My friend John Loftus has a short video on his site Debunking Christianity, about the Problem of Evil. While some of the video relates to moral evil (what man does to man or animals), much of it relates to natural evil (what God or nature does to man or animals). Christians typically use the argument that man's free will is responsible for all the evils we see in the world and God is not responsible. However, man's free will has nothing to do with the presence of natural evil.
I think this is a powerful video:
What a nightmare. They played this song at my dads funeral who died from cancer. And I thought to myself, what a ... up world.
ReplyDeleteVery powerful, Ken. I think it could bring those vague, disturbing, cognitive dissonance thoughts in the back of people's minds TO the forefront of their minds and cause them to think.
ReplyDeleteFunny video, but I think most Christians would dismiss it by saying that these events are just a result of a "fallen world" due to the sin in the Garden of Eden. In other words, God really wanted us to have a "wonderful world" but we just screwed it up. Besides, Heaven is waiting for these poor people if they just trust in God. In light of eternal bliss, these small sufferings seem pale in comparison. I know thats what I would think because I used to be a Christian.
ReplyDeleteEve took a bite out of an apple (or whatever it was), so many, many, many people-including children- must suffer horribly.
ReplyDeleteOnly religion can make people tie their brains in knots to somehow make God good. It's amazing.
I was having a discussion earlier with someone else about natural evil, although it was more of a bumping about with semantics, since I consider natural evil a category error and reification and he doesn't.
ReplyDeleteFor reference, one of the better theodicies I've read was made by Thomas Talbott in "The Inescapable Love of God". Although Universalism can pretty much automatically have a better theodicy than any other other branch of Christianity since it essentially amounts to "all will be well in the end" anyway.