Joe Schmid

speaker

235 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Sep 2026 last heard 3 Sep

Joe Schmid’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.

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Pints With Aquinas · Answering 7 Arguments For Atheism | Joe Schmid | Last Call Ep. 30 · 3 Sep 2026 podcast

non-human creatures and non-animal creatures were given the task of providentially ordering and governing and the evolutionary process to direct it in ways that were kind of more kumbaya and less suffused with suffering.

And that could be justified by the potential for them to make a significant difference in the lives of creatures, which again could reap infinite benefits in the afterlife.

If people are interested in that, they can check out a paper on the omission of the Odyssey by Brian Cutter and Philip Swenson.

Also a very tricky challenge, but I do think there are a number of goods that divine hiddenness enables.

So for instance, if there are really people who aren't believers in God or believers in Christianity, what does that enable?

It enables you and me and other people who are believers in Christianity and are believers in God's existence

to evangelize and to try to save them and to try to spread the truth about God, his existence, his nature, and his love for them.

And think about how valuable that kind of thing is.

Basically, God cooperating with creatures in bringing people into salvation, right?

So basically, in order for there to be the good of difference-making responsibility over other people's knowledge of God and salvation, there needs to be some kind of distribution of obscurity and there needs to be some distribution where people don't believe and other people do believe.

So that's one kind of response that we can make.

There are just goods enabled by a little bit more obscure modus operandi.

A second thing you could say is that for these people who don't currently believe in God's existence, God might be permitting them to be in a state of non-belief for the sake of greater relationship goods down the line.

Look at my own case.

I was an atheist, I was an agnostic, but now look where I've come, right?

And now my relationship with God has deepened because I've sought after him.

I've sought him in the depths of despair, in good times and in bad.

I've sought him, I've sought after him, and I finally reached him, right?

And that kind of made my relationship with God better in a very unique kind of way.

And so maybe God is just holding off on a relationship with some people for the sake of greater relationship goods down the line.

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