All hell breaks loose

1. A putative evidence for reincarnation are cases of individuals who have corroborated memories of a past life. I haven't examined any case-studies to verify that claim, but suppose we grant the phenomenon for the sake of argument. Christians often default to demonic possession as the explanation. Suppose we consider that first. Here's one objection:

He accentuates the fact (if it is a fact) that cases of reincarnation involve personal continuity whereas cases possession involve personal discontinuity. 

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/03/possession-reincarnation.html

A problem with Almeder's objection is the basis on which he makes those classifications. It seems to be circular. Do the phenomena themselves provide evidence for that distinction, or is he applying his classifications a priori to the phenomena, where he simply assumes the continuity/discontinuity distinction? How does he know possession is inconsistent with less continuity?

There are, however, other objections to the demonic explanation. Offhand, there's no reason to assume a correlation between a particular demon and a particular decedent whose memories a living person shares. Why would a demon have such intimate knowledge of the decedent? The demon might have such knowledge if both the decedent and the living person who shares those memories are possessed by the same demon, but we'd need evidence that's the case.

2. A more direct explanation for why some people have memories of dead people (assuming, ex hypothesi, that's the case) is that the souls of damned (i.e. human souls) sometimes take possession of the living. 

Some Christians object because they don't think the damned are allowed to contact the living. But there's no theological reason to deny that possibility. The church age is a mixed up time. The saints and the damned aren't separated in this life. The realm of light makes incursions into the realm of darkness while the realm of darkness makes incursions into the realm of  light–like a lighthouse at night. 

The ability of damned souls to contact the living doesn't mean hell has a back door, if we're using "hell" in the technical sense of the final state of the damned. An absolute separation between the two groups only takes place at the day of judgment, not the moment of death.

Carnival mirror

If atheism is true, then there's no guiding, overarching intelligence to coordinate what happens or how we perceive reality. So for all we know, it's like each of us was born in a coma. The world we perceive is a comatose delirium. Indeed, each of us was born into a separate comatose delirium. 

Or, to vary the metaphor, it's like each of us was born standing in front of a mirror. All we perceive is the world reflected in the mirror. And for all we know, it's a carnival mirror. Indeed, each of us was born standing in front of a different carnival mirror. And the other people we see, the "us", aren't real people but belong to the "world", the distortions, of the carnival mirror. 

Consider the horror of that scenario. Stop and think about that nightmarish scenario. (Indeed, a never-ending nightmare is yet another illustration.) Let the horror of that scenario seize you. 

Most atheists (in the West) don't think that way because they operate as if atheism's false and there is a guiding, overarching intelligence to coordinate what happens and how we perceive reality. Buddhism is a prominent exception. Certain strains of Hinduism share the same skepticism because, even though they aren't atheistic, the kind of God they believe in isn't the ultimate reality.

I won!

There's an odd quality to debates with unbelievers. They "succeed" in shielding themselves from Christianity. They put up enough barriers that they "succeed" in walling themselves off from the evidence. They "won". Christians failed to persuade them. 

But it's like someone diagnosed with curable cancer who convinces himself that homeopathic therapy is the way to go. His doctor futilely pleads with him to undergo conventional cancer therapy. But the patient thinks he "won" the argument. 

Yet it's not the doctor who has a personal stake in the outcome. He's not the one with cancer. 

Sifting non-Christian miracle claims

In this post:

https://randalrauser.com/2020/04/are-christians-inconsistent-for-rejecting-non-christian-miracle-claims/

apostate Randal Rauser makes some good general points. However, I disagree with him on one or two issues:

i) I think the reported miracles of Sathya Sai Baba lack credibility, not because those claims are inconsistent with other things I believe about the world, but for the specific reason that there's evidence that he was a fraud:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/11/hindu-miracles.html

ii) I don't think non-Christian miracles are inconsistent with the nature of reality. Indeed, Scripture acknowledges the power of witchcraft (e. g. Deut 13:1-5; Mt 24:24; Acts 16;16-18; 2 Thes 2:9; Rev 13:13-15).

Yoga memory

Such phenomena as instincts, child prodigies, love at first sight, and déjà vu are sometimes said to be evidence for reincarnation, but they obviously have little probative value, since it is quite possible to give convincing explanations of these phenomena that do not involve reincarnation. More serious as evidence for reincarnation is the phenomenon of yoga memory - the experience of certain people, usually children, who claim to be someone else reborn and to "remember" the previous life. Consideration of such cases was almost entirely unsystematic and anecdotal until the recent work of the medical doctor Ian Stevenson, who in several books intelligently discusses various cases of yoga memory.¹⁹

There are two issues here. The first is whether the cases Stevenson discusses can be relied upon. To my knowledge, no one accuses Stevenson of dishonesty, but criticisms of his methods and conclusions have been raised. For one thing, in the vast majority of the cases that Stevenson discusses, there was contact between the two families - the family into which the child was born and the family the child claimed via yoga memory previously to belong to - before Stevenson was ever on the scene. For another, Stevenson seems to dismiss far too easily the possibility of fraud on the part of the child. For a third, Stevenson has never even attempted to answer the objections of his several critics, and proceeds as if these critics did not exist.²⁰

The second issue is this: assuming Stevenson's cases (and other cases of yoga memory) are genuine in the sense that there was no deliberate fraud, egregious error, etc., what is the most sensible explanation of those phenomena? One explanation, of course, is reincarnation. But are there other, more plausible explanations?

Suppose that telepathic communication between human minds occurs (and I myself have neither knowledge nor even any particularly firm opinion on the matter). If so, there is the possibility that those who have experienced yoga memory have learned what they know about the past person whom they claim to be identical to by telepathic communication with living humans who know those same facts about the deceased person. This may be completely unknown to the person who is having the yoga memory. Indeed, here is a crucial conundrum for reincarnation: claims based on purported yoga memory will be believable only if they can be verified; verification will normally be achieved via the testimony of people who are in a position to know the relevant facts; but that always opens the possibility that the yoga rememberer was somehow in telepathic communication with those same people. So the point is this: one great difficulty for reincarnation is the fact that the strongest evidence for it admits a variety of explanations.

(Davis, Stephen T. After We Die: Theology, Philosophy, and the Question of Life After Death, pp 26-27.)

