Welcome back Doubts allowed listeners to our next episode.

Any of you listening to last month's episode with Phil Helper will notice the absence of myself.

I wasn't there.

I'd actually had quite a bad back issue in my lumber spine, and I was in hospital for a while and then had severe sort of pain management and was managing it.

I'm now well on my way to recovery.

But it's an interesting thing in conversations with the subject we're going to talk to you today because we're going to touch in today back again to things we've touched into before, which to do with the fall suffering design.

I suppose it touches into evolution and creationism.

And when I was in hospital and I was talking to other friends about back issues, it does turn out that human species has a weakness in the lumber spine in.

The fact that we've evolved.

If we're going to go with evolution, we have a weakness of the spine at that particular point where so many people have oh back problem, this, that and the other, very very common to different degrees.

And when we come into sort of theodicy and creation of all sorts, the idea of how things can have a bad design is a really interesting question, and how this is where we'll be tapping into.

So before I say anything more, Ed and Frances, I'm glad to be back.

And what have we been in the store today.

We are delighted to have you back, Andrew.

And although of course we're very sorry you had to have this problem, it does fit in nicely with our proposal for what we're going to discuss today.

You with your badly designed back.

Yes, well done, Andrew.

When an actor goes method.

Got rights, I'll put myself in hospital really experience what a back problem is.

And now we'll link it to the Odyssey.

Well, Francis, you know what's coming up, so you'd be careful.

What's going on is our fifty arguments book has coughed up a chapter about responding to suboptimal design.

So we're going to launch with that, and it's going to actually lead us into a journey all around the Fall and Adam and even stuff and will end up somewhere perhaps unexpected.

So that's that's the plan.

Can I talk a little bit about this this chapter to kick us off?

Yep, sure.

So the book is by Dempsky, edited by Dempsky and Lacona.

Dempski is a big IT advocate, so surprise price is about sixteen of the fifty supposed arguments are around in intelligent design, and this one is an electrical and computer engineer responding to the idea that design in nature is suboptimal.

So it's if anyone following its chapter twenty one Intelligent Optimal and Design Divine design m He doesn't given any examples, but Andrew has given us the first one.

Francis, Sorry, I was just gonna say, so what what does what does he say about it?

A little bit more or one of us to talk a bit more about some classic cases that barlagists talk about when there appears to be suboptimal design in nature?

Oh, so, would that include the obstetrical dilemma?

It would.

It would also include Andrew's back, but that that's not something we're going to push on with much more so the abstractical dilemma.

It's also kind of a bit like the back because it's to do with walking upright and the size of the the hips in humans obviously the mothers and the way that the baby has to actually rotate to get through, which I didn't know I was just a little bit of reading on this.

And so the.

Baby of say a calf or a lamb or something, they're up and about within a few hours or if not sooner, walking about and stuff.

But human babies need years of development.

And it's partly because our brains are so important.

It's a kind of superpower.

It's not running fast or seeing well, it's our thinking and ability to cooperate in large groups and that kind of stuff.

So our heads are really important, and yet they can't get big enough to be ready to go when we're born.

So y all, this is considered a sub awful design, particularly because even compared to primates, the problems in childbirth with humans is just massively more mm hmm.

And the pain and.

And they're subsequent dependents because basically, because as I understand it, human babies are sort of born part formed.

Do you know, they're only half baked when they come into the world, and then you have to go with the baking process once outside the body, because if they stayed in the body until they were ready to go, it would be well they would just never get out or the woman would never survive.

Yes, yeah, yeah, so that's one issue.

Do you want to send any more on bad back, So Andrew, in terms of what you've heard that if something humans are much more prone to than other I.

Just read and heard and I had heard it before, but it was just like refreshing the same ideas that even without my own sort of back issues, I had come across the fact that it is a common variant variance of back issues you know everybody has.

Oh, and it's to do And I didn't know that until I first had read read this that it's to do with the fact that we've evolved as bipedal there is this sort of you know, weak spot in light of that.

It's the same way as other things have evolved, like apparently you know, strange things like you'ved of in the giraffes.

I think it's one of the what's it one of the nerves.

Yes, it's called.

Which could just go straight there, but it actually goes.

And the reason it's happened is because of just one of the evolutionary arguments, isn't it.

And it's like a bizarre thing.

Now I'm not sure if that's slowly your weakness, but it's certainly bizarre.

In the way.

Sorry, can we just can we just explain what the.

In that case more probably than I do, so please.

I was told this when I was doing my biology level.

So this nerve, like with say with fish, it goes straight from the brain to someone on the throad to something, no problems, but by something get a mammal, and then you've got a ridiculous example with the giraffe with nerve.

The nerve has to pass the same on the same side as the blood vessels leaving the heart, as it does on this fish or all other vertebrates.

So you end up with the nerve going from the brain right down to the heart in the body of the giraffe and then right back up again.

So it's larry.

That's why it's the larin genalaryngeal nerve angels.

How I say it, this has been known about for a long time and as an example, and what they said in Valajai level is in nature, designs, as it were, just have to be good enough and not they're never perfect, they're always just good enough.

And so it's not just as it's a compromise.

It's that it got to the stage where it's good enough and then there was no driver for it to evolve into absolutely brilliant.

And evidently the evolutionary answer to why it happened that way is explainable.

It's just when it comes to sort of a creation design, if it's younger, well, matter of fact, any kind of thing that's not involving evolution, it's rather bizarre.

You just think, Okay, God's just got some interesting quirks going there.

Yes, so contrast would be so the cheat is running that looks beautifully set up and designed, and that's because there was a driver for it to drive to run a little bit faster for its survival.

Yeah.

Yeah, Okay, so that's the background, which so we haven't even started the response because he didn't give any background the chapter.

It's all response.

He gives a four proper responses and then he throws in a fifth in one sentence.

The kay.

He talks about second agents, but I'm going to drop that to a degree because it's a way of introducing two ideas that stand alone and are much easier to understand.

I think he's not much secondary agents because he's a software engineer and he uses special secondary bits of kit to do computerated design.

So he's not making all the descience decisions the computer is oh okay, okay, but I think that's just an added level.

So he's linking this to the idea of physical laws, which is quite leep.

So let's just talk about the physical laws and themselves.

And the idea is that God has constrained himself to work only through physical laws, and that's why we get some bad designs or no suboptimal designs.

The problems of actual physics and reality constrain him, constrain God.

Do they constrain him?

Or has he chosen to constrain himself.

I guess it would have to be the second, but that isn't spelled out.

Okay, what about the whole side of miracles?

Then within this way of arguing, again, that's something God's decided to constrain himself.

So I think that's just underlying France's point.

Oh no, No, what I meant was that on one side, God's constraining himself to the laws, which is which is fine as an argument, and then suddenly over here somewhere else you've got this almost suspension of laws and what you call miracle in other areas.

Yeah, so yeah, that's not a problem that I.

Think, Yes, that he can that there are exceptional cases and it's up to God to decide.

Yeah, this is an exceptional case, I'll bypass.

Yeah, I think I think that's the the idea.

