I was over at Michele's today farting around and she posted a thread about the existence of God in a world filled with evil, how can God let it happen, blahblahblah.
I read through the comments and listened to what most of the people had to say, and there were some well thought out opinions there.
People go back and forth about God's seemingly interventionist nature, apparently discriminating between those worthy of life and those who's families can hanlde the tragedy of death.
One guy posted an excerpt from an interesting article on human suffering and the important lessons the experience of suffering teaches us.
But the whole thing leaves me wondering what the hell is so 'hopeless' about a worldview where God is absent? I mean, if the existence of evil is in some way proof of the existence of God, how could being without God be worse? Wouldn't it nullify the existence of evil? If God is Love, and people did as best they could to show love to eachother, then I say yes; a world without a supreme being would be filled with love if we as humans chose to be fucking nice to eachother more than once a year.
It's quite an interesting trip when I really start thinking about people, and how we see our world. It seems that most of us go through life without ever really thinking about the how the other six or so billion people in this world have lives that are just as important, happy, stressful, and exciting as our own. We hardly ever stop to consider the impact one tiny action of ours has on any of a myriad number of people we come in direct or indirect contact with. And everyone does it or has done it. I mean, when was the last time anyone thought to themseslves, "I wonder how this will effect the lives of others?", before they did something. Would that it happened several times a day.
That guy in Michele's post who killed the family while driving drunk; was most definitley not thinking about the other people in this world. At several points that evening, the driver could have opted not to show such disregard, but failed. The price this person, and unfortunately many others have to pay is the awareness that humans are capable of evil. Evil doesn't come from Hell or Satan. It comes from us choosing to be self-centered and ignorant and...well, generally prickish.
It's the stupid things in life that seem to come back to haunt us. Thinking we can get away with something just one more time and then shooting ourselves in the foot. I understand that being considerate won't eradicate suffering, nor do I think anything is capable of removing suffering from the human experience. But wouldn't it be nice if our suffering came from something we couldn't blame each other for? Wouldn't it be nice if suffering was merely a natural condition predicated by disease or freak accidents? Or maybe, this evil that results from humans is naturally predicated in that it is resultant of human behavior. A natural stimuli of it's own.
