Mother Nature can be a cruel, nasty bitch. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, asteroids; honestly, I could spend the whole day listing the many ways humans can be crushed, burned, drowned, blown away, or fall to their deaths. When these kinds of senseless tragedies occur (well, senseless to us as natural forces interact), people who still cling to Bronze Age beliefs can often find themselves wondering: if there is a God, what’s the deal with all this horrible shit that happens?
Enter the apologist*. His job is to convince you that your Omniscient deity, the one who supposedly is controlling this thing, isn’t the one who set in motion the long series of events that lead to your loved one’s demise. So, how do you square the round peg of religion? Why, you smash it with the hammer of faith, of course!
In short, it says that God is a god who apparently delights in suffering. It says that God is the sort of god who sends drunk drivers to kill babies, who burns down people’s homes, and afflicts random people with horrendous diseases like cancer.
Regardless of any potential “reason” such a god would choose to does this [sic] things, if indeed God had a hand in intentionally causing them to occur, then that God is not the God of the Bible.
That God is not worthy of worship.
That God is evil.
How is that not the God of the Bible? I’ve read the thing, and if he isn’t sending fire down from the sky to punish exiled Jews for complaining, he’s fucking over the Jews for not following his confusing and contradictory laws. While there are a few passages that allude to him being ‘love’ and other such nonsense, simply reading what the character does throughout the Bible gives one a pretty clear understanding of the kind of deity Yahweh is. This whole ‘God is love’ shit is merely the pressures of modern civility and ethics applied to an ancient death cult.
But there was no grander narrative behind these moments, no deeper meaning to be discovered if we simply read the signs correctly. They happened and there was a reason behind their happening, but that reason was mundane, not divine.
In other words, these things were not part of God’s plan.
Oh, so when shitty things happen, this wasn’t part of God’s plan, but when good things happen, everyone is supposed to fall on their knees and thank this supposed all powerful entity? Here’s the thing about ‘omnipotence’: everything is your plan. The spark that created the universe, the enzymes that formed the first lifeforms, and the actions of his creation would necessarily have to be part of it as well. See, omnipotence is one of those funny words that puts God in a bit of a corner: it implies that everything, both good and bad, are his domain. He’s not struggling, Zoroastrian style, with an equally powerful evil version of himself. No, evil is as much a part of omnipotence as good, and the two cannot be separated.
God’s plan is that one day He will make His dwelling place among His people to dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be among them and be their God.
So what the fuck is he waiting for if the world is broken and full of suffering? Seems like his followers have been waiting awhile in confused silence while they try to reconcile the cruelty of nature with their dogma of a loving God. Of course, all of this suffering and evil can be easily explained when you aren’t married to a fantasy that requires you to live a life of cognitive dissonance. Here’s an idea for you: there’s no one at the wheel, and there never was.
*(Update: The article no longer exists, and was never archived)