Yes, the whole design is that everything wrongs along physical laws, and then when suddenly the physical laws are broken by some divine intervention, then that makes us sit up a notice.

Okay, I mean, can I put in a we Perhaps haven't really got into it, so perhaps it's a bit early for me to offer a Devil's advocate pushback.

But would the idea be that humans and probably animals in general are assisted by knowing that there are laws and therefore generally having predictability, and therefore, as a general thing, it's it's good that things are not always just being dealt with on an ad hoc basis by God intervening, but that we know, you know, this action has this consequence.

Sorry, I've only just thought.

I've only just thought of that, which is why I didn't flag.

It up in the Yes.

Oh no, Yes, I think it's fine that he should.

God could constrain himself only to work for physical laws with these occasional exceptions.

I'm not disputing that as.

A theory right, No, no, no, But do you think that the reason he is supposed to do that is to provide predictability in the world which benefits us?

Is that the reason that's not a stated reason he doesn't try to justify, Well, I'll have.

To go into apologetics and coming up with better reasons.

Better reasons for why, because the laws would be his anyway, not something that he's subject to.

Think.

Maybe I've forgotten.

I did these notes a few days ago, but I don't think he mentioned any reason why God chose to constrain himself for physical laws.

But I can see it as something that's worth defending.

Swinburn was very good on this, and the first for this book I ever read, or Philosophy of Religion.

Right, So, if I'm going to criticize this, which of course I think I do, it's that there doesn't appear to be in any of the normal examples a physical law which is constraining the design.

So for example, there's well, the classic is the larynge elver, No having to loop down the neck and back up again.

It just could flip the other side of the blood vessel.

Than that be fine, That wouldn't break any physical laws.

Equally, the birth through evolutionary history has to be through the hips, and that's a bone.

That's sort of right, That makes a ring, isn't it.

So there's no reason why the birth couldn't be much simpler in a the softer bit of the body, like through the tummy button sort of thing.

You want to have a new redesign it for the humans?

Can you think all that?

All that works great for the primates, but for humans?

Are really going to redesign this and you do it without this constraint of having to pass the through through the hips.

Or if there was some way of articulating the hips so that they could open wider or something of that sort.

Yes, that would be more of an as evolutionary response.

And there is a bit of that I believe, right, but not enough to get around the whole problem.

Yeah, that's right.

So really there's no reason why it couldn't have been designed more extensively.

You know, if it only partially solves the problem, then there's no reason why I designed couldn't entirely solve the problem.

Yeah, yeah, yes, the hips could convert into something much bending.

Yeah, but.

Uh so, at best, I'd say this this response will cover some examples, but I can't think of what they would be.

Mm hmm.

So his next one is reuse of common design elements.

So God just repeats certain patterns and processes, right, which is exactly what his computer aided design software is doing.

But I don't see.

I don't see how this helps much.

Does anyone want to jump in?

Uh No, I don't.

I think it.

It seems that it's a bit, a bit of a weak response.

And what did you think of it?

Ed?

Well, I think it suggests God doesn't have the time or energy to think through each individual design he makes.

He kind of just waxually in a standard pattern and doesn't really consider whether it can be improved or not.

Which you can understand in the case of somebody doing the computer design aspect of things, because they are limited people.

They're limited by they have limited time and energy, so they need to use these devices to save them time and energy.

Whereas God has infinite time and infinite energy.

So why would he do that?

You've knowed it?

I'm good.

There are other other ways though, because if different, because obviously, if you're coming at a theistic point of view, then obviously you've got older, younger, than evolutionary creations.

I've heard some evolutionary creations just say that God in a sense was or maybe a no open theist kind of evolutionary God.

If you can combine the two, would be interestingly watching to see what kind of creatures are produced with the thing that he set up so that there's this openness to Oh right, I see, so they grow long legs.

That's good.

You know.

I've actually heard people speak like that.

In as a theist, which is a very very different way when normally you're thinking of God made the animals a certain way in all forms of creationism.

But evolutionary creationism is different because some people do sort of say that God sets it all off and steps back to a degree and is not necessarily so intimate, And then other people say he's intimately involved in evolution, which is bizarre in my view.

But what would you say to those kind of things.

I think it's takes us too far away from the topic in that oh.

Right, right, But it was just more like that, you could it would be an explanation for bizarre designs so called it would be that yet the earth bring forth and it goes ah right, Ah, Well, that didn't turn out too well, so maybe I'll bump the dinosaurs off or something.

Yes, that literally heard people speak like that, and that's why they alone.

I get that.

But in this framework, we've got all these ideas intelligent design, people saying, look, this intelligent design, isn't it amazing, and the standard responsors say, well, it doesn't look that intelligent to me.

It looks like it's blind evolutionary forces, and they're having to come back with some ideas, and so it wouldn't really work as an idea coming back to say, yes, there is careful, brilliant intelligent design, and this is why it appears not the answer.

Yes, yeah, you're right, it's not intelligent design at all.

I think we're getting better with the third answer, and that he he talks about the adaptive nature of biological organisms, and this is certainly the point and in line with evolution.

So the idea is that fine tuned perfect signs are vulnerable to changes in the environment, and it's then that they'll fail.

So they appear to be so optimal for the environment they're in at the moment.

If so there's a drought or a new predator turns up on the scene, if there's some adaptive nature in the in the setup, in the design, as we call it, then the organism's got the resources to respond, whereas if it was a pure design it wouldn't do.

So it makes me think of greyhounds, which are absolutely amazing at running fast, but are very vulnerable to diseases and and I think some kind of knock on problems from their pure design for speed.

Yeah, I mean you would have thought that God might have been able to future proof his initial designs, you know.

I mean, isn't that what you would look for in intelligent design in humans, that they understand that things change and that they factor in future proofing.

Yes, we are very good at future proofing because we've got the combination of our intelligence and our corporation to overcome things trying toss.

But God not so much.

All right, Well, I'm saying us as an organism, it does have this adaptive nature in terms of the way our brains are very right bas stick and the way that we're very good at corporating in extremely large groups.

Yeah, but I suppose.

Sorry, Sorry, I mean my point was more about if you're thinking about something as having been designed, and the answer is, well, it was designed for this situation but doesn't work in that situation, then what you would be looking for, I think for a good designer to do would have been to a future proof that in the first place, so that it can adapt to need.

Yes, And I think he's saying that, and he's saying it as a way of explaining how the current design that's got a future proof in.

If you're only looking at the present, it doesn't look perfect, but when you have the wider view of including the future proofing, you then see that it's a great design.

Oh okay, that's his point.

Okay, Okay, I don't know.

I I sort of feel that if he's saying it worked fine in the past, I mean, if his point is about change, it worked fine in this in the past, but then things changed and we're now in the present it doesn't work.

But I think we're going to go on to his fourth point, which is more about the future, that he is future proofing it so it doesn't work in the present, but it's going to work fine in the future.

And those you know, if I've understood that right, then those two things seem to be somewhat fighting with each other.

To me, that he's saying that if it doesn't look if it doesn't look right now, that's because it was right in the past, or if it doesn't look right now, that's because it's going to be right in the future.

