# God and the Problem Of Evil. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 31, 2012, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411 "2012-10-31T08:57:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/101 "2012-11-02T19:01:45Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > And so, we can see that, over time, it is part of our process of growing and learning. And, unknowing where the endpoint is, we cannot say for certain, but we can certainly say that over a long enough timeline, we will only get more and more toward that state. And so to judge all of creation in that context, suffering is not only an integral part, but it’s part of what makes the whole good. In other words, the ends justify the means. However, the concept of means is incompatible with the concept of God being omnipotent. An omnipotent being has no need of means. An omnipotent being can just leap straight to the ends. ---
**Author:** ![Docta\_G](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/2bfe46/32.png) [@Docta\_G](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Docta_G)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/102 "2012-11-02T19:04:53Z")
It doesn’t matter what story you tell: there is a conceptual problem with the idea that a perfect being could creat an imperfect world, where perfection is defined as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence. It doesn’t matter what story you tell: you cannot square a circle without changing the semantics of the terms you’re using, that is, without equivocating. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/103 "2012-11-02T19:10:50Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > And how do you know what the will of God is? Well, as a Methodist, this is fairly easy to answer: [Wesleyan Quadrilateral](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesleyan_Quadrilateral)–Scripture, Tradition, Reason, Experience. In practice, it’s complicated. 😃 Ultimately, everyone has to decide for themself. > [@trabajabamos](#): > > Thank you for your response. I suppose I didn’t explain my intention but it seemed to me that the whole back-and-forth about Moses was introduced to question the validity of your apparent stance that belief in God must be based on faith and that proof of God’s existence would cause faith to become superfluous. > > So the argument would go something like this: “God exercising divine power in Biblical events would offer certainty of His existence and diminish the quality of and need for faith among observers.” > > I appreciate that you aren’t a literalist but find it odd to say that various truth claims pertinent to the Christian mythology are generally irrelevant. Are you telling me Christians would be (or ought to be) fine with the Pope- or whichever authority- issuing a statement saying that yeah, everything that purportedly happened post-crucifixion was made up and that Jesus probably just rotted in a ditch? Well, my denomination doesn’t really have any authority that’s not an outcome of a large consensus of members, so that question doesn’t really apply to me. I’d vote with my feet if I was unhappy with any pronouncements, because I don’t really accept any human between me and God. > [@trabajabamos](#): > > Or, more simply: > If none of the truth claims in the Bible need necessarily depict anything that actually happened, why do you choose to believe any of it? I’m not trying to be combative, but I certainly empathize with literalists who argue that you have to take it all or leave it all because, failing that, everyone gets to roll their own. The simplest answer is: there’s no reason to expect it be “all or nothing”. The Bible is not monolithic. With more nuance: most Christians do believe all of it, but what they mean by “belief” varies a lot. The Biblical literalists try to force the idea that “belief” can only mean “belief in the literal truth”. But belief can mean something like “belief in the essential truth”. For example, take the phrase “all men are created equal”. No one believes that statement is literally true–men are born with varying amounts of intelligence, charisma, privilege, etc. But the statement is true in the sense that political rights should not depend on the particulars of one’s heritage. And not just men, but women, as well. So many people, if asked “do you believe all men are created equal?”, would answer “yes”. Belief in a statement must always be qualified by what the interpretation and context are. As for “everyone gets to roll their own”, well, yes, we do. God gave us free will and judges us each as individuals. Everyone has to roll their own, because the “Pope said so” won’t get you a free pass on Judgement Day. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/104 "2012-11-02T19:13:04Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > In other words, the ends justify the means. > > However, the concept of means is incompatible with the concept of God being omnipotent. An omnipotent being has no need of means. An omnipotent being can just leap straight to the ends. What you say is **reasonable** , but I’m not sure whether it’s **true** —it’s something I’ve thought about and agonized over. If an omnipotent God wanted you to have some quality like wisdom, or compassion, or patience, would there be any difference in the end whether you went through experiences that grew and developed these qualities in you, or whether God bopped you on the head with his magic wand and magically instilled these qualities in you? The latter doesn’t seem right somehow, in much the same way that [Last Thursdayism](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism) doesn’t seem right. