God works in mysterious ways. Maybe the deer is collateral damage in a fight against evil that we can't quite fathom. Perhaps God has a family resemblance to the Pentagon in its fight against terrorism. The poor, the meek, and the humble should accept this instead of displaying overweening pride of intellect by complaining about suffering animals or mangled civilian casualties. By believing they may inherit the earth or even get a reasonably good pension from the military.
Cheers, Ken Hanly ----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin Schwartz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 9:43 AM Subject: [PEN-L:23251] Re: RE: God > >There is a very powerful argument against the existence of a a 3-A God: >the problem of evil. > >jks >>CB: Yes, and are those who are agnostic about God agnostic about the >Devil ? > > >JD: I wasn't raised as a Christian, but as I understand that faith, it's >humanity that's the source of evil. (The Devil is most important to the >fundamentalists, not the more sophisticated Christians.) "God" gave us free >will and we mostly chose to be evil. In my view (as far as I can tell), we >also created good (and God), along with the definition of good vs. evil. The strongest version of the problem of evil involves natural suffering of nonhuman origin. (The free will defense doesn't work fot this sort of evil.) Unnecessary pain is intrinsically evil, so how can there be an all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God whopermits, for example, a little fawn to die in pain when a rotten tree falls and braeks its back, or an elephants to starve to death when its teeth wear out? Can't hew just tweak the tree so that it misses the fawn, or have the tree hit it so that it dies immediately; or give theelephants teeth that last another ten years? Or maybe He doesn't want to, or can't do anuthing about it, or doesn't know? Any of these hypothese are inconsiastent with the usual three-A God. jks _________________________________________________________________ Join the world's largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