And well, I don't know, I mean, I just don't find that, yeah convincing.

Well I think you say this conflict you talk about, Yeah, it results in a compromise in the design.

Oh okay, Well, so I'm reading in what he's saying.

But that's how I think he'd respond.

Is this author sort of thinking along the lines of this is at this point, we don't need to bring in any this this can account for so much in life without bringing in bad in the sense of fall or things going wrong with God's design, because obviously that's the case in most the obyssees.

That comes in later.

But at this particular point he's this is, this is just saying, this is God's way of creating these things happen.

It's perfectly normal.

This is not to do with so called classically sin.

None of it.

At this point classic was sin.

That's right, that's coming out.

That's coming up.

But that this is all before that.

There is another bizarre thing, as well, though, Aperton from France's point about future proofing, because certainly in other forms of creationism, when we're never meant to die or even eat animals like carnivorous, it's a bizarre our situation to think that the body in one sense has future proofd itself to be able to now eat meat and have the food chain and die and still have this amazing cycle.

And to see whether why.

Is that an admission of evolving to another form of human based on the original design.

These are interesting questions, at least for the Young Earth people who would say, yes, we weren't meant to you know, presumably I don't know.

Could you cut yourself?

Would you step on an animal or something?

We've had this before, when we've mentioned it before.

But in the sense of future proofing, whichever way you cut it, it looks like the human species has adapted to something, some way, somehow, even in the most pristine Young Earth creationist model.

What I'd like to do is to part this future proofing idea, because I think it'll be really good to bring it up again later.

I remember too, so this which is well, I think is best one so far.

But again it only can explain some of the examples.

So if we go back to your own's nerve, that's not a future proofing for something.

And in what way is the problems of childbirth the future proofing.

They don't seem to have any obvious flexibility for adaption as the reason for that that layout that that is causing problems.

Yes, they just seem to be a typical example of, as you say, evolution making things good enough.

Yeah, so it's a fair point in itself.

I accept that.

But the best again just covers some examples that I can't quite think of what they'd be.

Okay, So now he has a sort of cover all one, and that is when we're looking at a design and we have to think about the purposes of the designer, and he says we don't fully know the purposes of the creator and thus falsely attribute poor design.

And then he puts it another way.

He says, our advantage point to assess this design is limited.

And what does he mean by that that we can't see into the future?

Is that?

Is that what he's saying, when we look at something that appears to be poor design, we have to assess it from the point of view of the of the purpose of the designer.

So let's have a look at a car and you think, okay, this, this car is a sports car.

Designs go fast and they look at the brakes and so, well they're not helping it go fast.

That's that's clearly terrible design.

But the designer has in mind the safety of the driver as well as how fast the cargoes.

And so it's only when we understand the purposes of the designer that we can understand the design.

Okay, I don't know, what do you think of that?

What do you think of that?

Ed?

I think when it comes to this situation with looking in nature and seeing what appears to be poor design, it's a way of hiding.

It's a sort of it makes this intelligent design claim to be unfalsifiable.

M hm.

So you say, look, how how could we see all these lovely designs in nature?

And that's clearly an intelligent designer.

And then when we say, well, but look at this, that and the other, that's poor design.

Instead of saying no, if you consider this, you'll understand that it's there's a good reason for that.

The answer is, well, we don't know the we're just proposing a creator.

But not proposing anything purposely might have or she might have or whatever they might have, and so we can't ever say that there's poor design.

Yeah, I get out of jail card, isn't it?

Yeah?

Exactly.

I mean in the case of the sports car, you see you can see a sports car in action, and then you can understand the purpose of the breaks, whereas I suppose if you never get any indication as to the purpose of, for instance, the laryngeal nerve in the giraffe, and giraffes are going through their whole lives and living and dying, and we've had I reckon I guess thousands of dyears of giraffes living with this laryngeal nerve.

I mean you're sort of thinking, what purpose could they conceivably be to having this convoluted system such that you know, somehow we're all going to be it's all going to make sense.

I mean, it's just I think, you know, it just beggars belief that somehow we're going to ever achieve some vantage point.

We can say, oh, that was why the laryngeal nerve was like that.

Now I understand, I mean, what more has to happen?

What more you know, when is the when is it going to be the convoluted loringeals nerves time to shine where where we all get get the whole reason that it was.

There all along.

There's no different when the current reason is so obvious.

Yes, yes, that's right.

It's exactly the same thing we've talked about lots of times, and the tragedies and sufferings in life.

And you know when people say why did this happen?

Why did this happen, it's all back to the classic God's ways are higher.

You don't really know you, you know, how are you?

So it's it's it.

Sounds like a good statement to do, but ultimately it's pushing back to none of it makes sense now so you have to then, But any cult group, any religious group, any group at all, could say well one day you'll know, and you'll go that now I see why half the country was exterminated or something, you know, or why every Canaanite child was killed.

Now it makes sense.

You know.

That's that's asking a little bit too much of most human beings, I think, on at least lots of things.

Yeah, So that again is we're having this episode where we're wondering about Yeah, it will pick up come back again to us, and this one is also going to come back, I hope.

Like it's like the wondering in the Exodus.

Yes, we're wondering about yeah.

So now we're beginning to the end, and he gives almost an after thought.

So I think, I mean, it's good to have somebody explain why they think I I.

D.

Is still standing despite suboptimal design.

That we observe and consider that.

But now he's give us as the afterthought.

He says, we must also remember that the world we are observing is not the original creation.

It is a corrupted version of creation.

So that surely he means he's talking about Adam and even the fall, that typical Christian doctrine, which we will in a minute talk about in more detail.

But uh, what I like is that it's spot on because in the Adam and Eve story, God says to the woman after the they've been kind of caught having eaten the fruit, and he's issuing the kind of curses or punishments.

He says to Eve, I will greatly multiply your pain in child bearing.

In pain, you shall bring forth children.

So at last we have a clear biblical answer to the obstetrics dilemma.

Yes, yes, that's it's not one that you here used a lot.

The NHS doesn't have a no and it just direct doesn't have a web page on that one.

No, although it does remind me that apparently there was resistance to giving pain relief through or chloroform or whatever it was used for women in Victortorian because people said people said, oh, well, you know, tis flying in the face of what God pronounced.

If you if you mitigate pain and childbirth.

Yeah, interesting, I will greatly unmultiply the pain with medication.

Yes, counteracting God interesting theology?

Yeah yeah, weeah.

So we've got.

What we've got now is we've kind of stumbled on the Fall, and this is our segue to talking about the Fall, which has many interpretations, and one of them, or an aspect of one of them, is its explanation for natural suffering.

And I'd like to get into this through this.

Firstly, that famous video clip that was from Irish TV when Stephen Fry was talking about how cruel God is in natural stuff for it was right back in twenty fifteen, and I would imagine people who are listening to us full of must have come across it many times, but we will put a link to it in the show notes.

They may also know that Justin Briley, sorry, that was the one with worms burrowing out through children's eyes and that sort of stuff.

It was clever, articulate, funny when you watch it on video because you can see the reaction of the Irish interviewer and it really hit every spot and it just went wild.

