Re: I am affronted by the presence of god
The population-control argument is kind of undone by the fact that many of these diseases either don't kill at all, or do it really, really slowly. If population control was really a problem, why not make humans a lot more susceptible to aneurysms or something? Quick, relatively painless deaths; the older you get, the more likely it becomes. Yeah, in the world we live in today, that would suck and be terribly scary, but if it was all we ever knew...then okay, sure, sometimes people would die young, but they wouldn't do it over weeks, months or even decades in some cases.
But an even better question is: if a godlike figure really is all-powerful, then why did he create or allow to come into being a world that would not meet the demands of the species which lived there? On a more religiously-minded angle, if god supposedly helps/inspires/guides people without stripping their free will away, why not encourage people toward better resource management, better technology to maybe find other homes if this one really and truly plays out? So far, he kind of hasn't done that...unless you count a rover drawing a penis in the dirt on Mars. Either way, it's kind of hung. Canlorn is right.
The only reason I stop short of calling myself a hard atheist is simple. There is a ton that we don't understand, and however unlikely it is, it's quite possible that some creature, some race out there in the cosmos, is so far advanced from us that it might as well be some form of god. We might consider that race or creature divine or omnipotent even if it is neither. That's about the closest I'll get. Our gods don't exist and cannot be real; they're just projections of our fears, right down to the "do this or else" rhetoric prevalent in so many religious texts. But some sort of god, or all-powerful force, might exist, and might have a lot more control over us than we care to think about.
Generally though? I don't get angry at god when things go badly. I get angry at the situation. The people involved, the scenario itself. I get upset with the concrete aspects. I may ask why, but if I do so, it's because I know the answer might be that there really is no answer. Why did my brother die? His heart enlarged. Why did his heart enlarge? Nobody's certain. And you know what? It sucks that my little brother isn't here anymore. I miss him. I wish he didn't have to die. But he did, and I don't have all the answers. I can either get used to this fact, or I can rail against it and still end up with no answers and a head full of ghosts.
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