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/105 "2012-11-02T19:31:59Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > But spun another way, and you’ve basically justified ecumenicalism, which today is conventional wisdom. Most American Protestants for example have no problem changing denominations when they move from one city to another, the idea being that any presentation of God is an approximation at best and that the varietal of worship chosen should relate to the fit between the practitioner and the religious community, not theological minutia. But one Protestant sect accepting that another sect’s choice of hymns or something is very weak ecumenicalism. Considering Jews exposes the real rot in the concept, from the Christian point of view. The priest might tall the rabbi “Sure, we can get along” but under his breath he is saying “but you are going to hell.” Anything else destroys the very basis of Christianity, which is more than that Jesus said some cool things. Even if Jews get a pass for believing in the same god, then we have Buddhists and Hindus. Ecumenicalism beyond the level of “we won’t kill or forcibly convert people any more” makes no sense for universal monotheistic religions. Now Jews are happy to leave other people alone, since we have a tribal religion and don’t think anything bad happens to non-Jews because they are non-Jews. But if we refuse to accept Christ as the Messiah, how ecumenical can we be? All it boils down is “you are wrong, but we we’ll agree not to mention it too often.” > [@](#): > > Actually, Bertrand Russell pointed out that it’s stronger than objective evidence, as established by Descartes. I can’t say with 100.0000000000000000000% confidence that there’s a keyboard under my fingers, but I can say that I perceive one. For existence, yes. Fir shared views of external reality, not so much. Subjective reporting is the best for relating so-called religious experiences, but not to see if religious experiences match reality. I assume the same goes for LSD trips though I’ve never touched the stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/106 "2012-11-02T19:40:02Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > We can prove that anything believed of God is from another human,Our belief is based on what we read, were taught,said or thought of some human, even our ownselves. That is true today. If the Exodus had happened, it is not true of Israel then, who had direct experience of God. Much of what we know is from other humans, and we have developed ways of critically analyzing that evidence. I’ve never been to Venice, but I’ve read about it and seen pictures of it, so I can believe it exists. But if one account had it on a lagoon, another in the mountains, and another on an island far from sure, I’d begin to have my doubts. Like about the Simpsons’ Springfield. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/107 "2012-11-02T19:53:37Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > I don’t accept a literal interpretation of the Bible, so reading it as a historical record looks silly to me. > > The point of the stories in the Bible vary, and are subject to many interpretations among Christians who are not literalists. And I think off-topic to this thread. You get the same message considering it as allegory. And where do you get the concept that evidence of God’s existence hurts faith? Revelations certainly doesn’t have that message. The concept of Jesus returning would seem to contradict this notion. If Jesus comes down, would the first thing you’d say to him be “go away, kid, you’re hurting my faith?” I suspect this whole thing about evidence hurting faith would go away as soon as evidence turns up. > [@](#): > > There’s two things going on here and I’m only discussing one of them. First, there’s checking that a formal system is self-consistent and seeing what one can derive from it. Second, there’s finding evidence that a formal system is applicable to this universe. > > For example, take Euclidean geometry. It’s a formal system that is self-consistent and one can derive many theorems with it. For a long time, it was our best model of the geometry of this universe. But as we took better measurements and performed better experiments, we’ve discovered that our universe does not actually follow Euclidean geometry. Sure, it’s a useful approximation, but ultimately it’s incorrect. > > Not so with logic. We have not found any counterexamples. All the evidence points to a self-consistent universe that follows the rules of logic. But non-Euclidean geometry was derived from changing the basic postulates - but it was derived using the same logical and mathematical laws as Euclidean geometry was. That the universe is not fundamentally Euclidean didn’t affect the validity of any of this. Physical checks cover the validity of the postulates, not that of the reasoning. > [@](#): > > About “the basic rules of logic are true in all universes”–you do realize that this is a subjective statement for which no one can produce objective evidence for? We cannot produce evidence from any universe but this one. It is clearly not provable, but not purely subjective either. We’d have to be able to conceive of a universe where they are not true. We can conceive of universe where conservation laws don’t hold, where causality doesn’t hold at the macro level, and lots of other stuff, but one where A && ~A is true? Kind of hard. