. . . Authority is defined as “legal or rightful power; a right to command or to act; jurisdiction” (Webster’s 60). Thus, the question of authority is crucial. If no one had “a right to command or to act” a people would be in chaotic condition. Even in something as simple as a baseball game, authority is important.

Even evolutionists admit that no one has ever directly (immediately) observed the evolution of any human being from some lower (non- human) form of life. Such an admission involves the further admission that in order for the theory to be scientifically believable someone had (1) to both gather and to interpret the evidence and (2) to formulate a theory that man actually evolved from some lower (non-human) form of life. The same composite of facts is available to anyone who wishes to study the question. But the composite of facts does not constitute the whole story. There is also the very important matter of how to handle—how to interpret—these facts. Just a little later I shall have more to say about this very important point...

Rosenberg makes clear that the God that he has in mind is the traditional God of theism—omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), omnipresent (all-present), and benevolent (all- loving). It is this traditional view of God, the Judeo-Christian concept of God, that he claims is inconsistent with the existence of suffering. Rosenberg says that suffering is unpleasant and nobody wants it; he then gives examples of suffering, such as the Holocaust, starving children, natural disasters, and other terrible diseases. Not only do humans suffer, but there is great animal suffering as well—Rosenberg references examples from the size of mass extinction events down to the stepping on a dog’s tail. The core of Rosenberg’s argument is essentially the classical argument from evil.