Krishna, Christ, and Manitou

Recently, J. P. Moreland did a whirlwind presentation on near-death experiences:

https://www.facebook.com/BiolaApologetics/videos/504055120062148/

Unfortunately, the video froze up near the end. But it was an interesting overview.

A common Christian objection to NDEs is the oft-repeated claim that non-Christian NDErs interpret their purported encounter in non-Christian terms. If we think NDEs are real, that seems to be an argument for religious pluralism. 

In this course of his presentation, Moreland recommended this book:

John Burke, Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God’s Promises, and the Exhilarating Future that Awaits You (Baker Books, 2015). And Moreland quoted this passage:

Osis and Haraldsson, two researchers, studied five hundred Americans and five hundred Indians to determine how much religious or cultural conditioning shaped one's near-death experience. They noted, "If the patient sees a radiant man clad in white who induces in him an inexplicable experience of harmony and peace, he might interpret the apparition in various ways: as an angel, Jesus, or God; or if he is a Hindu, Krishna, Shiva, or Deva."

Though I have heard researchers state conclusions like this, i have never read of NDErs describing anything like Krishna (who has blue skin), Siva (who has three eyes)... (pp141-42).

I haven't read Burke's book, and I'm dubious about using NDEs to detail heaven and hell. But it does draw an important distinction. Hindus use the names of their gods to denote what they saw, but what they (say they) saw doesn't match Hindu iconography. They're just using the religious designations culturally available to them. But to say they saw a being by that name doesn't mean they saw an individual who corresponds to the Hindu god–because the visual impression is different from the conventional designation. 

To take a comparison, suppose Jesus appeared to an Iroquois brave in the 15C. Suppose the Christophany looks like an ancient Palestinian Jews with a robe, beard, and sandals. The Iroquois brave has no word for "Jesus" or "Christ". So he might call him Manitou. That would be the only designation available to him to denote a numinous, humanoid being. 

That might convey the impression of religious pluralism if we fail to make allowance for the fact that he can only use the vocabulary and categories his culture provides. 

If, however, he provided a visual description that didn't match the traditional Iroquois iconography for Manitou, then it would be invalid to infer that he saw Manitou. Rather, he saw a being whom he calls Manitou because that's the only name he has at his disposal to denote a numinous, humanoid being. It doesn't mean his experience actually refers to Manitou. 

Perhaps, then, NDEs have less religious diversity than meets the eye. In principle, non-Christian NDErs might report meeting a heathen deity because that's their only frame of reference. But they didn't actually see a pagan god. They simply use the name of a pagan god as a placeholder. 

I'm insufficiently well-read on NDEs to know how non-Christian NDEers describe their encounters, so I don't know how applicable that distinction is. But it's something to make allowance for when assessing their reports. 

Hindu miracles

The argument from miracles is a traditional line of evidence for Christianity. One way atheists try to deflect the argument from miracles it to cancel out reported Christian miracles by raising the specter of reported non-Christian miracles. In my experience, atheists rarely give any concrete examples. It's just hypothetical. 

But occasionally they do gesture at reported Hindu or Muslim miracles. In my experience, controversial Hindu guru Sathya Sai Baba is the usual culprit. Keep in mind that non-Christian miracles are consistent with the truth of Christianity. Miracles are not a sufficient evidence to validate a religion. But they do eliminate naturalistic claimants. That said, how credible are the miracles attributed to Sathya Sai Baba? Commenting on Modern Miracles: Sathya Sai Baba, a Modern-Day Prophet by Erlendur Haraldsson, reviewer Brian Steel makes the following observation:

One aspect of the parapsychological phenomena that might have rewarded investigation is the increasing tendency in the past three decades, under the intense scrutiny of larger and larger darshan audiences and of camera zooms and videocameras, for SSB’s public materialisations to be largely confined to vibhuti, small items of jewellery, and necklaces, as well as the occasional dubious Shiva lingam (and the aborted lingam session caught on camera by the BBC in their 2004 documentary, Secret Swami). Also, is it not worth consideration that there have been no reports of spectacular phenomena like trances, bilocations, or ‘Lazarus-like resurrections’ in SSB’s final decades of life? JSPR Volume 79.2 Number 919 April 2015. 

Looks like parlor tricks to me. He seems to be a classic charlatan. If that's the best candidate for documented Hindu miracles, it's hardly impressive or persuasive. Nothing comparable to the well-documented Christian miracles. 

Reflections on reincarnation

1. I rarely write about Hinduism and Buddhism because it's fairly specialized. Reincarnation is neglected in Christian apologetics because most Christian apologetics is focussed on challenges to Christianity in the West. 

2. Before addressing the specifics, I'd like to make a general observation. Not all paranormal claims are mutually consistent. Compare reincarnation with crisis apparitions. There are reports of dead relatives appearing to a loved one to warn them or give them encouragement during a crisis. But if that's true, then how can reincarnation be true? According to a standard paradigm, reincarnation involves a memory wipe. When a person is reborn, they forget their past lives. Start all over again. 

That rules out crisis apparitions. The dead relative has moved on. Been reincarnated. Started from scratch in a new body, as a baby. Immersed in a new life history. 

They don't remember their loved ones from past lives. At this point they are younger than their children. Reincarnation resets the lifecycle. Your late mother can't appear to you as your late mother. She's now a little girl. 

Reincarnation and crisis apparitions can both be false, but they can't both be true. And I think there's unambiguous evidence for crisis apparitions, whereas the evidence for reincarnation is ambiguous at best. 

3. To my knowledge, apologists for reincarnation offer three lines of empirical evidence: déjà vu, transgenerational birthmarks, and memories of a past life. 

4. Déjà vu

i) I think this is the weakest evidence. Not just weak evidence for reincarnation, but weak evidence that it's even paranormal. 

In my own life I've had déjà vu experiences. One time, sitting at a fast food joint, years ago, I suddenly had the intensive feeling that I'd done this before. I'm pretty sure that I hadn't done it before in this life. But since the establishment was built in my lifetime, it wasn't even possible for me to have been there in a past life. So whatever the explanation, it can't be reincarnation.

Likewise, I've lived in at least two consecutive locations where I had déjà vu experiences. But both of them were built in my lifetime, so that can't be chalked up to a past life. And even if they hadn't been constructed in my lifetime, what are the odds that in a past life I lived in both places–not to mention both places in succession?

iii) Moreover, the sensation I've had is more like a time loop than remembering a past life. It's not the sensation that I was in the same place in a different life, but that this life is repeating itself. 

iv) Sometimes our minds play tricks on us. That's my explanation. 

