Our endowment

A Christmas Rumination by Francis W. Porretto:

A good man -- take my word for it -- has succumbed to the Problem of Pain: the inability to believe that a benevolent Deity would have created a universe that permits so much evil and suffering. I had to grapple with that one myself before I could confidently return to faith. It's a nasty one, for one giant reason: the severe difficulty we limited ones have in contemplating the nature of God and the Divine Plan.

The heart of the thing is the nature of free will under the veil of Time. We are temporal creatures. Alone among the living species, we experience the passage of time, in which we sequence the events of our lives and concoct theories about why this happened instead of that. Because our wills are free, we are capable of taking many paths forward from any point in time and circumstance. The scope of our decision making is limited only by our nature.

Our nature is defined by the laws of the universe that gave rise to us. God decreed those laws and made them self-enforcing. But they don't constrain our wills. We are free to choose what ends we will pursue: pleasure or pain; profit or loss; stasis or dynamism; good or evil. Freedom of the will is God's original gift to Mankind: the one that distinguishes us from all the lower orders...and perhaps from some of the higher ones, as well.

A woman at my workplace went to India with her daughter. One day they decided to visit a temple. The level of poverty and misery there made the daughter tear up. She couldn't handle such a scene. She asked her mother, "How can God allow this?" The mother, to my surprise, didn't have any answer. She largely agreed with the idea that suffering means that a good God doesn't exist which basically means God doesn't exist.

I've not believed that. Even, after viewing the horrors of Islam in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, my belief in a Powerful Architect hasn't diminished. If anything the existence of evil strengthens the basis of His existence for it means that we truly are free -- free to be good or bad, free to be kind or inflict pain.

Comments

[Tambi Dude]

"I've not believed that. Even, after viewing the horrors of Islam in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, my belief in a Powerful Architect hasn't diminished. If anything the existence of evil strengthens the basis of His existence for it means that we truly are free -- free to be good or bad, free to be kind or inflict pain."

So you don't believe in organized religion but believe in GOD. You belong to a minority of those who reject religion. Most of them, like me, end up being an atheist.

[Alex]

“Is God willing to prevent evil, 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?”

Epicurus – Greek philosopher, BC 341-270

[Feargal]

A response to Epicurus from the Lord. (Actually, he was answering Job, who advanced a similar argument.)

1: Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind:
2: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3: Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
4: "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
5: Who determined its measurements -- surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?
6: On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone,
7: when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
8: "Or who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth from the womb;
9: when I made clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10: and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors,
11: and said, `Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed'?
12: "Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place,
13: that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth, and the wicked be shaken out of it?

-- Book of Job, Chapter 38