On Creationism

CS Lewis is popular with Christians, so it is worth looking at what he said. The World's Last Night is an essay he published in 1960. It can be found on-line here . In particular I want to focus on just two paragraphs. Here is the first But there is worse to come. “Say what you like,” we shall be told, “the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’ And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.” This is a good summary of the problem Lewis is trying to resolve. He goes on:  It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible. Yet how teasing, also, that within f...

 To me, the idea of a God who tortures billion of people by casting them into a lake of fire for eternity is horrific. When you couple that to claims the same God is perfectly good and all-loving, you have good grounds for rejecting Christianity as incoherent nonsense. I will note in passing that many Christians reject the idea of hell, but it is well established in the Bible, so in doing so they are rejecting their own holy scripture. This post is about how Christians reconcile God torturing billions with the other claims made about God. More specifically, I am looking at how William L Craig explained it in a debate some years ago. A transcript of the debate is here. https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/debates/can-a-loving-god-send-people-to-hell-the-craig-bradley-debate On the one hand, the Bible teaches that God is love, and yet, on the other hand, it warns that those who reject God face everlasting punishment, and it contains frequent warnings about the danger of going to hel...