Free Republic

Certainly that logical fallacy, a superficial ignorant parroted polemic (such as invokes everything from the Flood to AIDS as a moral argument against God), can be answered.There simply is no contradiction btwn God being omnipotent (and omniscient) and all good (from whom all good has come, as the creator of an exceedingly vast, systematicity ordered universe, exquisitely fine-tuned for our physical life), and the allowance of evil,For unless you want a world in which mankind is like a cloud or a robot, then allowing evil is a necessary good if:Man is to be a being with the ability to make...

Minneapolis once had the reputation of being a nice city. That seems, now, like a long time ago in a galaxy far away. These days, the reality is different. This sickening video of a gang of youths viciously brutalizing a man just outside Target Field, where the Twins play baseball, has gone national. It is visual proof of how feral downtown Minneapolis has become: Or, to take another example, on the last night of the Minnesota State Fair, generally thought of as one of the more wholesome events a family can attend, there was a gang rumble just outside the...

Peter Atterton, a professor of philosophy who teaches at San Diego State University, recently published an op-ed in The New York Times with the title, “A God Problem.” The author contends that the traditional “Western,” i.e. Christian, conception of God as a being who is at once “perfect,” “all-powerful,” and “all-knowing” is in fact “not coherent.” To put this another way, the idea of God is self-contradictory, as logically impossible as square circles, colorless red things, and married bachelors. Professor Atterton’s position, as I will show, is no less mistaken now than when it was articulated by philosophers in centuries past.Atterton launches a two-prong...

Does Suffering in the World Disprove God’s Existence? By Philip Cottraux War. Plagues. Starvation. Natural disasters. Children dying in the streets. Rapes. Massacres. The Bible says For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son (John 3:16), yet why does He allow these things? If He is all-powerful, couldn’t He intervene and stop all of it in an instant? This is perhaps the most common argument against His existence, at least from my experience. If an atheist sniffs out a tweet I’ve made about God’s love, they’ll respond with an image of a child’s body blown to...

It’s been a time of calamities: Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, flooding in South Asia and Africa and a massive earthquake in Mexico have led to widespread devastation around the globe.Some people seem to think this is divine retribution for the sins of humanity: Kirk Cameron, former child actor, said in a video on Facebook that Hurricane Harvey and Irma were “a spectacular display of God’s immense power” and were sent so human beings could repent. Earlier, after seeing the devastation of Hurricane Harvey, conservative Christian pastor John McTernan had noted that “God is systematically destroying America” out of anger over...

"God isn’t fixing this,” Thursday’s newspaper proclaims after Republican presidential candidates “offer prayers”

In certain schools of Christian thought, hell is not everlasting, but a more painful form of purgatory. M any Christians presume that hell is a place where brutally painful punishments are inflicted on evildoers for an indefinite, and perhaps infinite, amount of time in the afterlife. Think of a medieval torture chamber with no exit — or fire extinguishers. But this, as I argued in a recent column, makes no theological sense. If morality is good, then doing the right thing must be its own reward and doing the wrong thing must be its own punishment. To think that a...

A well known Austrian Auxiliary bishop is not prepared to take the unjustifiable pummeling of the media bosses: Loveparade is not a "harmless celebration" -- If God "punishes", He does this with the intention to bring men around, God punishes out of love.[kreuz.net, Salzburg] This Friday the Auxiliary Bishop Andreas Laun of Salzburg wrote a careful article about the Massacre-Loveparade in Duisburg. The text appeared in the neo-Conservative Linz commercial website 'kath.net'. The in the meantime suspended, so-called Loveparade was the biggest alcohol, drug and sex even of Western Europe. Msgr Laun stated from the start, that no one is...

What do we mean by professing that G-d is good and man was created in His image? When G-d allows and even causes unbearable pain to befall man, afflicting him with sickness, cruel death, earthquakes and the most horrible wars, there seems little room for these claims. If G-d, by our moral standards, cannot be justified for many of His actions, as we have suggested previously, how are we to revere Him?

Horror: Theodicy (2:17) Synopsis: In this episode, Chris plots revenge against Stephen by hiring an amateur adult model to lure him into a hotel room with a hidden camera. “OUR MARK HAS TO BE CONVINCED THAT YOU’RE RUNNING FROM A BOYFRIEND WHO WANTS TO KILL YOU. CAN YOU PERSUADE HIM TO GO UP TO YOUR HOTEL ROOM?” Watch Video.