But assuming for argument's sake that déjà vu demands a paranormal explanation, telepathy is a simpler explanation. What if one person's memories occasionally leak into another person's mind? 

5. Transgenerational birthmarks

i) The claim is that babies sometimes reproduce the unique birthmark of a dead person, like an ancestor. In fact, this has become a TV trope:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReincarnationIdentifyingTrait

ii) I haven't studied the literature in sufficient depth to know if such a phenomenon actually exists. Of course, the appeal is circular. If some babies reproduce the birthmarks of a dead person, then those aren't unique birthmarks.

iii) However, let's stipulate for discussion purposes that the phenomenon exists and demands a paranormal explanation. How would reincarnation be an explanation for replicated birthmarks? On a standard paradigm of reincarnation, the soul (mind, consciousness) transfers from the dead body to a new body. A body-swap scenario. But how would that cause any physical traces? 

iv) Why would reincarnation duplicate birthmarks rather than duplicating the body? If the body is not a double, why the same birthmarks? 

v) What reincarnation have to do with heredity? Why would someone be reborn in the body of a lineal descendent? Isn't reincarnation just the idea that the same soul is reembodied? But that's not a genetic or genealogical relation–as if, to be reincarnated, you must be a reincarnated ancestor. Assuming (ex hypothesi) that reincarnation is true, why can't the soul transfer to a body in a different family tree? To my knowledge, reincarnation is usually treated as independent of lineage. 

vi) It would be interesting to know if there's a history of witchcraft or necromancy in these families. If a baby has the birthmarks of a dead ancestor, is that a family curse? Was the baby hexed? Are the dead (damned) casting a malevolent influence on the living? 

6. Past life memories

i) Suppose for argument's sake that reincarnation is true. Suppose someone underwent 100 past lives. In fact, that's a conservative estimate. How would they remember 100 life histories? Wouldn't their recollection be hopelessly scrambled? How would they remember what they did in each life? Who they knew in each life? 

Memory has a sense of relative chronology. You remember childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, &c. You remember that some things happened to you before other things. 

But if you underwent 100 past lives, how could you possibly keep the timelines straight? Assuming that some people remember events before they were born, that would actually constitute prima facie evidence that reincarnation is false, since it's hard to see how you could keep all those life histories separate in your mind.

ii) An alternative explanation is that those aren't your memories. You're tapping into someone else's memories. They are invading your mind. That doesn't require all the machinery of reincarnation, so it's a simpler explanation. 

iii) To my knowledge, Hinduism has a dualist anthropology while Buddhism has a physicalist anthropology. In Buddhism, humans have no perduring soul. So how is reincarnation even possible? Who's the you that's reincarnated? Weren't you extinguished at the moment of death? A new brain and body won't be you, but a blank slate. 

Engaging Hinduism

https://voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast/hinduism/

Prince Ali, fabulous he, Ali Ababwa!

Steve pointed me to this excerpt from The Cambridge Companion to Miracles (pp 194-195):

There are many examples of such 'marvellous' happenings. Perhaps the most famous contemporary guru associated with the miraculous is Sathya Sai Baba. Sai Baba was born in 1926 to a poor family in Andhra Pradesh and his life is surrounded by devotees bearing witness to his miraculous powers. He claims to be a reincarnation of the saint Sai Baba of Shirdi (d. 1918) and also to be an incarnation (avatara) of Shiva and Shakti. His career has been of increasing claims to divinity supported by a large organization and thousands of devoted followers. At the heart of his teachings is the idea that we are all God and that the difference between him and others is that he has realized this. He advocates what he regards as the universal human values of truth (satya), right conduct (dharma), non-violence (ahimsa), love of God and world (prema) and peace (santi). He also teaches the unity of world religions and service to humanity.³¹ These teachings, which are typical of Hinduism after the nineteenth century, are accompanied by miraculous events and Sai Baba demonstrating miraculous powers. The most important of these is materializations of objects such as watches, necklaces, rings and gold ornaments. Of particular importance is the manifestation of ash (vibhuti) from his finger tips, although other substances are also said to be produced such as red powder for tilak marks, turmeric powder, sweets, fruit, holy water and Siva lingas. Ash is sacred to Siva and, significantly, the term vibhuti is used synonymously with siddhi. He is also attributed with powers of clairvoyance, levitation and appearing in two places at once, or bilocation. One of the most recent claims to a miracle by Sai Baba was in 2006 when he told his devotees that he would appear in the moon. The large crowd that gathered were disappointed because of the overcast weather.³² Sai Baba does not appear to perform healing miracles.

The important point is that Sai Baba is said to perform miracles as a sign of his divinity. These manifestations are taken to be evidence for his claims by devotees and evidence of his fraudulence by his critics and rationalists. There is much controversy surrounding Sai Baba. On the one hand there is good work funded bythe Sai Baba centre or ashram and many positive claims have been made about the transformative effect of the guru on people's lives; yet on the other he has borne the brunt of negative criticism that his 'miracles' are in fact sleight-of-hand³³ and accusations of sexual abuse and even complicity in murder.³⁴ With Sai Baba we have a curious mix of a traditional yogic understanding of powers, as attested in yoga literature, in a very modern context with a Western understanding of miracles. Sai Baba himself would seem to be aware of this context and speaks to both Hindu tradition and Western belief in miracles as the disruption of material causation.

[Notes]

³¹See Lawrence A. Babb, ‘Sathya Sai Baba’s Magic’, Anthropological Quarterly 56 (1983), 116–24. Also idem, Redemptive Encounters: Three Modern Styles in the Hindu Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). For a general survey of his life see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba

³²http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba

³³Erlendur Haraldsson, Modern Miracles: An Investigative Report on Psychic Phenomena Associated with Sathya Sai Baba (New York: Fawcett, 1997).

³⁴David Bailey, A Journey to Love (Prasanthi Nilayam: Sri Sathya Sai Towers Hotels Pvt. Ltd, 1997).

Just a few brief comments for now:

1. Sai Baba claims to be a kind of savior. An enlightened one. Of course, it's quite possible he's a fraud, per above.

2. However, if Sai Baba is truly performing "miracles", then (from the Bible's perspective) he's a false prophet or an antichrist. The Bible warned us against false prophets and false messiahs (e.g. Deut 13:1-5, Mk 13:21-23).

