Events of the day

Today was our day for the January Food and Fellowship gathering. By our, I mean the Humanist Association of Tulsa. We had 17 people there today. We met at Billy Sims Barbecue in the Farm Shopping Center. The restaurant is small; so our meeting there was a real benefit to the business.

We picked up Barbara, one of our members who is 84 years old, and gave her a ride to the gathering. Her daughter and son-in-law recently moved here from California and are living with her while trying to find work. Her other daughter and son-in-law suffered a misfortune when the young man had a stroke. He is still in the hospital as I write this.

The quote by Epicuris I posted a few days ago pretty well summed up the problem of the coexistence of God and evil -- a problem in philosophy that goes by the name of theodicy. My wife resolves this problem by saying that while God would like to ease the suffering of humans, he is not able to change things for the better. That is, God is not really omnipotent. He looks down on the suffering (think of Haiti) and would truly like to do something to ease the pain but is lacking in the ability to achieve that end.

From my point of view (naturalism), the world works exactly as if there is no god. A lot of unfortunate things happen to people, and there is no god around to intervene, to set things right, to ease the suffering. It has always been that way, and wishful thinking is only that -- wishful thinking. I remain open to contrary evidence, should any present itself. But so far, none has.