And so Justin Briley, he obviously at the time was very prominent as the host of the Unbelievable Show.

He came back with a really well done video response wandering around a street in London with a statue of Oscar Wild and Andrew.

It be good if you could play us a clip from that and we'll take it from there.

I've just been reading recently to my kids Oscar Wild's stories for children.

They're absolutely brilliant, and actually I think they're for adults as well.

My favorite definitely is the story of the Selfish Giant.

I'm sure you're familiar with it, but I think Oscar Wild in this story expresses actually the true nature of God.

The story centers on a garden.

It's a garden where it's always winter and never spring.

Children used to play there, but they don't play there anymore, and it's all because of the giant's selfishness that has brought this down on this beautiful garden.

Interestingly, the Christian story also begins with a garden, and however you interpret that story, fundamentally, it's about the idea that from the beginning the world has gone wrong because of us, and in many ways that's bent the whole world out of shape.

So in a sense, we're living in the winter garden the Oscar Wild describes.

And of course we'll put that clip in the show notes that the whole Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Now, Andrew, could you tell us your understanding of how widespread this explanation is for natural suffering?

Well in its broadest sense.

Again, we have to span all these different types of Christian integration of of you know, the creation of the world and everything that we see, but it's basically there in most it's it's it's basically they're either very very upfront and explicitly almost the foundation of it all, like in Young Earth creationism, and then has slightly less within you know, progressive creation and then evolution and extree creationism.

It's it's there, and it's at that particular point where people like Justin who've popularized something that's been going on for the last a twenty years or so, which is which is to now go back and I think we've touched into this in the previous podcast.

Now go back to a pre adomat, pre adam of what's the word pre Adamite fall, which was something I'd never heard of when I was young.

It was like it was just befall, you know.

And the reason is again just like usual, it's like go get yourself a lawyer and go and find some other answer to this because it's getting difficult.

That's the way I see it.

And so you've got it's like go away and find it.

Oh well, I'll tell you what.

If we have a pre fall.

Now, we need to know where the serpent came from in the first place.

So maybe there was a pre fall way back of the angels or demons, and that's how they came about, and then suddenly that infected the evolutionary You know, this is very common now that you hear in the more sophisticated evolutionary side of Christianity and creation together and less so by by any means that the youngest people will ever have a fit at that kind of view, because it just doesn't fit that narrative.

And so really the idea of something going wrong adding to why we see the problems we've seen today is pretty much everywhere to some degree or another.

Oh okay, so you get it with a normal CRV, a vicar in a town in Britain, Yeah, they would have.

Their understanding would be that the natural suffering, not the moral evils we do to each other, but the natural suffering the world with valeria and cancer and all the rest of it is because of the Adam and even the full story.

Or something related to something going wrong, which is more nuanced now as ovisticated, because those sort of CEV people wouldn't be even like John Stott, you know, conservative kind of evangelical, you know, the God of truth in the evangelical world when I was young, would have been a theistic evolutionists who sort of saw that there must have been an Adam and Eve of some sort to mix into this evolutionary story in which there must have been some kind of fall from grace, in which there must have been some kind of change as a response to that, like anti right, would even still say that that today there's very few people that I've discovered only in the last say, five or ten years, who don't go for any Adam and Eve kind of literalistic fall.

And even those people, when pressed, I don't think think the universe is like it is because of all God and it's all good, even at the most liberal extent.

It's that something has gone wrong.

Even then that's of course human sin and everything else.

He just gets difficult when it comes to plate tectonics and earthquakes and the suffering of animals for billions of years.

So all of that is now trying to be answered still with a fall, but it's a pre Adamite fall, right, Yeah, So I'd still say were rush into the ninety percent here, and then maybe there's a few that's say I just don't understand or it's nothing to do with the fall, but I haven't really come.

Across at all.

Well, I've heard of Peter end saying that the whole full narrative is nothing to do with Oh yes, yes, Christianity.

Christianity's take, it's it's a sort of pre pre story of the sin of Israel and the banishment of Israel from the garden of the Land of Israel in their into exile.

Yes, there are nuanced views like that.

Was whether Peter End's himself would say that, say, cancers and volcanoes and death and the suffering for billions or millions of years of evolution is a good thing, or it's what God wanted, or it's his that's just the way God is.

I haven't really heard him say that, even with that sort of mythological idea of Adam and even and what it's speaking to.

So when it comes to you know, sort of your relative who's dying of cancer or something, whether that well, that's this is God's this is God's good Earth.

It has that side to it, and we may not like it.

I haven't really had to speak like that, but it's normally most people would say this is not the way things were meant to be.

Once you say that sentence, you then need some kind of clarification of why you said that.

Yeah, you know, unless someone is saying, this is the way everything that happens in life is the way it's meant to be.

I've known anyone say that, Actually, yeah.

And so Catholics and Eastern Orthodox would be in the same bracket as.

The yeah, Catholics of the sort of original sin idea for stuff and ethern Orthodox less Actually they don't understand, they don't have the same understanding original sin as Evangelicals and Protestants and Catholics.

They have a very different understanding.

But nevertheless, it's still the idea that something has gone wrong, that death, in fact, in Eastern Orthodoxy is an enemy, and that's a very strong part of East Orthodoxy.

Actually, that death itself, which then puts you back into Oh so it wasn't meant to happen then, and that's death in this physical sense, I mean, not some sort of spiritual sense only.

So that means an Eastern Orthodox view does have to go back to something going wrong and there were back again what went wrong and when?

And how?

Yeah?

Yeah, so really is this is the Christian answer to why there's natural suffering in the world.

And it's only recently with the sort of pushback of people saying it doesn't add up that this extra level to it was some pre adamant fall or whether it's called comes into play.

So let's waste a bit before we dig any deeper on that one, but just basically on the face of it, it all feels like hardly worth treating seriously.

And you've mentioned this before, Andrew, with your deep sea creatures suddenly turning on each other and that sort of thing.

Yeah, I mean that was that was my response to the Young Earth response who say that this is solved by Young Earth, that it all happened with Adam and even the fall, and that it's not you know, these these creatures and cancers and deaths and everything else over millions of years is just a borran to them, and it all happened through God, through Adam sinning, and through the first couple actually breaking a law and sinning.

And then it's bizarre because it has its own problems because then it is like, and I've said that, before God goes right right, all these creatures, the earthquakes will start, all these creatures will start eating each other, the deep sea fish will start to capture these other creatures.

This way all because of a just obeying of a particular command in that story, which will come back on to again later for another reason.

But it has its own problems because at least the other way, it's like, you know, there's this is almost like that it's either God withdraws himself to let it all do this, or God specifically punishes the earth in this way to let it all do this.

And so it's all in a response to one person, which then is so unfair kind of idea on everyone else.

So there's all kinds of problems that way.

So that was the reason I had brought that one up deep Yeah, eating each other.

Yeah, and before it passed on to France's I want to remember your point, Francis about future proofing, and this is surely the future to be proofed against in the original design.

And yet it seems to be the almost opposite that the the whole world was set up on this vulnerability that if the humans just did one little thing wrong will, according to the story, the whole thing descends into chaos.