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/108 "2012-11-02T20:01:40Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > The simplest answer is: there’s no reason to expect it be “all or nothing”. The Bible is not monolithic. > > With more nuance: most Christians do believe all of it, but what they mean by “belief” varies a lot. The Biblical literalists try to force the idea that “belief” can only mean “belief in the literal truth”. But belief can mean something like “belief in the essential truth”. Given the internal contradictions in the Bible saying it is not monolithic is very reasonable. But the question is: what filter do you use to distinguish the true parts from the false parts, the actual stuff from the allegorical stuff. For instance, I can say that Jesus did not actually rise from the dead, but that is an indication of how he would be remembered after his death. My contention is that all morality is actually atheist morality. By that I mean you choose a moral path without reference to God, and then you pick and choose pieces of your religious sources to justify that path. That is why some Christians use the Bible to justify support for homosexual relationships and some use the Bible to condemn them. If God actually existed, and cared, it might be a good idea for him to come down and explain what he actually meant. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/109 "2012-11-02T20:44:45Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > You get the same message considering it as allegory. And where do you get the concept that evidence of God’s existence hurts faith? Well, I disagree. 😃 I don’t think arguing about the interpretations of specific scripture is productive for this thread. I picked it up somewhere during my lifetime, probably in church, but who knows. > [@Voyager](#): > > Revelations certainly doesn’t have that message. The concept of Jesus returning would seem to contradict this notion. If Jesus comes down, would the first thing you’d say to him be “go away, kid, you’re hurting my faith?” I suspect this whole thing about evidence hurting faith would go away as soon as evidence turns up. Again, you’re interpreting scripture in a way that I don’t. As for “evidence hurting faith would go away”, I’m not sure where you’re getting that. What do you mean by “faith”? I use it to mean “belief not supported by objective evidence”. So once there’s objective evidence of something, what was faith becomes another type of belief. > [@Voyager](#): > > But non-Euclidean geometry was derived from changing the basic postulates - but it was derived using the same logical and mathematical laws as Euclidean geometry was. That the universe is not fundamentally Euclidean didn’t affect the validity of any of this. Physical checks cover the validity of the postulates, not that of the reasoning. Not quite. If a hypothesis is physically confirmed, then the postulates and reasoning are confirmed. But if a hypothesis fails, then the postulates and/or reasoning fails. Typically, we assume it’s the postulates that have failed. And that assumption is justified because the reasoning has never failed (ignoring cases where the reasoning is faulty). The bottom line is that we use logic and reasoning because they work, not because they were handed down by the Goddess Science. > [@Voyager](#): > > It is clearly not provable, but not purely subjective either. We’d have to be able to conceive of a universe where they are not true. We can conceive of universe where conservation laws don’t hold, where causality doesn’t hold at the macro level, and lots of other stuff, but one where A && ~A is true? Kind of hard. Argument from ignorance is a fallacy. I suppose one could argue that because it’s impossible for any human to conceive of a universe where logic does not apply, it is objective in the sense that it’s a repeatable observation. But that’s really stretches “objective” past the limit, in my opinion. > [@Voyager](#): > > Given the internal contradictions in the Bible saying it is not monolithic is very reasonable. But the question is: what filter do you use to distinguish the true parts from the false parts, the actual stuff from the allegorical stuff. For instance, I can say that Jesus did not actually rise from the dead, but that is an indication of how he would be remembered after his death. See above: Scripture is interpreted through the lenses of Tradition, Reason and Experience. People have minds; they can use them. (If they it even matters to them whether a particular story is literal or allegorical.) > [@Voyager](#): > > My contention is that all morality is actually atheist morality. By that I mean you choose a moral path without reference to God, and then you pick and choose pieces of your religious sources to justify that path. That is why some Christians use the Bible to justify support for homosexual relationships and some use the Bible to condemn them. If God actually existed, and cared, it might be a good idea for him to come down and explain what he actually meant. That’s a defensible position, but hard to prove without knowing the minds of the people involved. That is, just because a moral is derivable without reference to God does not imply that a particular person derived that moral without reference to God. As for using that position to support (or not) the existence of God, you already know what I think about proofs about God. ---
