't, it wasn't according to the Christian view
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  that God has become incarnate in order to persuade us, but they
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  have the view that God is. Inside you and that that's how
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  evolution is taking place but not through these external
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  agencies at that omnipotent deities able to use, but it's
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  still a beautiful, beautiful notion because that is the idea
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  more or less of the Supreme Being, who do you think you
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  really were just went? Wow, that was a brilliant, you
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  know, thinker Who impressed you the most?
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  I think that Whitehead is really near the top but what I did do
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  in the book is I chose this set of the very best of them seven
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  or eight and all of them are kind of equally very profound
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  but partial And I say that because the conclusion of the
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  book is is stating these seven or eight, great ideas are all to
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  be found in the you be in other words, a UB also located these
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  ideas and then Incorporated them as human sources yet has to be
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  because there's some times it is like with other human sources.
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  There's a this like a paraphrasing that's pretty.
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  Direct for example Luther is one of the yeah, one of the seventh
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  or eighth grade and Luther's justification by faith is almost
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  literally quoted word for word in the words of Jesus in the
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  Rancher book. And that is part of theodicy.
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  It's a partial view. It's a view having to do with
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  the individuals, individuals, interior, moral life, and the
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  kind of surrender and acceptance of ones that want to saved by
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  faith. And so, so that's an example.
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  Will you be borrowing as a human Source from loser?
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  But it but I argue that, you know, they have they have an
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  Olympian knowledge of human theology, the revelator's and
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  and so they're going to Echo the greatest thinkers and seen
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  augustin's one of them obviously acquaintances another but these
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  more modern 19th century early 20th century, they are echoing
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  Whitehead and very distinct ways.
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  But also a number of other All the ones in a way is Central to
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  the UB Zone, native theodicy, which we see in the, you know,
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  statement on the inevitability. He's on page 52.
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  I don't think I would have been able to appreciate your book and
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  I recognize that the your auntie book has really broadened, my
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  understanding of spirituality, more than I expected.
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  Were you pleased? That the Urantia book was
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  consistent. I didn't quite recognize that
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  till you know, later later on first.
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  I was like a lot of the ranch of readers that.
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  Well this is all new. This is totally out of the blue.
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  This is pure Revelation, never been surpassed but but what I
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  think the more mature view is that you realize oh my God.
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  This is this is actually in conversation with these great
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  thinkers of the past in our tradition and literally alludes
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  to many of them. I would add here about about
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  Saint Augustine who made some big mistakes but also hit some
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  very Three high points in his notion of what they call.
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  The Free Will defense of God's goodness.
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  And how this guy could have come up with this is, you know, it's
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  the spirit of Truth moving through him.
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  But we have to remember always with these human sources that
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  they are, they are, they are inhibited by their cultural
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  context. And in the next episode, we will
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  continue our discussion with Byron.
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  And talk about the state of today's religion.
• 21:19
  How Christians can help in the Urantia book movement, and just
• 21:22
  how much Byron believes? The luciferian influence is,
• 21:26
  impacting current times, look for part two, on the Rancher
• 21:29
  Radio podcast.