I mean, I suppose that Christians were sobular.

Wasn't one little thing it was, you know, it was the biggest sin that could be that it was just direct to speed into God.

I don't know, I imagine that's what they say.

And yeah, in terms of it's the culpability.

The culpability does seem that it ought to be very limited.

It ought to be limited to the two people who did it, and there doesn't seem to be any rational follow through as to why everything else should you know, almost literally go to Hell and a handcart?

You know, why.

Does it have to be?

Why does it corrupt the whole of the existing world?

Why does it have to be that in the future nothing can be as it was before, and that all humans and all animals have to be pulled into this suffering and death.

Yeah.

Yeah, And there's two answers to that, neither of which are any good.

One is what I was hinting at, that God designed it all prior with this massive vulnerability, that if he only needs to do this one one thing to get wrong and the hell and a handcart happens, So that's a design fault, you would have thought.

Yeah.

And the other one is that God got so angry and he did this in response, and it doesn't make sense, as you've been complaining.

Well, presumably they would say he just that God.

I don't then always say that God doesn't get angry, He doesn't lose his temper anyway.

So the second one, he does in the Old Testament.

So yeah, in the Old Testament, yes, it does but the Old Testament, Well it is, but we're talking about Christian interpretation of it.

Normally quite careful to say, oh, you know, God doesn't actually I mean, he doesn't lose his temper.

I think that's what they what they.

Classic theology has said it doesn't.

Yeah, which is bizarre when you read the text.

We've done this, it is obviously not.

It's so bizarre.

It's like, if you're claiming to get anything from Christianity from the Bible, then what are you doing.

But they have their reasons, they know the texts there, but they just said the reasons why it doesn't mean what it sounds like.

Yeah, yeah, So do you think this new response with the pre well, could you explain what the earth is preadamic fool might be?

Well, I think it's I think it's it's actually not necessarily rooted totally in a modern response.

What happens is that when when issues come up, you can go back in history and see various alternate views about stuff, even if they're more heretical ones or not, and they may actually fit.

Oh, that's a good one that could probably answer this question.

Do you know what I mean?

It's like a bit like when I've said about when people have said there seems to be less and less evidence for the destruct of the Canaanites in after the exodus as they went into the land, and then some people have noted that, and then later people have come along and gone, that actually quite helpful.

Maybe God, if it didn't happen, God isn't like that, that's good, We'll use that.

And so it's a little bit like this in that sense.

It's like utilizing.

So there were people in the past who did see.

But again even that was brought on by evolutionary thought and the age of the not evolution the age of the earth.

As the age of the Earth was seen to be so far distant and big people sought to think.

Re looked at the text of Genesis and thought, then there's what called a gap theory.

In the beginning, God created heavens the earth.

Now the earth was without form and void, and some people felt that the earth became without form and void, and there was this big thing before.

And some people then put, well, where did the demons and the devil come from?

And they thought, well, maybe it's in this gap.

And in the gap of Genesis one.

It was called the gap theory, and so people have had sort of you know, mused really rather than known for sure.

But you get these various texts and you think, okay, a formalists and void world that sounds like it's been destroyed before, which is how they argue from other passages.

And then you had this great, big origin of the evil beings, the demons and Satan himself.

That's the idea now that would sort of like you know, pooh pooed or put to the side.

It's in the Schofield Bible though, by the way, and not really built upon that much.

But I think some people have come back to that idea, including even Greg Boyd in some of his work I read in the nineties, which was picking up on this to account for a pre fall idea.

So it goes beyond just the origin of the devil and the angels in this view, it goes to the fact that they came and reaked habit on the earth, and then only then later when the Garden's situation happens, it's happening on on Earth, which a lot has already happened, and that might explain why the serpent's there in the first place.

Once you link the serpent to the day, which is another old question in itself.

Anyway, it's not even there in the text, but just say for arguments saying all this theology has been pushed into here.

There reason the serpents around in the first place, as the devil is because of this prehistory fall.

This may it explain the people that now push for the idea which has some merit.

I think that the garden is a local, local thing of goodness compared with the world, which is chaotic and full of weeds and problems and issues.

But the garden is what's got God's stamp of life into it.

They are then cast out of that garden into this rough world which was left also rough by this prehistory.

So it's all there in some of these modern theologies, and people are taking bits of these puzzles and trying to build up a new theology called a pre Adamite fall.

And I had heard of this many years ago, but not connected with how to deal with biological suffering of species in an evolutionary sense.

I had heard of it as just the origin of the bad supernatural, and now that's been linked to the bad biological In my view, the way I've seen it coming up now, and so that then passes on the Adam and Eese fall.

You then can then absolutely bypass they feel and even Justin I canna say Justin Martin, I mean Justin really on the channel even he is alluding to this kind of idea that something went wrong prior, even way back, because I think he holds to an evolutionary kind of creation view.

Right.

Well, he wasn't mentioning it in that clip.

No, it wasn't mentioned in that view, but he was mentioning it in.

Well.

I talked to him about it when I saw him anyway, when I went on a couple of times.

But I'm sure he brought it up briefly in our group when he was talking about you know, and I think I pinned him down on the question of how you know you would talk At one minute, you're talking about how wonderful the universe is and how it speaks to God, and how the universe is this, that and the other, and it's just so vastly amazing and wonderful.

Then when you talked about meteors and everything crashing in and we're so vulnerable, it's like, Wow, that's the fall, that that's the neck that's not God's plan.

He said something like that, and you think, well, hey, that's before Adam and Eve.

So how are you going to answer that?

So he is definitely going that way from my understanding, because he's not going to accept that all of that stuff in the in the universe is actually part of God's design.

And this is why it happens, is that when you force people to recognize stuff is happening before Adam and Eve in your theology, even evolutionary John Stock kind of theology, which is that you know, I don't know, one hundred thousand years ago there was two hominids that God put his mark on.

That doesn't explain a lot for everything that came before, including those cominid creatures.

So at all, and how and how and how as Alex O'Connor so brilliantly put on his channel recently when he was talking to somebody, how arbitrary it seems that you know, these two that God puts his spirit and soul into and says you are my people, and whatever?

What about a poor mother who's now this Adamite Preadamite creature who just you know, you know, do you backdate and well, by the way.

Sorry.

Having said that, who's the id guy you were talking about.

He's big on this Preadema fall now.

Dempsky, Yes, yes, that's right.

Dempsky mentions it very I listened to him.

He was on unbelievable mentioning this.

He makes the argument and it's a very very clever one and it just shows to me, shows that we're back into oj Simpson lawyer territory is what I call it.

It's just find some answer, please come back, and don't come back un till you find the answer.

It was going, Ah, we have a.

Theology that says that Jesus died for the sins of the world around about a d.

Thirty two thousand years ago.

But his salvation doesn't just apply to people post Jesus, because they have a theology that it applies backwards to Abraham and all these people of God and everything else.

And so his salvation goes forwards and backwards.

And this is why his view is slightly different.

It's not so much the demons and the angels.

His view is that ad and sin in the future backdated to affect the world, which is so bizarre.