**Author:** ![trabajabamos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/47e85d/32.png) [@trabajabamos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/trabajabamos)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/110 "2012-11-02T20:51:02Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > Well, my denomination doesn’t really have any authority that’s not an outcome of a large consensus of members, so that question doesn’t really apply to me. That feels a bit like a dodge but I’ll rephrase: Is there any event related in the Bible that you consider pivotal to your faith? If so, how do you defend against the possibility that it was simply allegory? If not, in what sense do you “believe” in Christian scripture? > [@Pleonast](#): > > With more nuance: most Christians do believe all of it, but what they mean by “belief” varies a lot. The Biblical literalists try to force the idea that “belief” can only mean “belief in the literal truth”. But belief can mean something like “belief in the essential truth”. With respect, this borders on incoherence; you can’t say a group “believes” some thing and allow the meaning of the word “believe” and the thing itself to vary across that group. Saying that, “All men are created equal”, is an assertion about the way in which we should treat people. Insofar as people agree with the conclusion that we should offer equal rights to all, they “believe” it. But saying, “Jesus died for our sins”, is an assertion about a specific thing that happened combined with a pile of unverifiable assumptions that could choke a donkey. People who “believe” this ostensibly accept that it happened the way the book says and that all of the assumptions it implies about life, the universe, and existence in general are true. > [@Pleonast](#): > > As for “everyone gets to roll their own”, well, yes, we do. God gave us free will and judges us each as individuals. That’s cool I guess, but we’d better hope God doesn’t really care about the details because, if He does, the vagueness inherent in His teachings has certainly put most of the faithful (unwittingly and through no fault of their own) on His bad side and they can’t even know it. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/111 "2012-11-02T21:29:46Z")
> [@trabajabamos](#): > > That feels a bit like a dodge but I’ll rephrase: Is there any event related in the Bible that you consider pivotal to your faith? If so, how do you defend against the possibility that it was simply allegory? If not, in what sense do you “believe” in Christian scripture? I wouldn’t say anything is “pivotal”. My favorite verses are Matthew chapters 4-7 (the Sermon on Mount), Luke 10:25-37 (the Parable of the Good Samaritan) and John 1:1-18 (Jesus is the Word). The first is the story of Jesus giving a sermon. Does it matter to me if Jesus really said it? No, the message itself is what matters. The latter two stories are so clearly allegorical to me that I’m baffled by anyone interpreting them literally. And, yes, I believe those stories, but I do not interpret them literally. > [@trabajabamos](#): > > With respect, this borders on incoherence; you can’t say a group “believes” some thing and allow the meaning of the word “believe” and the thing itself to vary across that group. I can so say that. 😃 Christians are not monolithic. We can disagree about anything, including what “Christian” means. > [@trabajabamos](#): > > Saying that, “All men are created equal”, is an assertion about the way in which we should treat people. Insofar as people agree with the conclusion that we should offer equal rights to all, they “believe” it. But saying, “Jesus died for our sins”, is an assertion about a specific thing that happened combined with a pile of unverifiable assumptions that could choke a donkey. People who “believe” this ostensibly accept that it happened the way the book says and that all of the assumptions it implies about life, the universe, and existence in general are true. You are making unwarranted assumptions about the beliefs of Christians. “Jesus died for our sins” can be interpreted many ways and on multiple levels. There is not one fixed meaning to it, nor does saying one believes it require one to necessarily accept any other belief. I think you’ve been confused by some Christians who use that phrase as a code word for their particular belief sets. > [@trabajabamos](#): > > That’s cool I guess, but we’d better hope God doesn’t really care about the details because, if He does, the vagueness inherent in His teachings has certainly put most of the faithful (unwittingly and through no fault of their own) on His bad side and they can’t even know it. Thus the need for faith. And, actually one of my favorite stories (read the Good Samaritan) addresses that issue–it is the Samaritan (someone with heterodox beliefs) that is the exemplar, not the “righteous” people. ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/112 "2012-11-02T22:06:38Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > In other words, the ends justify the means. > > However, the concept of means is incompatible with the concept of God being omnipotent. An omnipotent being has no need of means. An omnipotent being can just leap straight to the ends. This isn’t what I said at all. There is no means and there is no ends and there’s nothing to justify because there’s nothing going wrong. Consider, you’re watching a movie, it’s a good film, and you enjoyed it. Do you look at the first 100 minutes as just set up for the last 20? No, there’s purpose to every part of the movie and you have to take it all together as one cohesive work. Imagine a film where all of the characters at the beginning have nothing to learn, no conflicts to resolve, are perfectly happy. What story will you tell? If they’re already perfect, anything that happens is tragedy because they’re taken farther away from perfection. Or look at another medium like music. If all you have is a small set, possibly only one, of timbres, notes, and rhythms, what sort of songs can you