{"id":59217,"date":"2015-10-24T07:00:15","date_gmt":"2015-10-24T14:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=59217"},"modified":"2015-10-24T10:32:20","modified_gmt":"2015-10-24T17:32:20","slug":"the-problem-of-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2015\/10\/24\/the-problem-of-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem of pain"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the books I read on my sabbatical was Jesus Among Other gods<\/a>\u00a0by Ravi Zacharias.\u00a0The part of the book which I found most engaging was the chapter in which he addresses\u00a0the problem of evil and suffering. Over the next week or so, I’ll be posting a few short extracts from the book from this section, together with a comment or two.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The “Problem of pain” is an understandably common reason given by Agnostics and Atheists\u00a0for doubting or even denying the existence of God. However, as Zacharias points out,\u00a0one can only really talk about the problem<\/strong>\u00a0of pain if there is a moral law:<\/p>\n

…[some]\u00a0protest that God cannot exist because there is too much evil evident in life\u2026 [The Atheist says that] evil exists; therefore the Creator does not\u2026 <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

But here, Christianity provides a counterchallenge\u2026 If evil exists, then one must assume that good exists in order to know the difference<\/strong>. If good exists, one must assume that a moral law exists<\/strong> by which to measure good and evil<\/em>. <\/span><\/p>\n

– Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other gods<\/span><\/p>\n

Okay, so to talk about “good” and “evil”, a moral law must exist. So what? How does that point to theism?<\/p>\n

But if a moral law exists, must not one posit an ultimate source of moral law<\/strong>, or at least an objective basis<\/strong> for a moral law? By an objective basis, I mean something that is transcendently true at all times<\/strong>, regardless of whether I believe it or not.<\/em>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

– Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other gods<\/span><\/p>\n

What could possibly be the objective basis of this law? The Theist answers “God”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the books I read on my sabbatical was Jesus Among Other gods\u00a0by Ravi Zacharias.\u00a0The part of the book which I found most engaging was the chapter in which he addresses\u00a0the problem of evil and suffering. Over the next week or so, I’ll be posting a few short extracts from the book from this section, together with a comment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,17],"tags":[1172,2969,3386,3385,542,1911,2030],"class_list":["post-59217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-faith","tag-atheism","tag-featured","tag-jesus-among-other-gods","tag-moral-argument","tag-morality","tag-ravi-zacharias","tag-theism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Pain1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59217"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59589,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59217\/revisions\/59589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}