3. Sai Baba's "signs and wonders" are more reminiscent of Jannes and Jambres and Simon Magus (e.g. ash from his fingertips, materializations of objects) than biblical miracles performed by true prophets like Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Elisha, etc. In a sense, Sai Baba's miracles are cheap parlor tricks or small potatoes compared to parting the Red Sea or the walls of Jericho falling down or even creating a gnat. Maybe a better way to put it is: I suspect there's a point at which Sai Baba would have to say "this is the finger of God".

4. Although Jesus and the prophets of the Bible performed signs and wonders, they didn't rely solely on signs and wonders to verify their claims (e.g. John 4:48).

5. If Sai Baba is performing bona fide miracles, albeit false miracles from the vantage point of Christianity, then that undermines atheist claims that miracles are impossible, that there's nothing more than the physical or natural realm. These atheists posit a universal negative against miracles and the supernatural, but if Sai Baba isn't some charlatan, then these atheists are felled at one stroke.

Atheists like Stephen Braude might argue "miracles" are possible within the natural realm. Perhaps humans have seldomly tapped abilities which may seem preternatural, but which are entirely explicable on naturalistic grounds. If so, that depends on their specific arguments and whether Sai Baba's miraculous powers can be accounted for given their specific arguments. For instance, telekinesis could explain levitation, but how could it explain materialization or bilocation?

Religious pedigree

This post is occasioned by the question of whether Ahmadis are real Muslims. Because the late Nabeel Qureshi was the most high-profile Muslim convert to Christianity, Muslim apologists attempt to discredit his witness by claiming that Admadis aren't real Muslims. 

Since I'm not Muslim, I don't have a personal stake in that debate. But here's a defense of the Muslim pedigree of the Ahmadiyya sect.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/qasim-rashid/10-fabrications-muslim-leaders-need-to-stop-making-about-ahmadi-muslims_b_5854492.html

This also goes to the question of whether Islam is essentially violent. Is the jihadist tradition baked in the cake? 

But it goes to larger questions, like Newman's theory of development. How do we distinguish authentic developments from inauthentic developments? 

From what I can tell, the Ahmadiyya sect is a variation or extension of Shia Islam, with its doctrine of the hidden Imam or occultation of the Madhi. But that just pushes the question back a step. Is Shia Islam an authentic or inauthentic development? When I read Muslim writers like Henry Corbin, René Guénon, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, with their esotericism and Neo-Platonism, a chain of intermediary Intelligences, and other paraphernalia, that's far removed from the provincial outlook of the 7C desert founder. Yet Ibn Sina was very eclectic. Conversely, Ibn Rushd was passionately Aristotelian. Are these authentic or inauthentic developments?  

Are members of the LDS the true Mormons, or members of the RLDS? 

Which is more authentic: Theravada Buddhism or Mahayana Buddhism? In Buddhist tradition, Gautama undergoes legendary embellishment, morphing into a surreal figure that's far removed from the historical Buddha. 

What about Hinduism? That's such a mishmash. 

There are different ways to analyze the question:

1. One criterion is logical consistency. For instance, modern Catholicism has undergone drastic reversals on major issues. Take salvation outside the church. The whole raison d'être for the priesthood is the presupposition that saving grace is channeled through the sacraments. To be saved, to be in a state of saving grace, you must receive valid sacraments. To receive valid sacraments, you must receive them from validly ordained priests. And valid holy orders is contingent on apostolic succession, the Roman episcopate and papacy. 

Once, however, you say that people can be saved apart from the sacraments, then the whole rationale for the sacraments, priesthood, episcopate, and papacy begins to unravel. And it's not just the occasional exception. Contemporary popes are verging on hopeful universalism. 

Likewise, contemporary popes are increasingly pacifistic. On a related note is their opposition to the death penalty. 

Yet another example is the contrast between the policies of anti-modernist popes regarding evolution, historicity and traditional authorship of Scripture and popes from Pius XII onward. 

From a logical standpoint, we can say these are inauthentic developments. "Inauthentic" in the sense that they are not valid inferences from traditional positions. To the contrary, they are logically inconsistent with traditional positions. 

2. Another criterion is truth. Muhammad, Swedenborg, Sun Myung Moon, and Joseph Smith were false prophets. From an alethic standpoint, it's nonsensical to ask what represents a true development of a false premise. All the sects of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Mormonism are factually false. That, however, is distinct from the question of logical development (see above).

From a Protestant perspective, Biblical revelation is our touchstone of truth. That's a way we distinguish authentic from inauthentic developments. 

3. Finally, there's the criterion of historical development. That's a loose criterion, but not meaningless. 

Let's use the metaphor of a card deck. The standard deck with 52 French cards. Four suits of clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades. 

Many card games are based on that standardized card deck. Even though different card games have different rules, what they all share in common is the same card deck. 

Compare that to Tarot cards. That's a different deck.

Another differential factor is the card sequence. That depends on the shuffle. How the game plays out dependends on the sequence of the cards that are dealt. If you reshuffle the deck, the game will play out differently. Likewise, if you deal from the bottom of the deck rather than the top of the deck. And, of course, how skilled the players are will affect the outcome.

In terms of truth and logical consistency, many developments in modern Catholicism are inauthentic. They are, however, distinctively Catholic developments in the sense that given the hand they dealt themselves, there are only so many ways to play that hand. The Catholic deck has certain cards that can be combined or recombined in different ways. A theological paradigm generates the available options. 

Catholicism has always been eclectic and syncretistic. It's possible for Rahner or von Balthasar to accentuate and elaborate a particular strand of Catholic tradition. Tradition can take on a life of its own, detached from fact and logic. 

But certain developments are not in the cards. Different religious traditions play with different decks of cards. If you reshuffled the deck, historical theology would take a different turn. 

Dropping the metaphor, if Christianity had originated in ancient China or India or Mesoamerica, that would reshuffle the deck. Church history would take a different course. Because Christianity originated in the Eastern and Western Roman Empire, historical theology interacted with, and adapted to, Greek philosophy as well as indigenous socio-economic, scientific, and political influences or challenges. 

As the Christian center of gravity shifts to the global south, that will reshuffle the deck. Closed questions in theology will be reopened. New heresies will arise, which generally duplicate old heresies. Christians in the global South will have to assess for themselves whether the legacy of Western theology represents an authentic development of the authoritative source (Scripture). 

