Repeating Myself At Increasingly Needless Length

EDIT: OK, so I was pleased with my rambling musings on the below topic from a message board post I made someplace else, and I thought I would post it here - why not? And then so I did, but then something made me check the archives and sure enough! I said the same thing in about 5 sentences, far more effectively, months ago. In a far more snide manner at that.

So I'm repeating myself. TOO BAD. Read it and sleep!

3. "Why does God let bad things happen." Ah, yes. The old saw. People who find this an objection to belief in God have never honestly tried on the other side's argument. I'll stick with the stereotypical Christian God, who seems to be the main one being addressed in these plaints. If someone really believes in God, then what follows? Heaven. An eternity of perfect bliss and contentment, better than anything you could ever imagine, and it goes on forever. Well OK. If anyone really believed that they were getting THAT next, how could the pitiful sufferings of this world possibly matter?

Alright. Gotta get back to the jihad.

No, but seriously - of COURSE I realize that the idea of taking heaven seriously is not going to sway a good Atheist. Nor should it. And of course I recognize the point of those who say that Christianity's traditional deferral of perfect bliss until the afterlife has been used right down the ages to reconcile people to their benighted lot here on earth. To say nothing of the lure of paradise to would-be modern martyrs. But none of that even touches the main objection, that God would have to be mean to allow pain or death!

To someone who DOES believe, it's not difficult to see what our hypothetical God's perspective on all this might be. To someone who really believes that there is an infinite and perfect happiness after this brief blip of mortality, to someone who believes that free will implies a certain hands-off attitude on God's part where people are allowed to choose and things are allowed to happen, to someone who accepts that pain on earth is a necessary damage-avoidance mechanism that in general prolongs life, to someone who believes that death is ultimately inevitable because this world is not our final home...

The point is, anybody whose mind is large enough to really wrap around the concept - even if only for the sake of argument - should be willing to admit that the objection doesn't make a lot of sense once you really accept the premise. It's a lot of boo-hoo'ing from people whose hearts are too much in this world.*

From the standpoint of the Christian mystic, at least! I'm playing a bit of devil's advocate here. I personally see no reason why the world couldn't have popped into place by itself.

(tee hee!)

*My heart is too much in this world. I admit it.