I've never seen a satisfactory answer to this simple question.
Why, if there is a compassionate and merciful god, is there so much suffering in the world ?
The most common answer is that we have been granted free will, and gods do not interfere with the daily lives of people.
That's all well and good for the small minority of us adults that live in the priveliged parts of the world. My life is pretty much in control and I'm glad to have the free will to do as I wish (though I obviously don't believe any god granted it to me).
What about the starving millions in the 3rd World ? They have little opportunity to help themselves. OK, maybe we should use our free will to choose to help them - maybe...
What about the millions that die young, often very young, every year from incurable diseases ? There's literally nothing we can do for them.
What about the thousands that die every year as a result of earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods or other natural disasters completely beyond our control or powers of prediction ? There's literally nothing we can do for them.
What kind of a god would allow such regular and terrible tragedies to kill innocent men, women and children ?
It just doesn't make any sense.
Epicurus
Is God Willing/Able to prevent Evil ?
Is he willing, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
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5 comments:
You ask some good questions. What are your thoughts on these things??
Well, I'm an atheist. I don't think there is a god. It's just the way it is - sometimes bad things happen.
I'm neither an atheist nor am I a theist. But I have a question:
If evolution is just clockwork in a universe with no governing conciousness then why did human beings become capable of doing contraception?
Evolution by definition is a perpetual mechanism for transmission of digitally encoded information(genes)... in other other words "A hen is just an eggs way of making another egg". Then why are we an anomaly?
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Edwin, I think your understanding of evolution is flawed.
The process of evolution (mutation and natural selection) has no foresight or objectives - so it can't make mistakes or suffer anomalys - those concepts have no meaning to evolution - it's just a process.
If a species evolves a behaviour (eg. excessive contraception) such that it doesn't sufficiently reproduce, and that behaviour is not weeded out by natural selection, the species will become extinct. No anomalies or mistakes there - just process, just another dead end on the evolution tree.
As it stands, contraception doesn't seem to be a threat to our reproductive abilities. The world population is expanding ever faster.
I've also commented on the related post on your site.
thank you. ur explanation seems to be right.
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