Believe truth! Shun error!

From a recent Facebook debate I had with an atheist:

Your objection is deeply confused. You act as if his credibility is relevant. It's not. Credibility is important in a witness. But he isn't asking anyone to simply take his word for what he says. His personal motives are beside the point. All that's germane is the quality of argumentation and evidence he presents in support of his position, and not whether you trust the purity of his motives.

You are still fixated on motives rather than evidence, which is a red herring. In addition, that objection cuts both ways. What about atheists who say that even if they directly witnessed an apparent miracle, they'd believe that was a hallucination before they accepted that as evidence for God?

What about atheists who say the God of the Bible is evil? Haven't they burned their bridges for believing in God regardless of the evidence?

And I've explained why your obsession with motivations is a decoy. For instance, the general purpose of formal public debates is not for one debater to convince the other, or vice versa. Rather, it's for the benefit of the audience. Both speakers are representatives of certain viewpoints. The point is to engage their arguments, not because the speakers are sincere, but because they are capable exponents of a position you wish to evaluate.  I've seen and read many debates between Christians and atheists. I don't evaluate the performance by speculating on the sincerity of the atheist. I just consider the quality of his arguments.

BTW, from a secular standpoint, why does it even matter what motivates someone's beliefs? From your viewpoint, Christians and atheists share a common oblivion when they die. Nothing they believe makes any ultimate difference to them or the world at large. What difference does, from a secular standpoint, if a Christian's motives were pure or impure? The morgue doesn't differentiate between the corpses of Christians and atheists.

You said "I don't think there's anything that I could read in a book that could convince me that a God exists." That's unqualified skepticism.

Is that your position about history books in general? Sometimes we must sift between conflicting historical sources. Does that mean we should be skeptical about history in general? So you're skeptical about the existence of Lincoln, the Crusades, the Battle of Waterloo, &c.?

Most of what you believe is based on secondhand information. Why do you demand firsthand experience in the case of God's existence? Why do you have a different standard of comparison for the historical Charlemagne than the historical Jesus?

The Gospels are arguably 1C historical accounts of a 1C historical figure, based on eyewitness testimony. Are you suggesting the sources are comparable for the existence of Vishnu?

Is Vishnu empirical in the sense that Jesus is empirical? In addition, not all concepts of the divine have the same explanatory power.

So your claim is that reported miracles are inconsistent with observed reality. But that's circular inasmuch as observers report miracles.

To disbelieve all reported miracles assumes extreme skepticism about testimonial evidence. Yet you admit that you rely on testimonial evidence.

You have yet to address the vicious circularity of your objection. What we know about reality is based mostly on observational claims. Well, that includes reported miracles.

Moreover, this isn't even a case of conflicting observational claims. The fact that some people don't observe miracles doesn't logically contradict other people observing miracles.

if your comment was alluding to the ascension of Elijah, he didn't ascend to heaven on a winged horse. Perhaps, though, you were alluding to Muhammad's night journey. If so, that depends on the credibility (or lack) thereof, of Islam–and Muslim sources generally.

It's funny how often atheists act as if non-Christian miracles are inconsistent with the Christian worldview. Atheists have a bad habit of parroting stock objections by other atheists.

Your question is confused. Verifying a miracle is a separate issue from the patient's conviction that Vishnu performed it. This goes back to your irrational fixation with motives.

You keep conflating two distinct issues. A verified miracle disproves naturalism.

Moreover, you retreat into hypotheticals about the Hindu woman. That becomes another diversion. Instead of addressing actual, well-attested case studies, you retreat into imaginary what-if scenarios. Why don't we begin with reality rather than counterfactuals?

For starters, you need to produce a Hindu with a verifiable miracle before we even address the question of divine attribution. You keep putting the horse before the cart. There's extensive documentation for Christian miracles. This is a problem with atheists who think that can just wing it by resorting to fact-free hypotheticals. There's a place for hypotheticals, but that's not a substitute for evidence.

"Let me ask you this: If you heard a Christian say she experienced something that would fit the definition of a miracle"

You have a bad habit of recasting the issue as a string of vague claims. But I'm not discussing highly ambiguous examples. You need to acquaint yourself with specific evidence for specific examples.

You play the typical game of stipulating an artificial test for miracles. But that reveals a complete misunderstanding of where the onus lies. Naturalism denies miracle in toto. That's a universal negative. All that's required to falsify a universal negative are a few verifiable counterexamples.

The logical and honest approach is to establish that a miracle has occurred. That rules out atheism at one stroke. That's the first step. Anthony evades that by shifting the discussion to hypothetical rival divine candidates. And he keeps harping on that as if it rules out verification of a miracle. A bait-n-switch.

Regarding the Vishnu hypothetical:

i) On the one hand, the Christian God might have occasion to answer the prayer of a Hindu. Suppose a linear ancestor of Ravi Zacharias is deathly ill. Even he dies, Ravi will never exist. The Christian God might answer a Hindu prayer so that further down the line, Ravi will be born.

ii) On the other hand, suppose, for discussion purposes only, that Vishnu is real. Suppose he sometimes answers Christian prayers. Christians are praying to the wrong god, but have no way of knowing that. Not only are they mistaken, but they're in no position to detect and correct their mistake.

Is that thought-experiment supposed to be a defeater for Christianity?

Let's consider another thought-experiment: suppose the devil plants fossils to make people go to hell by losing their faith in Scripture. Atheists mistakenly believe in naturalistic evolution because the devil planted false evidence. Is that hypothetical a defeater for atheism? Can Magnabosco disprove the thought-experiment?

Another basic problem with your tactic is that it cuts both ways. If he's going to cast the issue in terms of case-by-case elimination of rival gods, how does he, as an atheist, propose to dispatch the "330 million" gods of Hinduism, as well as other theisms, polytheisms, pantheisms, and panentheisms?

In my experience, many atheists act as if the worst consequence is to mistakenly believe Christianity. But why is that worse than mistakenly refusing to believe in Christianity or mistakenly believing in atheism?

Suppose, for argument's sake, people mistakenly believe in Christianity. What do they have to lose? If atheism is true, when they die they never find out they were wrong because they instantly pass into oblivion. And when atheists die, they never find out that they were right, because they instantly pass into oblivion. 