It's like a time loop trap.

But he says it, he says, it would.

Actually that would fit with what Justin actually said in the clip in response to people pry, Yes, so he said, the world's gone wrong.

Because of us, because of us, but it's gone wrong.

I mean the world went wrong of thousands of millions of years before we were around, worms were barrying out of the eyes of Gazelle's or whatever.

Yes, but that was because of us.

Yes.

And the way they to explain it is this a bit like I'm a big fan of the Backs of Future films.

You may not be or not know much about them, but in Backs to the Future too, a lot of people listening to this would know this.

There's a scene where the whole of nineteen eighty five changes because this one person gets into a time machine and he does something and it affects the entire past, so that the whole present that they travel to is now a different nineteen eighty five because of this one thing that retro fitted backwards and change the whole of the present because of the past being changed.

It's something like that's almost like a time machine story that Adam and Eve can sin what five thousand years ago and it can actually cause the world to be full of all the problems billions of years before, precisely because of that, and to me it just sounds utter craziness, and but it is.

It is where people if you've got to go somewhere and try and do something, then try your best go from and that's what they do.

So just being he's being honest, that's yeah.

He's probably not saying the devil's fall beforehand, that's causing that.

But although I wouldn't be surprised now if he does embrace that.

Boyd was a little bit like this in many ways and some others and Dempski's more Adam and Eve sinning is then retrofitted back as christ salvation is retrofitted back, and so the biology course, I just find it really difficult to think that Adam and Eve is like the world that he was in before he sinned wasn't the same world as he was in and after we've seen in the sense of millions of years before, is what I'm saying.

It's like, wow, how do you get your head down that?

So at the point before he takes the fruit or whatever you wanted to say, that moment was the prehistory was wonderful maybe for millions of years, and then the point he takes the fruit, the prehistory changes that.

I can't get my head around that, even though I love timetrame will.

Loop, it's not all that the fossils laid down.

Yeah, so the whole world changed around him, if you like prior, which is bizarre because most people have said that the world change like Young Earth creation is from the moment he fell.

Then the world changed, and then everything started eating each other dying, you know, deep sea fish eat each other.

Maybe plate tectonics started its motions that it never had done before.

Volcanoes got bigger, pain increased.

You know, that's all forward, But Demski is willing to say this went backward by millions of years.

Wow, what a novel idea.

And not even the pre Adamite four P people ever, I think, said anything like this.

This is this is new.

That's the new aspect of this view.

Yeah, in my in my limited reading so far, put it that.

Well.

Okay, Well, I made a list of six quite a few years ago of reasons why I think the Fall as an explanation for natural suffering fales.

Yeah, yes, yeah, and we've covered some of it, so I'll try and go down the list.

First one is the science, and if we ignore this, get out that.

And I just been talking.

We have to say that all this fossil record, for example, of fishes and other creatures eating each other.

I think there's evidence of things like cancer even in the fossil record.

And this is all long before human kind existed.

We don't need to believe an evolution to see this problem.

All you have to do is to reject the Young Earth count and the flood as an explanation for the fossil record, and you've got the problem.

And the fossil record is dated by what's it called radioactive decay methods, and they are completely independent of any sumption regarding how long we need revolution or anything like that.

It's very simple science, and it shows that fossils were around way before you know, any fossils, we say primates and things like that.

And like us, there's this famous saying that you just prove evolution if you get rabbit bones in the pre Cambrian layers.

So the pre Cambrian layers are dated about what's six one hundred million years ago, and they've got fossils, and there will be indications of well certainly of death of the active minimum yea of creatures brains, right, So it's all and it's all inevitable in evolution anyway, if you do accept evolution, which is a struggle for a competition between resources and its predation, all of that is in built into evolution.

Hm.

Well, I'm going to say what I've said on several previous occasions, which is that pain and death didn't come into the world through humans.

Humans came into the world through pain and death, which is the mechanism by which evolution works exactly.

Yep.

Yeah, And no better people to say that and state it outright the same as you, Francis.

Where you have strange bedfellows are the Young Earth creationists because they will say just that.

That's why they go their way, because they know, you know, you can get the clearest understanding of what evolution is sometimes through the Young Earth response because they know this is not the Bible story.

The Bible story is death comes through sin in the fall of Adam.

And you've just said what exactly the case if evolution is true, death and suffering come through the process to bring man, you know, And there you go.

There's the poll officite narrative, and therefore one has to go.

And so in your case, Francis, the Bible narrative has to go, and in the Young Earth greatness the evolution narratives go.

You can see the stark reality there, and maybe there is a refuge.

Maybe if you were a fundamentalist, Francis, you would find refuge in Young earth ism rather than trying to have a tortured view of creationism.

Yes, maybe, or maybe both would talkture you too badly in different ways.

Counterfactuals facts, who's ever going to decide on?

Yes, hypothetical counter factuals, Yes, excellent.

Yeah, And the results for all this is things like I think in the Creation Museum in America, there's display of a t rex eating a watermelon.

Yes, that's right.

They can't possibly with all those teeth be eating fish and top fish other animals.

Yeah, And this is where their future proof comes in, you see.

Their young earths will say, yeah, but God was future proofing these creatures for the fall, you see, and so that's why they could suddenly eat each other in the right of it.

So yeah, some people argue that, yeah, which is another bizarre view of God's character.

Anyway, Yeah, you know.

Okay, So that was that one, Andrew, maybe you like to pick up the second one, and that is Jews don't have this doctrine at all.

The yeah that the early chapter Genesis explained natural suffering.

That's right, yeah, And in that way there's an in affinity.

Is actually funny enough with Eastern Orthodox Church and the Jewish idea when it comes to original sin, in the sense that both don't see original sin in the story.

And I think Francis you were mentioning that the Genesis story was sort of viewed a certain way, but that's certainly within Christianity, but the Jewish understanding almost saw almost with such passing reference to the Adam and Eve story, and the rest of the Hebrew Bible is so little that it's almost as if that was just their story, and it's like that's what happened there, you know, rather than in the inter I think it was literature in between Wisdom of Solomon.

I think in between the end of the Hebrew Bible as we have it and the New Testament literature.

Therefore, then it started to have links between what Adam did to the human race, which seems like Paul is picking up on those ideas where Adam put the world a certain way and Jesus undoes it a certain way, whereas the Jewish view doesn't see both, doesn't see either.

It didn't see the world was a certain way just because of Adam in early judaies and put it that way.

And there is such passing reference to Adam in the in the I think Peter Enz does this in his book that even some of the preferences to Adam is very nuanced to the way that it's not even necessarily a person, it's just the man, or it could be referring to mankind.

And then get there's a couple of named incidents which are just in passing, which is so different than orthodox classic Christian theology that you're thinking, these are the Jewish people reading would say, what have you done to our passage of Genesis one and two, two and three?

Really?

But anyway, yees, So it's not it's not it's not there in the same way they see judgment.

Well, it's difficult because early parts of the Old Testament judgment can come from generation to generation, and then in later parts it's the soul that sins, it's your diet's it's it's not your father or your son, it's you.

