My mom’s best friend had a really tough year in 2009, and it had nothing to do with the financial crisis. Her husband was dying of cancer. It was a long, slow and painful death; not something anyone should go through, but unfortunately one that many do.
Anyway, on Thursday, after a year of caring for him and watching him waste away, she was told by the doctors that he should be moved into hospice for his last days. That evening this sad, but very healthy and vital lady descended the stairs in their house — and slipped. Gravity carried her down and she landed hard on her head; and the mind that was probably on her husband at the time, was smashed and shut down.
She was rushed to hospital and operated on but the doctors didn’t know how her brain would cope with the surgery or if she would indeed even regain consciousness. She didn’t and, in the meantime, her husband passed. Her two children, after seeing their dad die, went over to the hospital praying for a miracle, but instead were faced with the decision to turn off life support for their mom.
Now does this seem fair to anyone? The religious may say that god has some kind of master plan which we lowly humans can’t understand and that ultimately some good will come from this. Really? Well I just watched the news and today criminals forced some poor 10-year-old girl to watch as they murdered her grandmother. Also today, in Hammanskraal, two girls, aged 14 and 15, were raped while they were, ironically, walking back home from church. What possible good could come from that? And what “all-good” god could possibly justify these tactics to achieve his aims? Even Machiavelli would be shamed.
So I have to conclude that if there is indeed a god then he’s not the kind of good and nice being his adoring fans make him out to be. Probably he’s more like someone who should be on trial for war crimes against humanity. Either way, I guess we’ll all find out one day. Unfortunately that day seems to have arrived rather abruptly and unfairly for my mom’s best friend and her husband. Oh yeah, and for thousands of Haitians.
@Illuvatar. I followed your link. Peter Kreeft’s ‘explanation’ of evil is a classic Apologetics argument.
“The unbeliever’s problem is not just a soft head but a hard heart. And the good apologist knows how to let the heart lead the head as well as vice versa.”
Any unbeliever knows that the heart is a pump which function is to pump blood through the body. Every single emotion whether it is fear, love, compassion etc is the result of neurons firing as well as chemicals in the human brain.
Kreeft’s argument requires a massive ‘leap of faith’ and provides zero proof for God’s existence.
“Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It’s nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith and enable it are intellectual slave holders, keeping mankind in bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.” Bill Mayers.
Kreeft being a Catholic cannot even agree with all the other Christians. He converted from on delusion to another! No wonder Christians have difficulty in convincing the unbelievers out there!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kreeft
For believers: God gave us free will. Rapists use it wrongly.
Human misery is caused by humans with no conscience as to how they make others suffer.
Death is not evil. It’s there. You’d be surprised to realise that your mother’s firend may just have preferred to go at the same time as her husband. It’s lonely being the one left behind.
My grandmother lived until she was 93 and wanted nothing so much than to join all her friends and relatives in death.
@ The Praetor
“The alternative could be that there is actually a God, who has seen her suffering, while taking care of her sick husband, and in compassion He took her away to be at peace before her husband died, to spare her further emotional trauma.”
Yeah right, in fact god was so compassionate that he took another 100 000 plus lives in Haiti to accompany her to heaven.
Yes, and just to underline his compassion further, he made sure that two kids were raped and that a 10-year-old was forced to watch her parents being murdered.
But you know, this entity who is all powerful and all compassionate, all-seeing and all-knowing, somehow can never defend himself; always relies on grovelling humans to come up with the excuses for his behaviour. The classic case of “do as I say, not as I do.”
Larry Goodfella on February 1st, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Atheism must be a dying concept if it can only manage 1000 years of peace.
If you do not want to spend eternity with god, who’s to say he wants to spend it with you.
The other day I asked an ant what he thought of man. I actually said, human being.
Does not exists, it said.
But, said I, you see him every day, you even crawl all over him. I am a man, too, did you know that?.
Does not exist, it repeated.
I tried again: but sureley you must have an idea…
I have no ideas, I am an ant for pete’s sake.
Me again: What about the nice things I spill all over the place, like sugar grains and dead flies.
I told you, it said: does not exist so don’t bother me with this kind of questioning.
Off it scurried with its fellow ants in search of food. Which I provide fps.
Relative to man, the ant is a giant considering the size of man to the sun, a minor star in a universe
cock-a-block with billions of stars. Yet, the sun rules our lives, no question about it. Sometimes too hot,often quite pleasant. It will still be there millions of years from now, time incomprehensible.
And we question the maker’s intentions.
An ant would be a wise place to start…
@Amanda
I didn’t offer Peter Kreeft’s article as proof of God’s existence – that is an underlying assumption of the article. It is rather an attempt to explain the existence of evil whilst at the same time maintaining a belief in a Good and Benevolent Creator; thus dealing directly with the subject material raised in the TL post above.
You raise some further points in your comment:
1) Peter Kreeft is writing from an apologists point view – there is nothing wrong with that given that we’re all free to present our arguments in an open forum.
2) “heart is a pump which function is to pump blood through the body” as contrasted with Peter Kreeft’s “hard heart” – you employ the classic logical fallacy of Equivocation here.
3) You say that love is an emotion that has it’s origin in the brain – I disagree. Lust perhaps is an emotion that has it’s origin in the brain, but love is a far more complex entity. That, however, is another topic of discussion not belonging squareley in the discussion at hand.
4) You quote Bill Mayers’ stance on the concept of Christian Faith – this again is not a topic that is directly under discussion, therefore to do it justice would require a separate forum of discussion otherwise it just detracts from the current topic.
5) Peter Kreeft is a Catholic – does this mean that it disqualifies him from entering into debate about the existence of evil under a
(Continued from above)
Good and Benevolent God?
6) Thanks for the link referral to Wikipedia. Here is one for you in return:
http://www.fixed-point.org/index.php/video/35-full-length/164-the-dawkins-lennox-debate
It’s long, but well worth the watch
Cheers!
Thank you for a fascinating and well argued debate with little or no mudslinging and some wonderful insights. I feel for your pain and that of the children who had to face such an awful decision and I am glad you have someone to blame. God has broad shoulders. I sincerely hope someone better qualified than myself may have given you some comfort. The closest I can come to that is agreeing with the person who said that perhaps on some deeper subconscious level she could no longer cope and so “fate” “God” intervened. I know that when I stopped trying to understand and control everything in my life and accepted what life gave me daily, a great lightness of spirit enveloped me.There had been a time when I saw my husband as my all and was consumed by fear for his unbelieving heart. When I lost my husband after this surrender I realised that my concern about his unbelief and my assumption that his death would thus be the end was in actual fact the ultimate in human judgement and unbelief and I was given the luxury of being there at the moment of his instant departure while still young and fit. It gave me great comfort to know that he did not suffer except momentarily and I have since received an unsought message from him through a close friend that he is fine and happy.Every life has a season and death is a release from suffering.