By contrast, suppose people mistakenly refuse to believe in Christianity. What do they have to lose? Everything! 

As William James put it, in his classic essay ("The Will to Believe"):

ONE more point, small but important, and our preliminaries are done. There are two ways of looking at our duty in the matter of opinion,--ways entirely different, and yet ways about whose difference the theory of knowledge seems hitherto to have shown very little concern. We must know the truth; and we must avoid error,- -these are our first and great commandments as would-be knowers; but they are not two ways of stating an identical commandment, they are two separable laws. Although it may indeed happen that when we believe the truth A, we escape as an incidental consequence from believing the falsehood B, it hardly ever happens that by merely disbelieving B we necessarily believe A. We may in escaping B fall into believing other falsehoods, C or D, just as bad as B; or we may escape B by not believing anything at all, not even A. Believe truth! Shun error!-these, we see, are two materially different laws; and by choosing between them we may end by coloring differently our whole intellectual life. We may regard the chase for truth as paramount, and the avoidance of error as secondary; or we may, on the other hand, treat the avoidance of error as more imperative, and let truth take its chance. Clifford, in the instructive passage which I have quoted, exhorts us to the latter course. Believe nothing, he tells us, keep your mind in suspense forever, rather than by closing it on insufficient evidence incur the awful risk of believing lies. You, on the other hand, may think that the risk of being in error is a very small matter when compared with the blessings of real knowledge, and be ready to be duped many times in your investigation rather than postpone indefinitely the chance of guessing true. I myself find it impossible to go with Clifford.

Just one god separating atheism from Hinduism

Here's an oft-quoted definition of atheism:

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

I wonder how that would work in dialogue with a Hindu:

Atheist: I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.

Hindu: I believe in 333 million gods. When you understand why I believe in all 329,999,999 of your gods, you will understand why I add one more.

The logistics of reincarnation

Recently I was considering some additional, internal problems with reincarnation:

i) If accounting for how some people allegedly remember past lives is a problem, then there's the opposite problem of accounting for why most folks have no recollection of former lives. That vastly outnumbers the people who say they remember a past life. So that poses a dilemma for the reincarnational explanation. 

ii) Reincarnation poses daunting logistical problems. Consider the timing. On the one hand, new bodies only become available for souls to reincarnate at the moment of conception. Conversely, souls only become available when the host dies. 

Since the timing of when people die and when people are conceived is random, how is it possible to coordinate the transfer of preexisting souls to new bodies? If reincarnation is true, wouldn't there be shortages in either direction? Bodiless souls and soulless bodies? Souls waiting for a body to become available and bodies waiting for a soul to become available? 

What's the mechanism that synchronizes death and conception so that a soul is freed up at the moment of death at the same time a couple in some part of the world succeeds in fertilizing an ovum? 

In theory, reincarnation could happen between conception and birth. But there's still going to be a logjam or bottleneck since there's no correspondence between when someone happens to die and when a baby happens to be conceived. Those are causally and chronologically independent events.

And what about preemies? Moreover, we keep pushing back viability. So the window for souls to reincarnate a new body is narrowing.  

To Appreciate Christmas, Read The Quran

I want to expand on Steve's recent post about competing miracle claims. One way to falsify the ridiculous skeptical suggestion that Christianity's miracles aren't significantly different than the competing miracles of other belief systems is to set Christianity next to each of its primary competitors, one-by-one, and see how they contrast. Islam, the second largest religion in the world and, in that sense, Christianity's biggest competitor, provides a good illustration. Contrast Jesus' credentials to the lack of credentials for Muhammad. Contrast Biblical prophecy to the Quran's lack of anything comparable and the pathetic nature of Islam's attempts to come up with something comparable. Contrast Muhammad's credibility problems to the credibility of early Christian leaders like Paul and James (former opponents who converted upon eyewitnessing the resurrected Christ and died as martyrs) and Luke (a demonstrably reliable historian who goes into a lot of historical detail in his writings). Contrast the vagueness and lack of historical context, names of individuals, place names, etc. in the Quran to the large amount of such details in the gospels, Acts, Paul's letters, and other Biblical documents. And so on. The idea that the credibility of Christianity and that of Islam are comparable is absurd. The claim that the two are comparable undermines the credibility of the person making the claim.

I referred to how large Christianity and Islam are. Their size doesn't, by itself, prove that either is true. But it is a significant factor that should be taken into account. The fact that Christianity is the largest religious movement in the history of the world gives it a lot of plausibility as a candidate for a Divinely-revealed religion, more than any of its competitors. The vast majority of Christianity's competitors down through the centuries either don't exist any longer or are far smaller. The largeness of Christianity takes on even more significance when you consider how the religion's growth was so unlikely and fulfills some unusual prophecies. I wrote about this subject several years ago in a couple of posts at Christmastime (here and here). The opening of Isaiah's Suffering Servant prophecy (52:13-5) is especially striking. You wouldn't expect a Jewish Messiah to initially be rejected by most of the Jewish people, then become widely accepted among Gentiles, including Gentile rulers. (For more about the Suffering Servant prophecy in general, see here. Not only is Jesus' rejection by the Jewish people and influence on the Gentile world beyond reasonable dispute and something that continues to unfold in modern times, but other aspects of Jesus' life that fulfill the prophecy are also highly evidenced: his crucifixion, the earliness of the belief that his death was intended to make atonement for the sins of others, etc. Isaiah's prophecy is detailed enough to single out Jesus among the billions of people who have lived throughout history.)

You'll have a greater appreciation of Jesus and his prophecy fulfillments at the time of his birth and his other miracles if you contrast them to what we see in Islam and other competitors. The large majority of those competitors are on the ash heap of history while Jesus grows increasingly "great to the ends of the earth" (Micah 5:4).

Birthmarks and reincarnation

One primary putative evidence for reincarnation is the recurrence of birthmarks that correspond to the decedent. For instance, Ian Stevenson, a leading apologist for reincarnation, stresses that line of evidence. With that in mind, here's an interesting story:

Meet baby MilliAnna, the fourth generation of women in her family to be born with a wild streak of white hair. 

The 18-month-old, from Ridgeland, South Carolina, was born with a unique birthmark that leaves a patch of her dark hair bleached white — just like the previous three generations of women that came before her. 

