The BBC Online has an article attempting to tackle the question of a loving god and disaster. Why, David Bain asks, would a god who supposedly loved each individual human allow for such wide-spread suffering as the earthquake in Haiti? (Or the tsunamis or hurricanes or other natural disasters that have devastated populations for as long as we’ve been around.) He starts from the basic assumption that god exists, although whether or not he agrees with that claim is unclear; I’m inclined to say he doesn’t, judging by his website. The article itself contains many familiar arguments and rebuttals, leaving off with an understandably vague (and likely, for a believer seeking solace, unsatisfying) conclusion:
But, as for those who believe in an all-good, all-powerful agent-God, we’ve seen that they face a question that remains pressing after all these centuries, and which is now horribly underscored by the horrors in Haiti. If a deity exists, why didn’t he prevent this?
The selected comments are also interesting:
- An Anglican deist arguing that god isn’t interested in human affairs, viewing us as dust (a rather amusing and unintentional, I’m sure, parallel to the cosmic horrors of Lovecraft)
- An couple atheists/agnostics pointing out the bleeding obvious, that suffering happens due to physics and evolution and geology and there’s no one allowing it to happen, it just happens
- A couple theists aiming for a odd argument about needing suffering to appreciate goodness and suffering inspiring love (an argument which Bain touches on and, I’ll admit, rather unconvincingly refutes in the article)
- Another theist making the rather horrifying claim that this life is temporary and our real lives begin after death, so we should all do good because you never know when you might die
- A couple references to atheistic religions (Buddhism)
- A guy who… seems to be making some obtuse point about no one is really a good person and thus we all deserve punishment? I think?
- And finally, an Anglican priest arguing, essentially, that god works in myserious ways and while he could have arranged things so that people would not suffer, without suffering there wouldn’t be free will and without free will people wouldn’t have the choice of loving him and thus their love wouldn’t mean as much. (Ignoring the mythology of angels, who have no choice but to worship god; common descriptions of heaven, which basically seem to involve the loss of free will in the name of sitting around and worshiping god; and the fact that, let’s face it, when you’re being threatened you’re not really making a free choice, and for many theists, hell is an all-too-real threat.)
Of course, there is one simple answer to the problem of disaster and of evil: there is no god allowing or causing these things to happen. They just happen and we must deal with them as best we can. There! Thorny philosophical issue solved.
