God and the problem of evil

Tom Sangala October 7, 2015

436 2 minutes read

The word evil is used here to mean the bad things that men do to each other or those which happen to people without their faults.

In 1912 Britain built the largest ship ever called The Titanic. No surprise because those days Britain was the biggest ship builder in the world. Before the ship made its first voyage towards the other side of the Atlantic prayers were said for the safety of the ship and the hundreds of its passengers. Half-way on the Atlantic the ship hit an iceberg, slowly began to sink. The SOS was sent. Only a few people were rescued. The majority were buried with the ship. If God exists indeed, some atheists and agnostics asked why he did not save the lives of these people.

A few months ago this year a big aeroplane piloted by an experienced man left an aerodrome in Malaysia only to disappear without trace.

In disasters such as these scientist minded people can trace to mechanical faults on the part of engines or faulty judgments on the part of the pilots.

What about the earthquake which devastated the oldest black republic in modern history Haiti. Thousands of people perished there including an archbishop of the Catholic Church. Last year end started in Malawi with a drought. In this land of God fearing people the clergy went to churches and mosques, prayed for rain. They got more than what they had asked for not just rain but also flash floods in half the districts, loss of lives unprecedented in recent years followed by a poor harvest. Once more Malawi has been reduced to a beggar nation.

These are the sort of evils that humankind suffers from time to time without more faults on its part.

In 1939 a failed student of architecture by the name of Adolf Hitler now Chancellor (Prime Minister) of Germany started a war by invading Poland, Britain and France in defence of their ally attached Germany opn 3rd September 1939. The war grew into the world’s greatest ever. In six years fifty million people perished including millions of Hitler’s own people. Hitler is said to have slaughtered six million of the nation or race that produced Moses, Jesus, Einstein, Karl Marx and numerous Nobel Prize winners in the sciences. Of course you know whom I am referring to. The people whose prophets had told them were God’s chosen race. But why had God created a man deluded by theories of herrenvolk or master race.

This disaster and many can be traced to moral depravity on the part of man. Despite of being a self-inflicted calamity some people use it as one reason why they do not believe in God’s existence or his goodness.

Of the two great European nations of the past the Greeks and the Romans it is the Romans who continue to produce men and women who fascinate some of us either by their writings or their utterances. In his book The Prince Nicolo Machiavelli wrote, “We Italians have to thank our priests that we are not religious.” That was long in the sixteenth century. In a matter of decades a famous Italian film maker and his actress fell in love. But the film maker already had a wife whom he had put away. Divorce was not allowed in Italy. The film maker and his girlfriend had to go France to get married there because they were in a danger of being arrested in Italy. Later the film maker was quoted by the press as saying “Italians do not believe in God but they are good Catholics.

Believers say we should all believe in the existence of God because of the wonderful things we see around us. We must worship their creator, see how nature works. Everything in the universe seems to have been devised by an intelligent creature for the benefit of human kind.

Nonsense, respond unbelievers with all these sufferings of mankind. If God exists he is neither omnipotent nor omniscient let alone well disposed towards mankind or else why does he let these evils happen to the human race.

Great men and women such as scientists Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein and leaders like Abraham Lincoln and Eleonor Roosevelt remained steadfast in their beliefs that there is God and He is good.