Re: I am affronted by the presence of god
Brad, you can't have it both ways.
If god is all-powerful, as so many religions claim, then he doesn't get a free pass when bad shit happens. With great power comes great responsibility, so with ultimate power comes ultimate responsibility.
If god is not, in fact, all-powerful, and it's difficult or impossible for him to fix things, then people need to stop feeding the lie that god has all the cards.
And as to your question about why god should fix stuff?
See, here's the deal. When you see something wrong, you can either make it better, make it worse or walk on by. Most of us try to make at least some things better; we do this because we're social and empathetic creatures. Sometimes we do make things worse. Most of the time, we just walk on by. But generally, we celebrate those in our community who make things better, even (and especially) if it inconveniences those people. If you have to go four extra miles for someone, your selflessness is, to some degree, celebrated. You're hailed as empathetic, supportive, a good friend or a good leader. We actively foster this behaviour in ourselves.
But a god figure, which is supposed to be the source of all of our best qualities, arguably has a far, far greater responsibility to fix what he fucks up, or even just to fix the consequences when things do not go according to original design. Why exactly are we holding a mythical figure to standards that are -lower than those to which we hold ourselves, when that figure is supposed to have far greater capacity for good and far greater responsibility for maintaining what he created?
By suggesting that god isn't responsible, what you're saying is that no matter how much power you hold, you shouldn't be held to account for the bad things that happen. Feel free to just ignore them. You'd fit right in with the old Trump administration with an attitude like that. lol Seriously, a little selfishness is par for the course, and sometimes you deliberately have to help yourself before helping someone else. It happens. I get it. But we aren't talking about god giving a two-year-old an ice cream cone. We're talking about god not being bothered to fix unnecessary suffering, in the form of debilitating, long-term illness.
I'll put a spike in this. Let's say for just a moment that I was the leader of Canada, and by some freak coincidence I also had the power to eliminate Alzheimer's disease in my country. Doing so would cost me little or nothing. How would you feel if I simply refused to act? Would it make you angry? Would you be disgusted that, when faced with a choice to do nothing or to ameliorate the suffering of my people, I turned away? Would you call me a bad leader?
Let's go even smaller. Say I had a partner. I wake up one night and I can hear her crying in the living room. I know she's been stressed lately, and she hasn't been sleeping too well. She was beside me when I fell asleep, and now I hear her crying like her heart's going to break. What sort of partner would I be if I just grunted, rolled over and went back to sleep? Because hey, maybe the reason for her weeping is beyond my ability to fix, but maybe my going out into the living room and putting an arm around her, or even just sitting down next to her, would make her feel supported in some small way. It would be a sesture, the bare minimum. You'd probably call me an asshole for being that selfish, particularly if this is something I did all the time instead of, say, doing just once when I was ridiculously tired. You wouldn't make excuses for me. You'd call me selfish, maybe even encourage my partner to leave this toxic relationship because clearly I don't care about her well-being.
Now, turn that to god. He never answers. He never actually makes things better. Long-term illness still exists. People cry themselves to sleep. People even in well-developed countries go to bed with growling bellies and troubled thoughts. God fixes none of it. So I ask you: if it's okay for god to just abdicate all responsibility, why isn't it okay when humans do it? Why the double standard?
If there were a god, and he resembled the Christian version, and he did even a hundredth of one percent of the stuff that it was claimed he had done, I would be calling him an abusive, controlling, narcissistic tyrant. If I knew a person who did even a hundredth of one percent of the stuff god has supposedly done, I'd say the same of them. Why can't you?
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