Theodicy Redux: Why do Certain 'Pastors' not get it?

It’s amazing that despite numerous Brane Space blogs on theodicy, and the general problem of evil- there are certain folks (like a certain "pastor") who reference this blog for indirect attack, yet still fail to appreciate the serious problem it poses for their god-concept. According to this same pastor in a recent blog piece on the nature of evil:

“Frankly , God owes NO ONE any "explanation" for anything ! The atheists and followers of Satan want everyone to think that we should live in a perfect , sinless , evil-less world .”

This, of course, misrepresents our position, but what’s new? It’s always more convenient to attack a red herring than it is to deal with the actual, underlying themes and arguments. For one thing, we don’t want or expect a “God” (whose existence is dubious and debatable) to proffer any “explanation”. What we want is the particular GOD BELIEVER to advance cogent reasons WHY HIS God is inactive in the world, to the point of being superfluous.

We want this to be a serious exercise in logic and not a specious errand devoted to deflection and distortion. As in the trope that we “think we should live in a perfect, sinless world’. NO WE DO NOT! I already made it clear that evolution presumes an imperfect world, and thus once one accepts evolution then imperfection must follow. (A point also made by Bernard Haisch in his own God Theory)

What we are saying, according to the Leibniz ontological premise, is that IF God existed then It ALREADY WAS PERFECT as a perfect vacuum of nothingness. If ALREADY PERFECT THEN WHY CREATE SOMETHING (UNIVERSE AND BEINGS) MANIFESTLY IMPERPFECT?

Especially – if one ascribes omniscience – it would have to know even prior to its act of creation that it would have to allow billions to be tortured eternally in Hell (according to the fundagelical beliefs and those of many other Christians ). Thus, by the very choice of creating, it committed a monumental act of violence and did so in a pre-meditated fashion.

The atheist lacks this problem because we don’t pin the inception of the cosmos on a god but rather a spontaneous quantum 'bubble' erupting from a 5D enclosed brane into a 4D space-time under the impetus of immense dark energy.

However, the onus is on the Christian – especially the fundie, to account for why his deity had to depart from putative perfection to enable a world of manifest evil AND IMPERFECTION. Was he or It following orders from an evil counterpart?

But instead of addressing the core issue, this following sort of refuse is emitted:


“What Satan DOESN'T tell you , though , is that the world WAS PERFECT !! That is , until he tempted Adam and Eve to sin - and ever since then , sin and evil have been in the world - though , it will NOT always be that way”

And so we see that rather argue rigorously from reason, the evangel cultist has no option other than to reaffirm and invoke his fairy story again, of the “garden of Eden”. (Along with his favorite fictious bogeyman "Satan'.....wooohooooo...!) A & E is a corny story that used to be taught to kindergarten Catholic Catechism kids in the 50s and 60s but eventually dumped because the kids started getting too smart and asked tough questions:

“Teacher, how come snakes can talk? I don’t see no snakes talkin’ anywhere, even at the Zoo!”

In other words, the “Adam and Eve” story is a cop out for morons and very under-developed children. There was never any “Adam and Eve” just as there was never any “Garden of Eden”. The planet was always brutish and nasty from the time of its formation from the solar nebula – starting with a poisonous, reducing atmosphere of methane that was only changed over eons into one of oxygen and nitrogen.

And then near the end we see the prime copout of projecting the origin of evil onto those who question them, because they’re incapable of explaining it themselves:

“Much of the evil BEGINS with Satan's atheists and other non-believers , as well as the various anti-Christ religious denominations ."

So, it’s all on us then! We’re responsible for the serial killers, the rapes, the 9-11s, the assassinations, all the wars (never mind most of the U.S. military commanders now in Iraq & Afghanistan side with Jaysus and believe their god is “more powerful than Allah”), and I suppose even the recent eruption of the Icelandic volcano which discommoded 9.5 million air passengers. So – according to this lame brain pastor, what? I guess we owe all those passengers an apology?

But impervious to reason as usual, he goes on in his own inimitable way.

“So , the next time an atheist and their ilk want to point the finger at God for the evil in the world , just tell 'em to look in the mirror , and they'll see the finger pointing right where it should be - BACK AT THEM !!”


Actually, again, he’s too clueless to get things straight in his mind. We don’t point the finger at God” for evil in the world, because we don’t accept there is a GOD! We say that BECAUSE THERE IS NO GOD, THERE IS NO NEED TO ACCOUNT FOR WHY EVIL EXISTS!

It exists because no one’s controlling the global theater. People get away with whatever they do because NO ONE IS MINDING THE STORE! There is no “Papa God’ to STOP, FAR LESS correct the evil doers, or to prevent volcanoes from blowing molten glass into the sky to prevent air travel, or to prevent an earthquake that killed over 200,000 in Haiti. Everyone's in a giant pinball game, like it or not.

There's nothing there because we inhabit a purposeless, godless, random event universe. So we certainly can’t blame God! That’s like me blaming today’s snow storm in Colo. on the “sky duppies” who live in the clouds. It’s stupid and unproductive. Save it for the peanut gallery.

At least Bernard Haisch, though his God Theory is exotic and far from closed, has the sense and intelligence not to blame others for either natural or man-made evil in the world. He holds his own deity responsible but in a creative way, basically because an evolving manifestation of that deity prevents it from achieving the perfective state in how the world unfolds. It must unfold according to the laws and natural principles invested in its evolving creation, and since the manifest God is part of the imperfect unfolding, it can’t act to prevent human foibles, crimes, wars, troubles, or natural volcanoes, or mammoth quakes.

A beautiful, simple and elegant solution – though admittedly far from complete- though at least he’s an adult enough not to need to fall back on childhood stories of Eden.

But at least superior to a certain clueless pastor’s!

But what else do you expect from a clown who actually believes the “face of Satan” appeared in the cloud of detritus from the Twin Towers. (See the book, “Faces in the Clouds” for how humans project imagery because of a basic brain wiring defect in the frontal cortex)