thoughts on pentecost

Religious folks who believe in a loving, omnipotent and omnipresent God have been bothered for centuries by the existence of pain and suffering. This 'problem of evil' has even been turned into the main atheist argument. So I think it is worthwhile to take a closer look.



First, notice that any good physicist would make the argument that 'pain and suffering' only seem to exist - they are not part of the true reality as described by our best theories. Newtonian physics already eliminated all emotions from reality and they never did reappear in our current 'theories of everything'.


Of course, sound theology cannot rest on such arguments, so we need to take a closer look at 'pain and suffering' as they appear in our conscious experience.

I think you would agree that in your world, i.e. in your conscious experience right now, you do not suffer from too much pain - otherwise you would not be able to read this very sentence.

Perhaps some slight discomfort sitting on your chair (already for too long) and perhaps some unpleasantness from reading this blog (as usual); But it cannot be too bad, otherwise you would not continue to read this argument. All the 'pain and suffering' in the world exists right now in your memory only and perhaps in your expectations of what might happen in the future.



But Augustinus noticed already that the past no longer exists, the futures does not exist yet and the present is only of infinitesimal duration.



In other words, God created time so that we can handle all the evil.

The eternal, omnipresent God is certainly aware of all the pain and suffering, but such is the love of God that the sad truth of our sins is revealed to us only in infinitesimal portions - anticipated by our own thinking and experienced only in our memories.








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