Randy Alcorn #fundie

Randy Alcorn #fundie desiringgod.org

I loved that Lewis clearly articulated the problem of evil and suffering better than most atheists, including Richard Dawkins. Yet he embraced a biblical worldview that had a far greater explanatory power than his atheism. And he passed it on to me and countless others.

Young people go to college unprepared intellectually for what they’ll face. Let’s feed them C.S. Lewis on evil and suffering before they hear the rants of atheist and agnostic college professors, most of them intellectual pygmies compared to Lewis. Let’s not leave it to the world to ask the hard questions — the Bible raises these very questions and answers them better than any other worldview. It was Lewis who first showed me that.

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The problem of evil and suffering?

Had God designed the world, it would not be
A world so frail and faulty as we see.

People going to college ought to have read CS Lewis long before that.

The hard questions?
Why did God create Cancer? THAT is evil, and we all suffer in some way because of it.

Students will be able to watch that by Phillip Pullman: "His Dark Materials".

Now get HBO - or at least the BBC - to create a "Chronicles of Narnia" series streamed on Amazon. Oh, wait...!

Atheism isn't supposed to have "explanatory power." Atheists might have ideas as to the explanation of various things, but they wouldn't be coming from atheism itself, as it's not a "worldview." I don't know why that is so hard to understand for some people.

I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated, and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated. In other words, it forbids wholesome doubt.
- C.S. Lewis

I loved that Lewis clearly articulated the problem of evil and suffering better than most atheists, including Richard Dawkins.

There IS no problem of evil if you do not believe in an omnibenevolent omnipotent force (i.e. are not a Christian or a Muslim) in the first place.

Randy Alcorn #fundie desiringgod.org

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Confused?