The trait was passed down from her great-grandmother Jaonne, 59, to her grandmother Jennifer, 41, to her mother Brianna, 23. Now, MilliAnna is the latest to be born with the extraordinary hair. 

http://www.insideedition.com/headlines/19740-baby-takes-after-3-generations-of-women-to-be-born-with-streak-of-white-hair

By reincarnationist logic, this means the same decedent simultaneously transmigrated in four living individuals! How one person can be reincarnated as four coexistent people poses quite a metaphysical conundrum for personal identity. Put another way, this goes to show that sharing a distinctive birthmark is unreliable evidence for metempsychosis. 

Indeed, I daresay it's statistically inevitable that in a world with billions of humans, some unrelated people will share common birthmarks. That's a natural, predictable coincidence. 

From Krishna to Christ

Basil Mitchell was a distinguished Christian philosopher who went in the opposite direction of Michael Sudduth. Mitchell was originally a Hindu adherent, via Sufi religious pluralism, but that changed:

In early 1940, still very uncertain of my attitude toward fighting, I was registered as a conscientious objector and waited to be called up for ambulance service…In May of that year, as the German tanks rolled through the Low Countries and then through France, the question became ever more insistent. In that crisis it would need a very sure conviction to justify my refraining from doing what I could toward stopping this palpable evil…I turned to the Gita and searched it earnestly for guidance…but found to my distress that it had no message for me–or rather than it had a message, but none that I could not accept…What, then, was Arjuna to do? How was he to find the duty appropriate to himself? The answer was that he was a Kshatriya, a member of the warrior caste, and the duty of such a man is to fight…I found that I just could not view the matter in these terms. Not only was the concept of duty deriving from one's social status totally irrelevant to my situation, but the underlying philosophy was one I could not accept. I felt profoundly that what was at stake in Europe was (when all the necessary qualification had been made) a fight of good against evil and that the outcome was of momentous importance.  

From that time on, although I did not clearly perceive it, the Sufi influence began to lose its hold on me. I had been compelled to deny, under the pressure of a practical decision, that the same truth was to be found in all religions. The Gita, impressive though it was, represented a view of the world and of our place in it that was not only different from but incompatible with any that I could bring myself to believe or live by. 

What had increasingly led me to be dissatisfied with the essentially monistic philosophy of my Sufi mentors was its failure, as I now saw it, to attach enduring importance to individual persons…My native cast of thought was idealistic, and left to myself, I was liable to rest satisfied with abstractions. But I had been compelled by circumstances to attend to particulars–in the Navy to the needs of particular individuals acting out a particle role in a particular historical situation through the involvement of a particular institution; and, in my personal life, in responding to the demands of a person of very acute observation who had a sharp sense of truth in respect of feelings and their expression. Hence what initially, in my Sufi days,  repelled me in Christianity–its insistence upon the embodiment of the divine in a particular figure who had entered the world at a particular time and place–now seemed to me congruous with what I had learned about the nature and development of human beings. Basil Mitchell, "War and Friendship," K. Clark, ed. Philosophers Who Believe: The Spiritual Journeys of 11 Leading Thinkers (IVP, 1993), 29-30, 36-37.

Serrated theodicy

Calvinism sounds bad...until you compare it to the alternatives.

On Facebook, Jerry Walls recently plugged a NYT oped attacking Calvinism: "Teaching Calvin in California". 

Jerry fancies himself a Wesleyan Arminian, but just imagine teaching Charles Wesley in California. How do you think his sermon on earthquakes as divine judgment would go over in that seismically active part of the world:

http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-129-the-cause-and-cure-of-earthquakes/

Jerry is an Arminian propagandist first and a philosopher second. Always in that order. Jerry is a corruptor of critical discourse. A good philosopher practices critical thinking skills, and cultivates critical thinking skills in his students and listeners. Part of being a good philosopher is to mentally argue both sides of the issue so that you can defend your position in the face of the best the competition has to offer. You anticipate objections. You anticipate counterexamples. In fact, good philosophers will even improve on the arguments of the opposing position, in order to respond to the strongest possible objections to their own position.

Jerry never does that. He always gives a one-sided presentation. He picks on weak opponents. He submits to softball questions by sympathetic interviewers. 

I'll be the first to admit that Calvinism has an uncomfortably severe aspect. But I don't think that's a damaging concession. The Bible often has a severe aspect. Take "offensive" passages in the OT. Or the "offensive" doctrine of hell. Or graphic and horrific imagery in the Book of Revelation.

For that matter, extrabiblical historical has an uncomfortably severe aspect. All the horrific events that happen in the world at large, on a regular basis. 

It's unintelligent to assess Calvinism merely on its own terms. You need to put Calvinism in context. You need to make a comparative judgment. Comparing and contrasting Calvinism with the alternatives. I'm going to briefly review traditional religious strategies in response to the problem of evil. 

I. Indian philosophy

i) The law of karma is a traditional Hindu and Buddhist explanation for the problem of suffering. Why do the innocent suffer? Hinduism and Buddhism cut the knot by denying the premise. According to Hinduism and Buddhism, there is no such thing as innocent suffering. If a 5-year-old girl is run over by a drunk driver, she's being punished for something she did in a past life. 

ii) In one strand of Hinduism, evil exists because good and evil exist in the divine, and every possibility must be realized. In that respect, Hinduism is like Neoplatonism, Manichean or Zoroastrian dualism, the multiverse, and the principle of plenitude. 

On that view, evil is just as ultimate as good. Evil is an ineluctable aspect of bedrock reality. On that view, evil is not a declension from the way things are supposed to be. Not a temporary side-effect of something more primary. 

iii) Apropos (ii), the solution to the problem of evil is twofold:

a) Cultivate detachement

b) Annihilation. The only escape is to break the vicious cycle of karmic reincarnation by passing into oblivion. 

iv) Apropos (iii), detachment has different aspects:

a) In Buddhism, we suffer because we lose what we love. Everything is fleeting. The solution is renunciation of human affections. Of course, one could argue that the cure is worse than the disease. But there are no good options.

b) On a related note, both Hinduism and Buddhism have a doctrine of maya, although the interpretation varies. In general, this involves a distinction between appearance and reality. Between the divine and the world or the self and the world.

In one strand of Hinduism, what is ultimately real is the immutable, eternal, preexistent soul. The world of time and space is illusory. But since that's the world in which evil occurs, evil is illusory. You need to practice meditation to withdraw psychologically from the bewitchment of the phenomenal world. 

