{"id":69,"date":"2019-08-08T22:38:08","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T22:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/?p=69"},"modified":"2019-08-08T22:40:14","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T22:40:14","slug":"a-powerful-argument-against-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/2019\/08\/08\/a-powerful-argument-against-god\/","title":{"rendered":"A Powerful Argument Against God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Over the past few weeks, a series of crazed gunmen took the\nlives of more than 30 innocent people in three separate mass killings in the\nUnited States.  Among the dead were\nmultiple children.  Of course, children\ndying, in and of itself, is not a particularly newsworthy event.  Children die every day, from disease, hunger,\naccidents and, yes, violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tragedy, unfortunately, is a part of nature, which we know\nand understand in our heart of hearts.  But\nreligion, as framed by Christianity, Islam and Judaism, would have us believe\notherwise.  They would have us believe\nthat there is an all-powerful, loving God, that watches over us and, even when\nwe see tragedy, it\u2019s only because we don\u2019t understand God\u2019s plan.  And in the wake of such tragedy, the usual\nresponse from the religious community is to offer \u2018thoughts and prayers\u2019 to\nthose affected, as if that is somehow compensation for those who are\nsuffering.  If there\u2019s an all-powerful,\nloving God watching over us, how can it be that bad things continuously happen\nto good people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is nothing more gut-wrenching than a child being taken\nfrom their loving parents, parents that nurtured that child from birth, with\nhopes for its future of a life of happiness and fulfillment.  To tell a parent that they just don\u2019t\nunderstand God\u2019s plan, that somehow their dead child is in a better place, is\nempty consolation.  We\u2019re better off just\ncoming to terms with the fact that in nature, bad things do in fact sometimes\nhappen to good people, but also with the understanding that humans (not God) can\ntake steps to reduce the number of those bad happenings (by reducing violence,\ndisease, hunger and accidents).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question of God is perhaps best summed up by one of our\nfavorite quotes by the famous Greek philosopher Epicurus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the past few weeks, a series of crazed gunmen took the lives of more than 30 innocent people in three separate mass killings in the United States.  Among the dead were multiple children.  Of course, children dying, in and of itself, is not a particularly newsworthy event.  Children die every day, from disease, hunger, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “A Powerful Argument Against God”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71,"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/71"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesecularcommunity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}