Dr Paul Allen

If God is good, why is there so much suffering? Most of us have probably sought explanations for suffering in light of our faith in God, or else evil may have contributed to our doubts about God’s existence. If you have spent any extended amount of time thinking about these questions, you are exploring the problem of evil, a term that refers to analyzing challenges that the existence of evil causes for various religions. What is the problem of evil? Technically, we would do well to speak of multiple problems of evil. Each religion may face unique challenges (is karmic suffering really just, as Hinduism suggests? Is evil an illusion, as some Buddhists claim?), but this article will consider the problem of evil in Christianity in three forms.  The logical problem of evil is a philosophical attempt to argue that a theistic God cannot exist if evil exists. The evidential problem of evil argues that a specific kind or example of evil makes God’s existence improbable. The existential pr...

What is cremation? Cremation is a process that uses intense heat (1400–1800 °F) to incinerate a body. After the body is vaporised and reduced to bone fragments, these fragments are pulverised into a sand-like powder. The final step involves placing the “cremains” in a container and returning them to the surviving family. The word “cremate” is actually a sanitised version of the crass “burning a corpse.” What is the history of cremation? Early Christianity While there were a few exceptions (notably the Hebrews), cremation was a common practice in the ancient world. That rapidly changed, however, with the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire. As Francis Schaeffer explains, “Gradually Christianity came to Roman Avenches. We know this by studying the cemetery of that time—the Romans burned their dead, the Christians buried theirs.” 1 In some respects, the care with which early Christians disposed of their dead through the burial process would not have gone unnoticed in the pagan wo...