really create? Or fine art, you only get perfect colors, and lines. What makes that music or fine art interesting is those “imperfect” sounds or lines. If all you hear is that one “perfect” sound, it seems bad, but when you hear it in the context of a song that builds off of it, it becomes part of the perfection of that song. Similarly, if all you see is an uneven line or a blah color, it looks bad, but they may be part of a greater context of a beautiful image and they fit perfectly. There’s also this concept of “going right to the end”. When you watch a film do you only watch the last scene? When you read a book, do you only read the last page? When you listen to music, do you only listen to the last couple of seconds? When you look at a painting, do you only look at the farthest edge of the work? We perceive time differently, as though the past is gone, the future doesn’t exist, and now is all there is, but I subscribe to the B-Theory of time. And in comparing that total 4D structure as a work of art, we don’t just look at it as slices perpendicular to time, we see the whole work as one, and the perfection isn’t some last state, but the whole piece together. We see these differences over time as “changes” but that’s only because we can’t exist in moment A and moment B at the same time. But, when you consider, you can’t be at point A and point B at the same time either, and in both cases one has to travel between all moments or points on a path between A and B. Again, consider a painting. On left side a line is thin, and as we follow it more to the right, it gets thicker. If we compare the left-to-right to time, we could say the thin part is the start and the thick part is the end and it “changed” over that time. But when we are actually able to view the dimension in its entirety, there is no change, it simply is. Yes, we lack this ability, but many theists would say that God has the ablity to perceive time in such a way (ie, he’s outside of time). To argue that because God is omnipotent and thus wouldn’t have things change over time would be like to argue that such an artist wouldn’t have that line change in thickness from left to right. There is no “change” when any given moment and point is time and space simply is. So, again, pain and suffering seem like bad things in no context because they’re unpleasant, but just like the imperfect line or imperfect note, they serve as part of a greater context. That context is learning, growth, experience, existence. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/113 "2012-11-02T22:51:08Z")
The standard response I keep hearing is that we’re all born sinners and evil and guilty because of Adam and Eve (well, mostly Eve), so it’s all our fault. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/114 "2012-11-02T22:54:09Z")
I can’t see any purpose or learning curve in situations like what befell Sylvia Likens: > **[sylvialikens.com - sylvialikens Resources and Information.](http://ww1.sylvialikens.com/)** > > sylvialikens.com is your first and best source for all of the information you’re looking for. From general topics to more of what you would expect to find here, sylvialikens.com has it all. We hope you find what you are searching for! ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/115 "2012-11-02T23:01:47Z")
> [@Stark\_Raven\_Mad](#): > > Christian science? Also, how does this position explain something like natural disasters? Not sure what Christina science is. But to me and to quote scriptures of Lord Jesus, ’ God is the God of the Living’ to me everything is alive including the entity we sometimes call ‘mother earth’. We are her fetal child, all life in her is her (single) child. Just like a human mother can do things that intentionally or unintentionally harm her in-utero child, so can mother earth. ---
**Author:** ![trabajabamos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/47e85d/32.png) [@trabajabamos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/trabajabamos)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/116 "2012-11-02T23:11:34Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > I think you’ve been confused by some Christians who use that phrase as a code word for their particular belief sets. Yeah probably. I think I’m just going to file you as one of the exceedingly reasonable/inoffensive Christians I so rarely encounter out in the world and call it a week. I don’t have to “get it”, but thanks for trying to explain anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/117 "2012-11-03T00:22:05Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > Anecdotes are not data. Neither is faith. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/118 "2012-11-03T00:57:15Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > Here is a question I have been struggling with myself literally for years now. **Why would a loving merciful God allow so much suffering in the world?** Why should God fix the world when we’re perfectly capable of fixing it ourselves? ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/119 "2012-11-03T01:00:33Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Why should God fix the world when we’re perfectly capable of fixing it ourselves? Tell that to people who suffer from incurable illnesses. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411/120 "2012-11-03T03:45:37Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Tell that to people who suffer from incurable illnesses. Or people who were harmed or who lost houses or family members due to natural disasters. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/god-and-the-problem-of-evil/639411.md?page=7)