In Buddhism, maya is a delusion that masks the void. In Hinduism, you practice mediation to realize that your real inner self is untouched by phenomenal evil. In Buddhism, you practice mediation to realize that you have no real inner self to be touched by phenomenal evil. 

These are very bleak philosophies. 

II. Atheism

Atheism has some affinities with Buddhism. Indeed, Schopenhauer's nihilistic outlook is similar to Buddhism.

i) Technically, atheism can't have a theodicy, but it must address the problem of evil. One intractable difficulty with atheism is that if you're cheated in this life, you don't get a second chance. In a godless universe, many people suffer irredeemable loss. There are no eschatological compensations. No reversal of fortunes. 

ii) In addition, there are no objective goods. We value certain things because our evolutionary conditioning has brainwashed us into believing some things are worthwhile, but when you rip away the mask, there's nothing behind the mask. Just a dumb, pitiless, amoral process–much like the Buddhist void. 

III. Universalism

On the face of it, universalism has the most appealing theodicy. But on closer examination it has some bloody jagged edges. 

i) If God is going to save everybody, why put so many people through a hell on earth in the first place? It's like splashing acid in someone's face, then paying for her skin grafts and reconstructive surgery. Does universalism really require God to stand by as Nazis perform human experimentation on Jewish children?

ii) By the same token, the price of universalism is for victims of horrendous evil to share eternity with their tormenters. Mengele and his victims will be neighbors in paradise. 

There's a sense in which the purest form of punishment, pure retribution, is to be denied a second chance. You crossed a line of no return. Your burned your return ticket. Despair is the truest form of just deserts. The damned have no hope. That's what makes hell hellish. If there's no injustice so heinous that it's unforgivable, then is there any ultimate justice? 

IV. Molinism

i) Molinism attempts to harmonize freewill with determinism. Possible worlds contain moral evils caused by human agents with libertarian freedom. 

If, however, God instantiates a possible world, that's a package deal. Everything that happens in the actual world is bound to happen. Even though alternative courses of action are viable options, those only happen in possible worlds that God did not instantiate. If a possible world is indeterministic, an actual world is deterministic. By instantiating that particular world history, every event must unfold accordingly and inexorably. 

It's like a library of DVDs. Some DVDs are unplayable (infeasible). But of the subset of playable DVDs, God chooses which DVD to play. And the plot is predetermined. From start to finish, everything happens according to script. 

Compare it to instant replay. Even if the original outcome was indeterminate, the replay is determinate. If we think of possible worlds as abstract objects, then (according to Molinism), the human agents were free, but these aren't real people. In the ensemble of possible worlds, they can do otherwise. Indeed, there are possible world where they do otherwise. But in the real world, where they are real people, with consciousness and feelings, they can't rewrite the plot. Each possible world has a single history. It can't combine two or more alternate histories from different possible worlds. 

ii) In addition, human agents don't get to choose which possible world will be instantiated. Suppose there's a feasible world in which Judas is heavenbound. In that world, he doesn't betray Jesus. That would clearly be a better world for Judas to find himself within, but he gets stuck in the world where he's hellbound. He is fated to betray Jesus the moment God instantiates that particular timeline rather than some alternate timeline. Trapped in a world where he is doomed. 

V. Arminianism

Superficially, this seems kinder and gentler than Calvinism. But on closer examination, you will cut yourself on razor wire.

Arminianism has two basic commitments: God's love and man's freedom. These two principles tug in opposing directions. The claim is that for love to be genuine, humans must be at liberty to refrain from reciprocating God's love.

But even if, for the sake of argument, we grant that contention, it's only plausible at an individual level. Problem is, humans are social creatures who interact with fellow humans. As a result, God must respect the freedom of Nazi scientists to experiment on human guinea pigs (to take one example). Protecting the innocent from horrendous harm is less important than creating a theater in which "true love" is possible. 

VI. Open theism

According to open theism, God is in a situation of diminish responsibility for evil inasmuch as God is ignorant of the long-term consequences of his creative actions. But there are problems with that theodicy:

i) If you don't know whether you're inserting innocent people into a dangerous situation, shouldn't you play it safe? When it doubt, is it not morally incumbent on you to avoid exposing people to an unforeseeable, but potentially catastrophic risk? 

ii) Moreover, even if God can't foresee the outcome a year in advance or a month in advance, surely he can foresee the outcome a day in advance or an hour in advance. As events come to a head, the future becomes increasingly predictable, even if the outcome is not a dead certainty. 

In addition, we don't generally think the bare possibility that something might not be harmful is an excuse to insert innocent people into what is, in all likelihood, a hazardous situation. 

VII. Calvinism

According to Calvinism, God predestines every event, including evil events. Although that's a sobering claim, an implication of that claim is that everything happens for a reason. Indeed, there's a good reason for whatever God ordains.

Especially in cases of evil, we typically demand that there better be a good reason to justify it. And that's precisely what Calvinism claims.

Compare that to the candid admission of sophisticated freewill theism:

According to the story I have told, there is generally no explanation of why this evil happened to that person…It means being the playthings of chance. It means living in a world in which innocent children die horribly, and it means something worse than that: it means living in a world in which innocent children die horribly for no reason at all. It means living in a world in which the wicked,through sheer luck, often prosper.  

But whether a particular horror is connected with human choices or not, it is evident, at least in many cases, that God could have prevented the horror without sacrificing any great good or allowing some even greater horror.  

No appeal to considerations in any way involving human free will or future benefits to human beings can possibly be relevant to the problem with which this case [Auschwitz] confronts.   

There are many horrors, vastly many, from which no discernible good results–and certainly no good, discernible or not, that an omnipotent being couldn't have achieved without the horror; in fact, without any suffering at all. P. van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil (Oxford, 2006), 89,95,97.

Is that clearly preferable to Calvinism? What's disturbing isn't so much the idea that God predestines horrendous evils, but the fact of horrendous evils. The world has exactly the same horrendous evils regardless of your theodicy. 

It's just immature, as well as deceptive, for Arminians like Walls to constantly attack Calvinism based on the disagreeable implications of Calvinism while constantly refusing to compare it with the disagreeable implications of every other theodicy. In our fallen world, there are no nice theodices. Every theodicy has serrated edges. There's no escaping that.