I've been trying to come up with a good way to start this, but it hasn't arrived yet. So I'm just going to go with it.
Many of my friends are atheists. I am not. I have no problems with anyone's beliefs or lack thereof, but what does rankle me is the constant bantering about "If God were real why would he let bad things happen to good people?", as if that is the irrefutable proof of the God's nonexistence. They seem to think of God as a sort of a politician who owes his constituents nothing but good times and fair seas so that they keep re-electing him, as if his sole existence is based on our happiness. That irks me.
They forget about free will. You see, in order for free will to exist, God cannot control the actions of people. Simply put, we are not puppets. If something created the universe, as I think it did, I see no purpose to that creation with the existence of life. If such a being had the power to create the universe, then it would also set the laws in motion that would govern that universe's development and therefore would understand every aspect of those laws. Take a minute to think about that. It means that every action, from the movement of every atom to the collision and expansion of galaxies would be planned and predicted because the being that set it in motion built it that way. In such a universe, what would be the point? If you know everything that's going to happen, what's the purpose of doing it?
The purpose behind creating something so vast and yet so meaningless would be to create the environment in which something meaningful could take root. I'm talking about life. More specifically, I'm talking about sentience. All living things have sentience. Even if they don't have the level of self-awareness that we consider sentience, they have the ability to determine their actions to some extent, though for the vast majority it is merely striving to maintain the tenuous thread that keeps them alive. That means that all life has some level of free will. Free will is an indeterminable factor. Even if 99.99999999% of the time the actions of that life are completely predictable reactions to outside stimuli, that still leaves billions of actions that are taken that are not predictable. And every action in the universe affects the universe. That leaves changes in the universe that the creator would have have predicted, and has to readjust its predictions and views of that universe.
Life is like a child to that creator. It watches it grow in the house that it made to raise it in, and gets to delight in the ways that life surprises it. It has disappointments in the actions of that life and worries for its future, and sometimes takes an active role in working with it, but only through manipulation of the factors environment around us. Free will is not something that can be controlled, hence it being free. And as with children, doing everything for them and giving them an easy life doesn't allow them to grow.
All this is to say that blaming God for bad things happening seems incredibly vain to me. As if we can see all ends and determine the effects that the actions of trillions of lifeforms as well as the laws of physics will have on the world. We are incredibly small, but incredibly valuable. But as far as sentient life goes, we're very young. One day in the far future maybe we'll have a better comprehension of what the universe has in store for us, and by then we may be worthy companions for God. Until then, however, we should probably stop bitching and start doing whatever we can to shape the world we live in to be the place a creator would be proud of.
Many of my friends are atheists. I am not. I have no problems with anyone's beliefs or lack thereof, but what does rankle me is the constant bantering about "If God were real why would he let bad things happen to good people?", as if that is the irrefutable proof of the God's nonexistence. They seem to think of God as a sort of a politician who owes his constituents nothing but good times and fair seas so that they keep re-electing him, as if his sole existence is based on our happiness. That irks me.
They forget about free will. You see, in order for free will to exist, God cannot control the actions of people. Simply put, we are not puppets. If something created the universe, as I think it did, I see no purpose to that creation with the existence of life. If such a being had the power to create the universe, then it would also set the laws in motion that would govern that universe's development and therefore would understand every aspect of those laws. Take a minute to think about that. It means that every action, from the movement of every atom to the collision and expansion of galaxies would be planned and predicted because the being that set it in motion built it that way. In such a universe, what would be the point? If you know everything that's going to happen, what's the purpose of doing it?
The purpose behind creating something so vast and yet so meaningless would be to create the environment in which something meaningful could take root. I'm talking about life. More specifically, I'm talking about sentience. All living things have sentience. Even if they don't have the level of self-awareness that we consider sentience, they have the ability to determine their actions to some extent, though for the vast majority it is merely striving to maintain the tenuous thread that keeps them alive. That means that all life has some level of free will. Free will is an indeterminable factor. Even if 99.99999999% of the time the actions of that life are completely predictable reactions to outside stimuli, that still leaves billions of actions that are taken that are not predictable. And every action in the universe affects the universe. That leaves changes in the universe that the creator would have have predicted, and has to readjust its predictions and views of that universe.
Life is like a child to that creator. It watches it grow in the house that it made to raise it in, and gets to delight in the ways that life surprises it. It has disappointments in the actions of that life and worries for its future, and sometimes takes an active role in working with it, but only through manipulation of the factors environment around us. Free will is not something that can be controlled, hence it being free. And as with children, doing everything for them and giving them an easy life doesn't allow them to grow.
All this is to say that blaming God for bad things happening seems incredibly vain to me. As if we can see all ends and determine the effects that the actions of trillions of lifeforms as well as the laws of physics will have on the world. We are incredibly small, but incredibly valuable. But as far as sentient life goes, we're very young. One day in the far future maybe we'll have a better comprehension of what the universe has in store for us, and by then we may be worthy companions for God. Until then, however, we should probably stop bitching and start doing whatever we can to shape the world we live in to be the place a creator would be proud of.