BY MICHAEL SHERMER
On Saturday, February 23, 2019, I participated in a “moderated conversation” at the Southern Evangelical Seminary (SES) in Charlotte, North Carolina, with the philosopher Dr. Brian Huffling. (You can watch it here: https://bit.ly/2H8RfAU) The stated mission of SES is to “train men and women, based on the inerrant and infallible written Word of God, for the evangelization of the world and defense of the historic Christian faith.” As outlined in their mission statement, their primary epistemology— their core way of knowing—is that “we believe sensible reality (i.e., general revelation) is the first truth man comes to know via his intellect. This knowledge is then combined with, and provides the tools for properly understanding, authoritative special revelation given by God (i.e., the Bible).”
With this distinctive difference in thinking between religion and science it was not long before both of us realized that we were talking at cross purposes, inasmuch as Dr. Huffling was making philosophical arguments for why the problem of evil was a solvable one for the Christian religion, whereas I was presenting empirical evidence for why I think the problem of evil is an insoluble one for Christians. Here I would like to present my notes for the debate, which readers might find useful in their own debates and personal conversations with Christians. I made similar comments in a 2013 debate on the problem of evil at Pepperdine University (sponsored by the Veritas Forum) with Dr. John Lennox, which you can watch here: https://bit.ly/2tJyhZI