So there was evolvement in Jewish idea about even judgment on knocking a knock on effect, but there was nothing like the whole human race is kind of damned in God.

It was very much you are able to keep the law, and if you don't, this is will happen to you.

It's nothing to do with you've sinned in Adam.

So none of that's there for Jewish people and Jewish understanding.

Yeah, and it's not there in alter E either, that's what you're saying.

No, No, it's not really there in the Old Testament.

I mean the issue of judgment on subsequent people like there in Exodus seems to disagree with Ezekiel, which in fact so much those almost linked say, don't use these quotes anymore.

That God will judge the generations after you or something like that.

It's and he's go much into now.

He will judge just the person that does the wrong.

So even then they had their own little theological controversies between looking at themselves, the writings themselves, and the later prophets.

Looking back at the earlier writings were a little bit contradictory, as well in this way, but it's definitely not original since in any of the versions that we have in Christianity, and there's a lot of versions of that, by the way, so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay to that point, two point three was it just doesn't make sense, which we've covered so things like you know what, why introduce bone cancer and children into a good world in response to a rebellion by other or mankind or whatever.

It's just what how it just doesn't make sense.

It does in particularly if you then use Ezekiel where it says I'm not going to judge, you know, the children for this and the other you know, and it's like, well, if you know, if only the author of Genesis has written that, you know, because although having said that, the author of Genesis was just talking about their story, if anything, you can just say that it was an ethiological story about losing the nice lack of work in the garden and now everyone has to work and wear clothes and have a hard time.

But it's it's far short of original sin in the classic judgment sense.

It's just it's a tough life, you know, to live to now you've got to work.

You know, there's an ecological story about why why we do what we do, Why do we wear clothes, why are we working?

Why do we sweat?

You know?

And so there's that kind of idea within the thoughts, but it's not it's more like, and I don't think it goes beyond to say that the world has earthquakes because of that or grows thorns because of it.

It's just like.

That maybe that does go back to an idea that this local place was different than the rest of the normal world, you know, and they kind of blew it in that way, but it's not it's not an all encompassing thing that the world needs salvation anyway.

That would be my musing on why it's there and why it doesn't go as far as Christian theology on original thin.

Yeah, And that was sort of my point for and that is when you look at the passage, it's very clear.

It doesn't say that all these other sufferings and agonies are the result of Adam and evesin.

It's it's very limited, exactly, And that's why you don't get other passages that say if only Adam hadn't done this, then we wouldn't be at war or we wouldn't be there.

You know, it doesn't seem to say speak like that.

It's very little reference.

And yet the evangelical story is that Adam has everything to do with everything.

You know, so yes, yes, yes, yeah, So it just isn't there and in the text you have to completely read it in yes exactly, yeah, okay.

So number five is something that I've feel I've come up with myself.

But I might mark go for someone else, but I don't think so.

And that is if you look at let's start at the Old Testament, the rest of the Hebrew Bible, and we actually look at natural suffering occurring, and it's always explained as God choosing it to happen.

It's all God's compete in charge.

And for that instance of natural suffering which she is mentioned in the text, God has chosen for it to happen pecivically, so that the flood is a massive natural disaster.

The plagues of Egypt are more.

I think it's volcanoes that are with lots wife turning short.

I think that was a volcano David's son in the middle of I think in the Bathsheba story, there's a son and David begs God not to have killed the son, but God takes the son and the text suggests it's a disease that was the baby son to die.

Yeah, then job people could say, well it was Satan the accuser who who did it?

But no, in the text it's very clear that signs it off.

That totally.

Yeah, he sort of go for it, go for it.

Then you know, again, if this goes back to what we're talking about before, the idea that it's read into Satan has read into the serpent anyway, in the original story, Satan has read as an enemy back from the New Testament kind of language, back into the Old rather than the Old itself.

It doesn't, I mean, the Jewish people don't have this kind of idea of the big Satan enemy in these same sense that the Christian does generally speaking like like there's like there's almost like a dualism going on.

It gets pretty close to dualism in some forms of churches, maybe even in yours.

Originally ed that if you think about it and step back, was there a spiritual war going on between God and this other being and that you were winning battles and then losing battles?

I mean, did you ever experience your Christianity like that, because.

Yes, yeah, you know, I think it's a balance, isn't it between that all evil is is the devil, yes, right, and evil is from God and He's got the bigger picture, and I think we leant more towards the devil's side.

Yeah, and people do.

It's like all bad diseases and everything else, when actually in the Old Testament again, Satan has a very very little mention in the Old Testament, and it's in many of the passages.

Is not an enemy, And it's.

More it's never him doing something naughty in the back, no, something that he's.

Doing something like the job thing.

It's like, you know, I'm trying to be here.

You know, the idea would be I'm trying to be here to make sure that these people are worshiping you, right.

I think this is the issue in God's as well.

I don't.

Well, i'll tell you what.

Let me kill the children and then we'll see.

That's actually more lawyers talk, Francis, you can get into this one.

I should be standing up for lawyers here.

Lawyers.

Lawyers get a lot of stick, don't they flack.

It's like, but actually it's more lawyers talk it's not so much that this is this enemy is coming in job.

It's not an enemy.

Then at that stage in the in the evolution of the Bible, it's an agent, and it's it goes back to what we're going to talk about soon, which is these lying spirit, these agents of God, and God seems to be behind women being barren for example.

You know, he's opened my barren womb or something, you know, because he was closed it.

It's not like you know, the evil one blocked it and I will come along and open it.

That's similar more to Jesus stories in the Gospels rather than the Old Testaments.

Start contrast, start contrast.

Yeah, yeah, you said what was coming up, but you look at the clock Andrew.

Oh, okay, that's coming up in part two.

I meant I think it's going to be part soon.

Now.

Yeah, we've done our we've done our thing.

Okay, that will be We'll probably stretch and do a whole thing on God lying then in the older.

Yeah, that's yeah, that's you let the cat of the bag now.

Yes, okay, but that will just wet people's app site.

What do you mean, what do you want to about?

Because it actually touches into the Genesis story plus these things that we just mentioned.

So it's perfect, perfectly in line.

But you're right, yes, we should pause it right there.

We've got a little bit more to go.

Oh right, okay, I pause it at where we were going to go at that point then okay.

So my final example for the mild Testament is those teenagers who were taunting shirt I got mauled by bears.

That's predation, which is a universion natural suffering.

And again the context of the story makes you pretty clear that God's in charge of all that.

And the Red Sea was a wind yep yep or the red yep.

Yeah, but that was I suppose it was suffering because of the it's stopped when the.

Yeah, it's showing that God is sort of that natural.

What we say is natural is actually God.

It's like in insurance today, when my car got hit by a tree, I got insurance and got it written off and it was an act of God.

Wow.

Yeah, so natural an act of God actually still go together in language.

Yeah.

So in the New Testament, there isn't any story which has suffering attributed to four but it is attributed to the devil.

I think with the people suffering from demon possession.

Yeah, but there's a lot of stories which continue the theme from the Old Testament of God intervening, dishing out natural suffering.

Diseases, judgments, and families.

It's all.

Yeah.

