HANDBOOK OF CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS GIVES SOME SUGGESTED ANSWERS FOR GOD LETTING EVIL HAPPEN TO THE INNOCENT

The sixth chapter of the Handbook of Christian Apologetics looks at the problem of evil where God supposedly lets bad things happen even to good people and to bad people that don't deserve the appalling horrors that befall them.   The answer is roughly that we do deserve those things but that is not the point it says.   There are supposed reasons why suffering is not the worst thing that can happen.

Page 142 says that our abuse of our free will is to blame for spiritual evil like sin and that God allows it to preserve free will and that spiritual evil is to blame for physical evil and the end of physical evil is to train us and discipline us.

Page 143 suggests the possibility that if Adam had hurt himself before the fall he would have hurt physically but not mentally for pain is ninety per cent in the mind anyway which gives them the notion that the saintly soul does not feel as much pain when hurt as does the selfish and greedy and lustful soul. Presumably this means that Adam would know damage had been done but would not be told by pain for pain only came in after he disobeyed God. It might have been something like a message appearing in his head like a message in a computer telling it that a virus has got in. This is the callousness of much theism again. Those who cry out in agony are to blame for their agony. That is what they are saying.

When we could train ourselves by doing difficult good works it follows that any trials that come are just what we deserve because they wouldn’t be as necessary had we disciplined ourselves.
 
Page 142 says that evils that are not caused by free will, physical evils, such as viruses and sickness bugs and diseases and so on, are allowed by God to exist for they provide training for us and is also a just punishment for sin and a deterrence from sin.
 
So a baby then that suffers and dies of meningitis is a tool used by God to train those who love her and care for her for the disease cannot do the baby any good. The answer might be that the training is worth the suffering of the baby and its death. Is it really better for a baby to suffer and die so that some people may be more virtuous? Any parent in that situation would be inhuman for accepting this. Nobody has the right to say that a child should suffer and die on religious grounds. That is putting faith before people whereas religion assuming it should exist should be formulated with a firm eye on human welfare. The doctrine of page 142 is so vile that people believing it is a sufficient argument against the existence of God.
 
It is curious that the book doesn’t mention the Christian idea that even our sins and their bad results are used by God to create a better good (he creates the act of sinning as well for he creates all things so sinners use the free will to sin because of God not in spite of him). Maybe the book sees that if he is doing this then when God is working so hard and the best will still happen leaving it impossible to see anything wrong with sinning. You could beat up a baby intending God to bring good out of it.
 
If suffering is so necessary as the book says, then clearly if we get rid of AIDS God will have to replace it with another disease or perhaps a worse one so why bother trying to get rid of AIDS?  The real disease is spiritual disease.  They might answer we should fight AIDS anyway for the training. This doctrine takes the virtue of fighting evil away from us. How could it be a virtue to fight disease when it is only going to cause God to send and devise new diseases. It implies that getting rid of AIDS is not what is praiseworthy but trying when we know our trying is of no importance and isn't going to make a real difference. This tells us not to have goals. It suggests our motive should be, “We are getting rid of this disease for it is training for us as good people not because we want to rid the world of disease. Thank goodness there is such a thing as people suffering so that we can do good for them”. If we don't have goals and don't think much of our efforts we will see little point in trying. To fight means you oppose the evil and regardless of training or any good in it you want rid of the evil EVEN IF THAT MEANS AVERTING THE GOOD RESULTS OF THE EVIL. In other words, to oppose suffering is to oppose God.
 
Christianity is an evil religion and like all public evil, it has to be cloaked in respectability. The God belief is at the root of this evil. Without the idea that God turns our evil into good, the world would be a lot less amenable to the God idea. Curiously, the God idea implies that this optimism is sinful. It is assuming we know
 
The religious optimism is dangerous. An optimistic paedophile struggling with an attraction towards a child may be able to resist it because he sees that it could damage the child psychologically for life. His optimism does good and does not mean he feels that everybody else will experience the best out of life. His optimism makes him believe that life will be good for him and not necessarily anybody else. But if he believes in a supernatural God who make the unexpected happen easily concern for the child will not deter him for he believes that it is up to God to do something about the damage. If the damage happens it is God's fault or responsibility. Or it is the child's for not letting God heal. The believers cannot accuse him of the sin of bringing bad consequences on the child but they can only accuse him of leaving a mess for God to fix. You see how inhuman belief in God is.
 
The paedophile can commit the sin of molestation and repent and be right with God again. Jesus sternly warned that those who do not forgive will not be forgiven. So it follows that the victim is the one that is most likely to go to Hell and be damned forever for he or she is always unable to forgive though some may manage it eventually. Jesus didn't care if the struggle to forgive and the guilt about failing to ended up being worse than simply not forgiving. He didn't care if the cure was worse than the problem. It is possible to hate in a way that does your life good. He said one must gouge out one's eye rather than look lustfully at anyone. The Church says he meant that though we must not literally gouge out our roving eye we certainly must go to tremendous effort to prevent ourselves sinning with it. It follows then that the same goes for people who may be sources of temptation. They must dress so dowdily that they would be walking passion killers. An insinuation of Jesus' reasoning is that children are partly to blame for being molested for they don't make themselves ugly and wear bulky hideous clothes. You might say beauty is a gift from God and not to be hidden. Then you contradict yourself if you are a Christian by saying a woman with perfectly beautiful breasts should keep them covered if she can't find a husband.

To digress a bit, the book promises that any sceptic who prays for God to show him or her the truth will have the prayer answered. So if Christianity is true God will reveal it to the person provided the prayer was humble and was not unfairly asking God to do a miracle instead of letting him work on you his own way (page 387). I think the logic is perfect. If there is a God and if Christianity is true then this will happen. But millions have prayed this way and still found both to be untrue. Or they have went into a heretical Church like the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Roman Catholics. It is like an experiment that proves that the religion is a pack of lies and errors. If the sceptic will get an answer by praying then so will the sceptic who does not pray for there will be somebody praying for him and Christians pray for the enlightenment of the whole world. Then the sceptic is being accused of knowing what the truth is and turning away from it. This is slander. But at least it tells you that you know if you do not believe in God or religion and know you are sincere then you know there is no God.