It amazes me that journalists have such a hard time picking people who carefully read their Bible and have thought about it well enough not to be stupid about how they go on TV and talk about the problem of evil. I'm not saying they should find the best Christian philosophers and theologians, but they should at least find someone who isn't a total extremist or a heretic. [See A Physicist's Perspective for an excellent example of what I'm talking about, and he's got links to a number of other people doing the same thing.] Two nights in a row now, I've seen Joe Scarborough deal with this issue, and each time he's picked a strange selection. Sam complained about this after the first night, when his main responder was extremist Pat Robertson who had said 9-11 was entirely due to the people who commit sins he's not tempted to commit (homosexuality and abortion). I wasn't impressed with the others he had on. The only one who said mostly good things was quite rude. Night 2 was a little better, but there was another rude person saying decent things in an inflammatory way. Then there was Max Lucado, who is technically a heretic (his church believes baptism is necessary for salvation, which even Roman Catholics don't believe). Anyone who's read his books should expect only very rough sketches of anything of substance, but given that what he said was pretty good.
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