In John chapter nine, there's a blind man and the disciples asked Jesus why he was suffering, and the answer was that so the glory of God could be shown through his healing.

Right, and the same thing happens with Lazarus who died.

Jesus gave an indication that it was all part of a purpose.

So this man who was blind for decades, it was all about it was fished out to him so that God's glory could be revealed later.

More standard punishment ones as well.

In the Book of Acts, Herod he suddenly dies and eaten by worms just because of I think he would do something even a naughty Then you've also got in a Book of Acts.

It's a bit of a theme Judas.

When Judas died in the Book of Acts again, he just suddenly falls over his inside spill out, and that's seen as as punishment.

You would have thought.

There is the alternative one where he hangs himself.

Yes, yeah, yeah, we won't go there, okay ah, But the narrative I'm talking about narratives where there is natural okay, and God okay, and an arsen Safara, who are also in the Book of Acts.

They suddenly fall down dead when they're caught out holding back some of their gifts.

So that's that's another one.

Paul's thorn in the flesh that's sort of given to him by God.

It's not or the fall.

Yeah.

So that and then with Revelations just full of it.

Very horrific passes that one just in it's reading, even if it's a metaphoric metaphor behind it all.

Nevertheless, their imagery is completely not the devil doing that.

It seems to be Jesus the lamb doing it.

Yeah.

Yeah, but there are exceptions, so that the demon possession is one.

And then Jesus is teaching in Luke.

He's talking about about suffering and who was it the thought of the Allerson suffering suffering, and he was saying, no, he said, of those eighteen upon whom the tar of Saloam fell and killed them.

He doesn't give any explanation of why it happened, but he was saying it wasn't because they were sinners and they've got their justice ERTs, right right.

Yeah, So I'm issuing this as a bit of a challenge because it's my little pet thing.

So if anyone can think of an example in the Old Tactle, particularly where there is natural suffering and it isn't caused by God, please email in on that stand at gmail dot com.

Put me straight.

Okay, that's a good, good one to think about.

It is, yeah, it is.

It's a more Pentecostal charismatic churches that tend to hang on the you know, all bad is the Devil and all good is God kind of ideas more than others.

But yeah, you only had to have to read reams of the Old Testament alone to get but even the New but the alone to get the idea that God seems to be doing everything, you know, yeah, you know, and the Satan figure is just more like a lawyer to challenge him maybe.

But you know, for good reasons, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah, And now I was talking about this laura of thing.

I remember years ago, our friends Matt and Tim are from eighthears and one and one.

Do you remember them?

Yeah?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did something on the on this sort of topic, and they liked it to Trump because that was in Trump's first term around there, and they said it was like this sort of turd on the table, and all of the lawyer types or the kind of White House spokesman will all say, oh, no, it's not it's not a turd, and oh no, it wasn't.

It wasn't the president's fault.

And then suddenly Trump comes up and says, yes, that was my turd.

I did it, and everyone has to suddenly change their their tune.

So in this you've got all these lawyers Francis running around trying to explain the natural suffering, and then suddenly God stepped up and says in forty five that I'm I've created evil, I'm responsible for evil.

Yeah.

I mean, this reminds me of a story that Professor flu Off News to tell that he had this passage from I think it's from Job where God says something like you know, you know, I do what I want to do.

And he was debating somebody and he had this passage that he was going to quote in his pocket, you know, waiting to spring it on his opponent, and he sort of started to set the set things up for him to come out with this knockout blow, you know, I guess saying something like, well, you know, God is for evil in the world, and his ponent just said, yes, yes, of course God is responsible for allowing evil in the world.

And he said that the effect on him made him think of those films where people are charging with a battering ram at the door and before they get to the door, somebody just opens the door and they just have to carry on going, and you know, they just shoot through the the door, and you know, he was completely sort of thrown out by the door being opened wide and his battering ram, you know, just having nowhere effective to go.

Yeah.

Yeah, there is a discussion to the word evil in this verse modern translations disaster, yeah, disaster or calamity, but still that's natural suffering.

And then there's this famous towards the end of Deuteronomy Deuteronomy twenty eight, but it kind of carries on and off for the rest of the book, from the nornwards, this whole idea that blessings or curses are set before Israel, and what happens is up to them.

If they obey and do things right, they will have blessings.

Blessed should be in the city, and blessed should you be in the field.

This is Juterinary twenty eight.

And then further down it says, if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God, et cetera, cursit, you'll you be in the city, and cursed it you'll you be in the field.

And then some of this is spelled out what God means.

Pestilence will cleave to you or the land.

But the Lord will smite you with consumption and with fever, inflammation and fiy heat, and with drought, and with blasting and with mildew.

They shall pursue you until you perish.

So this this is very clear that God's owning it.

It's not just watching what he does, it's also listening to what he says.

I have to say, sort of milled you sounds a bit low key after all the drought and fire and consumption.

Oh no, it's not milled you, was it?

But they were not growing potatoes in the.

It just means something a lot more than we think in our context.

But what word you probably go back to all words, but it does seem like yeah, but it's basically God is so this idea that nearly when you listen to Justin Breally and on the channel, when it's all about something, it's all about, you know, the reasons why God allows it.

So it is occurring, and God allows, and then these things are pointing out that these aren't.

It's that God is allowing, He is doing actioning.

You know.

Now you could probably nuanced and say, well, all of these boils and things he's allowing to happen.

So again it's back to that again.

You could probably argue that, but the way the narrative runs is that you're not getting away from uh, this isn't permission, it's it's you know, even God is setting up the circumstances for the earthquake, setting up the circumstances for the wind, or the point.

The Lord will make the pestilence smite you with assumption.

Yeah, not the Lord will.

In these passages anyway, the Lord will withdraw and the evil One will come and do this.

I mean, BOYD tries to do that a little bit by saying that in Egypt, the destroying Angel, you know, God says he's going to kill all the firstborn.

That's in one part of the narrative and then the next minute the destroying angel does it.

So he was saying, it's interesting help, So it's always someone else that does it, But actually not if you have the understanding that God does things through agencies, not just you know, the agencies of spirits, the agencies of angels, the agencies of his own spirit presumably, and agency of his own action in a weird way.

So this idea of trying to sort of foister it and even with the well, no, we do that in the lying one next month, I won't say that.

Now, yeah, this is this is mine.

Stop here, I hope.

Yeah, we'll do a part two.

Where we're going to start Part two is this concept called skeptical theism, which we have mentioned in passing because of that's how this issue was.

This episode was designed.

So the response to poor design is, well, we is beyond our understanding to know what God's purposes are in the designs, and that's beyond our understanding.

I always it was what we were all about, but.

Now it's big think, don't you.

Yeah?

The idea sounds to be skeptical of our abilities to understand.

Yes, yes, which is another sort of giant get out form of Fels.

That's which other Christians disagree with anyway, So once you have an Inhalse crash, you've got problems.

Yes, it's almost like that random evolutionary process.

What will happen next?

Okay, so well until next time.

Then, I've enjoyed this episode myself very much.

Until next time, I've been your host, Andrew, and

I've been fronts, I've been ed