standard answer to Why does God allow evil things to happen is that there's a parent/child thing going on....this is a reasonable-ish response to pain on an individual level, when you get mass famines, wars, disasters... I'm not convinced it scales terribly well.... Unless you also add in the idea of an afterlife
Well said, I'd agree with all that.
No standard answer being acceptable to me (other than the one I actually believe, which is that there is no God, or at least no good, omnipotent one), I mused in my post that point one might suggest another.
Personal responsibility rings true for me in Narnia, but not in this world (where mass bad things are more obvious). The afterlife is logically an answer (the one that applies to Bujold's Chalion theology, which is wonderfully conceived), but most people, even people who claim to believe it, can't really seem to find it palatable.
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Date: 2008-05-12 02:56 pm (UTC)Well said, I'd agree with all that.
No standard answer being acceptable to me (other than the one I actually believe, which is that there is no God, or at least no good, omnipotent one), I mused in my post that point one might suggest another.
Personal responsibility rings true for me in Narnia, but not in this world (where mass bad things are more obvious). The afterlife is logically an answer (the one that applies to Bujold's Chalion theology, which is wonderfully conceived), but most people, even people who claim to believe it, can't really seem to find it palatable.