2. Why do good people suffer?
“God allows terrible suffering in the world. So he might be either an all-powerful but not good enough to end evil and suffering, or else he might be all good but not powerful enough to end evil and suffering. Either way the all-good, all-powerful God of the Bible does not exist.” – Hillary (from Reason for God)

3. John 9:1-2
1 As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Why is there suffering?

4. If there is no God…
“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky; and you won't find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.” - Richard Dawkins

5. DNA’s Dance??? Repulsive – Eleanor Stump Mirror of Evil.
Inconsistent – Dawkins’ Advice
Question – would it be immoral to abort a fetus with Downs?
Answer – “It would be immoral not to.”
STOP THE MUSIC!!!

6. Problem with the Problem
If there is evil then there is good.
If there is good then there is a standard.
If there is a standard then there is a standard bearer.
To deny God and morality is to deny evil and make the question meaningless.

7. Why didn’t God just create a world where evil is not possible?
God cannot do “anything”…
God is love – 1 John 4:8
God made man in his image – Gen 1:26-27
Love requires freedom.
Freedom requires choice.

8. Matthew 27:45-46
45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. 46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

9. C.S. Lewis – “They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into glory.”

10. Romans 8:18
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

11. Romans 8:28-29
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.