Of course, when debating the existence of God, a number of presumptions must be made, as we found out this evening in the debate on God and the question of suffering between Dinesh D’Souza and Dr. Bart Ehrman. As D’Souza said, we must, however impiously, play God when addressing these questions.

For the questions that plague the theistic position (or at least one that assumes a benevolent, Creator God) is if there is suffering, why does God allow it?  If God is truly omnipotent and all-loving (caring, whichever word you wish to use), how can he allow evil to occur?

Initially, D’Souza failed to answer that question.  He may have obliquely referred to it in making his claim that, for example, the Nazis perpetrated the Holocaust, so how can we blame God?  Well, yes, certainly that are immediately responsible, but that doesn’t address the fundamental point that, if God were truly omnipotent and all-Caring, then how could He allow it to occur?  Obviously, He is not responsible, but that event nonetheless happened.

Ehrman honed in on the fact that D’Souza wasn’t answer that question and asked for a good deal more specificity of what D’Souza actually believed.  And finally, D’Souza fleshed out the Christian position (though not adequately, in my opinion): we are moral, responsible, autonomous agents, so for God to remove suffering, it not only removes our free-will, but it stunts our growth as men and women created in the image of God.

As we are created in the image of God, we are to use our reason and our will to solve these problems seen before us, but for God to remove suffering doesn’t allow us to do this, and doesn’t allow our souls to grow and develop.  D’Souza raised the point that at some point in our lives, our parents stopped sheltering from the evils and vicissitudes of the world (by allowing us to go to college for one), because we cannot continue to live as children.  We have to gain wisdom and depth by experiencing these things.

D’Souza argued that God approaches the issue in the same manner: to remove suffering would leave us children, merely sitting around in a vegetative state.  Basically, we would have no higher telos or purpose in life (which D’Souza said implicitly if not explicitly).

So we have the option of two worlds: one where we are eternally children not capable of making decisions because we are not given the opportunity; the other, the world we live in, where, yes, suffering exists, but deepens our souls and allows us to act upon our God-given talents and, ultimately, our free-will.

Ehrman, however, disagreed with that dichotomy.  He envisioned a world where we could have both free-will and no (or limited) suffering.  I couldn’t understand fully whether he believed there could be free will and no suffering or merely free-will and limited suffering.  He raised the Holocaust in this context, but, from what I understood, was displeased with the extent of the suffering (millions of lives were taken, and the way in which they were taken was horrendous), but he seemed to implicitly be saying it would have been okay if it were a smaller tragedy.  Instead of 12 million lives, 6 million lives.  He questioned God allowing such a large number of people to be killed, but seemed to accept the notion of God allowing a smaller number of people being killed.

He said that it was completely arbitrary that, in this context, some people’s lives were saved, but others’ were not, but left open the question as to the arbitrariness of this new “Ehrman Limit,” where some suffering was allowed, but not too much.  Why his number?

But towards the end, he seemed to quell this notion of God being able to accept a less extensive amount of suffering and said that God and suffering are incompatible, yet held on to his claim that this world would be compatible with free-will, because he places importance on our ability to act.

He complained that D’Souza was limiting God in saying we could either have free-will and suffering or suffering and no free-will, yet never established a framework or a plan for how this world would take shape.  He never articulated this vision of a world with no suffering, yet with men and women being responsible and autonomous agents who act.

This I found to be the major flaw in his argument, but D’Souza faltered in never pressing Ehrman on that point.  In that regard, the debate overall was disappointing.  They never seemed to connect on these major points and address the issues and questions each raised.

But in the end, I entered as a committed Christian and exited similarly, but I’m grateful for Ehrman in that he made me question the underpinnings of my faith and left me with questions to ponder about the character of the God of the Bible.  And that is the beauty of events such as these.