The Old "Remorse" Argument (The Problem of Evil Badly Disguised)

Some have thought it profound to point out that just prior to the Noahic Flood, the text indicates that "God sorrowed [regretted] that he had made man," and see this statement as inconsistent with God's omniscience. In other words: since God is omniscient, we would expect that He would only do that which He would never regret, since He 1. Saw it coming 2. Could have avoided it 3. Always does what is good and right.

The fairly obvious rejoinder to this comes from the fact that the expression "God regretted that He had made man," simply represents God's extreme grief at the radical wickedness of man at the time. Obviously, Noah was an exception to the rule, since God did not destroy him along with the others. But "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord," for "He was righteous in his generation."

Likewise, the New Testament bids the Lord's people, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit." The explanation that God "regretted" making man simply preludes what God was about to do -- UN-make almost all men (except for eight). God's motivation was grief at their sin. Thus, the expression is an anthropomorphism like the many references to "God's hands" or "fingers" to render the situation analogous to one's with which the reader is more familiar, but which is not meant to be taken in a literal sense.

The fact that God experiences grief at sin is told us all through the Bible. Thus, this challenge simply amounts to an altered form of the problem of evil in general. If God could see it coming, and is all-powerful, and all-knowing, why did He make a world where sin exists?

First, the short answer is "I don't know." The Bible does not tell us everything about God, and (so far as I know) no one has claimed that it does. There are plenty of things God does for which the Bible says "Mind your own business" when one asks "why?"

This misconstrues the Christian claim that "we know that what the Bible teaches is true" with "The Bible tells us all truth." The first is true, while the second is not.

The refutation to the question of the so-called problem of evil is fairly direct however. There is --without the Christian worldview - no such thing as evil, since the very concept requires an OBJECTIVE standard by which to distinguish good from evil -- not available on any atheistic account or agnostic assumption set. Nor can the other monotheism or polytheisms consistently uphold such an objective standard.

Only the Bible provides a sufficiently comprehensive and detailed, transcendent legal and ethical code sufficient to answer the question, "How ought we to behave in this or that case?" The simple observation that almost no other worldview even attempts this means that -- since something must be objectively true (for the opposite assumption refutes itself) -- the contrary to the Christian worldview is logically impossible. Islam does not come close with Sharia law, nor does the contemporary Judaic outlook of conservative Jews -- as I have already shown.

Thus, the challenger with the "problem of evil" cannot even consistently offer such a challenge, since (given his view) there is no evil to create a problem. His is the problem of inconvenience, not objective evil.

To admit the existence of objective moral values (like good and evil) requires the preconditions -- prelogical and pre-ethical foundations -- for such values as well. Given that the Christian worldview alone provides these, the assumption of the one entails the other. The contary is logically impossible, and all the challenger needs to do to refute the charge is to provide an example of one worldview other than the biblical one which can in fact do this.

Not gonna happen any time soon. Certainly no Atheistic worldview can give rise to objective (but only conventional) moral values. Thus, such contestants are in the position of the man who wants to beat something with nothing, and whose own implicate -- there is no objective truth or objective moral values -- refutes his own position in each case.

Thus, we know with certainty that God has sufficient moral reasons for the evil He has foreordained, and that if we knew what He does, it would be obvious that He is correct, both veridically and morally. The doubter has no rational basis for anything, never mind such a basis for his particular complaint that he finds Christianity -- God's moral claim upon his life -- inconvenient.

That is not an argument. It's a whim. Thus, contrary to what most proponents of the "problem of evil" expect, the Christian simply does not need an answer of the kind the complainer wants - and God has not given one; nor does He have any moral obligation so to do.

His universe, his rules. If you do not like them, go make your own cosmos. If you cannot do so, you have found the answer to your own challenge. Your are not God, and He is wiser than you. He, as the final arbiter of all Truth, is necessarily correct. The fact that one should presume to judge an omniscient Being is (truly) madness.

Thus, I counter-offer to the one who posits the "problem of evil," the problem of madness. How does it follow, and upon which worldview, that absolute moral values -- not conventional mores, or social norms (which vary from time to time and place to place in their definitions of 'evil') -- obtain apart from the Christian worldview?

Without the (not an) answer to this question, the problem of evil reduces to the counter-problem of madness. And, mind you, Christians have been waiting patiently for about 2,000 years now.