Audiobook: Horror novel adaptation on youtube. Constructive criticism welcome. Episode synopsis: In this episode, Chris returns home to face another ordeal as the voices torture him to make new concessions. Watch and rate here. Series synopsis: Part II introduces our story's reluctant heroine, Nicole, after an encounter with a mysterious stranger turns her life upside down, and she begins a quest to stop a terrorist cult.

Audiobook: Part II introduces our story's reluctant heroine, Nicole, after an encounter with a mysterious stranger turns her life upside down, and she begins a quest to stop a terrorist cult. In this episode, Nicole tries to prevent Carl from hurting himself in a church and confronts Chris with a warning to leave town.

In this episode of our story about the end of the world, Carl Alpers returns to fire a gun at Father Stephen Keller during mass in a Catholic church. Viewer discretion advised (parental guidance) Watch episode then share your thoughts on the problem of evil and the issue of Theodicy (i.e. how a good, all-powerful, all-knowing God and evil both exist.)

It was obvious to observers around the world that one of the designated targets of the Pakistani Islamist terrorists was the Mumbai Chabad House, the one Jewish center in Mumbai. The 10 Islamic terrorists who came from Pakistan to India chose their targets with great care. If one assumes that the terrorists primary goals were to destabilize India, weaken growing Indian-Pakistani cooperation in fighting terrorism, and greatly increase Indian-Pakistani tension, hopefully to the point of military war between the two countries, every one of the targets made strategic sense. Slaughtering as many people as possible in Indias major economic center,...

After days of prayer and fear among Jews and good people everywhere, the horrible reality of the Islamic terrorist rampage in Mumbai was revealed in all its obscene and mindless savagery when members of Zaka entered the Chabad compound. Perhaps it is impossible for the average human being to understand the depth of evil represented by Muslim extremists. As an eyewitness told Ynet, the sight was unbearable even to the practiced eyes of those whose job it is to deal with the aftermath of murderous terror attacks: "The place was totally destroyed. Live grenades were all over the floor. Torah...

All terrorism is monstrous, but the murder of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg by "religious Islamic extremists" stands out for its unspeakable infamy. The deliberate targeting of a small Jewish center and its married young directors, whose only purpose it was to provide for the religious needs of a community and feed travelers, proves that those who perpetrated this crime are bereft not only of even a hint of humanity, but every shred of faith as well. The world's most aggressive atheists are more religious than these spiritual charlatans and pious frauds. When Osama bin Laden, whose beard masks the...

In this episode of our story about the end of the world, Chris invites demons to possess him and kills his first victim to appease the voices. (Please watch and provide constructive criticism.)

Barack Obama is the latest Democratic candidate to offer a plan that would bring us closer to universal health care coverage, along socialized British or Canadian lines. Almost all the developed nations have turned to such models of government-directed medicine, while the United States has thus far resisted. Could this be because our country remains the most Bible-believing in the world? Let’s consider the possibility. On the topic of health, Scripture overturns familiar assumptions. Why do people get sick in the first place? The usual medical answers focus on purely material causes: unhealthy lifestyles, uncongenial microbes, unlucky genes. From such...

It is the period of Holocaust Remembrance Day or Yom HaShoah—the Day of the Holocaust. In Israel, traffic comes to a halt for two minutes of respectful silence. In America, the day is observed by many Jewish communities as the dead are mourned. But for some, the Holocaust challenges faith. Anyone who believes in the God of Abraham, has only two choices when contemplating the Holocaust: (1) God was powerless to stop evil men from perpetrating the Holocaust and therefore allowed this unspeakable calamity to occur; or (2) He made it happen. Nobody with faith can adopt the first explanation....

Have you ever heard of Anna Politkovskaya? She was a Russian journalist who regularly reported on Vladimir Putin's undermining of press and other freedoms in Russia. This past weekend she was murdered. If you are debating whether to be optimistic or pessimistic about humanity's future, here is a point to consider: In every generation, especially in the last century, vast numbers of good people -- often the best people -- have been murdered by the worst people. Think about all the decent (and, of course, some indecent) people Stalin murdered among his 20 million to 30 million victims. Think about...