Saturday, February 16, 2008

If there is a God, a creator, with a plan for his creation, how come he created us so blind, so cruel, so evil? This is an age old question. How come he accept so much evil in the world? Why do so many innocent children have to suffer so much?

One answer that many Christians give is: Because he gave us a free will and we insist to do wrong. All the brutality, all the wars, all the idiocies, is not his fault. We have to repent and pray for forgiveness.

But most people in the world are already deeply religious, and Christianity is the religion with the largest numbers of followers. Almost all big wigs in the world are religious. Augusto Pinochet in Chile, for example, was a devout Catholic. Al Capone was a Catholic. Berlusconi in Italy and George W Bush are deeply religious men. The slave traders, the slave owners, the inquisitors where all Christians. The Hutus who where responsible for the genocide in Rwanda where fanatic born again Christians. Christianity clearly doesn’t work.

The Hindus believe that if innocent children are suffering it is because they did bad things in previous lifetimes. They believe that all suffering is a righteous punishment for wrongdoings. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna is convincing Arjuna to skip his doubts about going out to war against his relatives. If you kill someone that you have to kill, know that you can never really kill anyone. The body is but a garment. The Muslims have similar ideas, if I have got it right, but they go to heaven when the Hindus come back in to this world.

The atheists don’t have to bother about the theodicy problem but they have to have a view. Should one speak up against evil, injustices and idiocies or should one simply shrug ones shoulders?

The problem is that many atheists, really, in their hearts are religious, and many religious people, really, in their hearts are atheists. Many sincere and religious people pretend that they are atheists because they don’t want to be mixed up with all the religious hypocrites, and many atheists pretend that they are religious simply because they think it looks good. What a mess! What the hell can we do? I really don’t know. Almost all people in the world seems to have an answer but I don’t. To me it is a relief to meet people that don’t have a clue. With such people I feel at home.

I agree with Karen Bishop that apathy must be a part of the “ascension process“. To put the same idea in other words: To be disillusioned is to suffer because one is getting rid of illusions.

Another answer to the question how God can allow so much evil is of course that he/she is pretty useless. He/she created us to his/her image. When human beings make children they rarely have a plan for it. Also good parents can find that their kids run into trouble with drugs and criminality. Maybe “God” didn’t have a plan for us. Maybe we came to this world by an accident, a roll in the hay one midsummer night. Maybe the Gods weren’t even married when it happened and even if they then tried the best they could, they couldn’t stop us from running in to trouble. I still think that Homer and Marge is a better image than Shiva and Shakti. And the idea of just one father God doesn’t make any sense at all to me.

To search for perfection is neurotic, I think. To try to be a perfect parent that has to create perfect kids, exactly like in the books is an crazy idea. In the same way: The idea of a perfect God is neurotic.