Weekly Newsletter from Christian Vegetarian Association CVA - June 18, 2023
From Christian Vegetarian Association (CVA)

  1. The Problem of Evil, Part 4
  2. All-Creatures.Org Ministry

1. The Problem of Evil, Part 4

I have been exploring the question: If God is good and God is all-powerful, why is there evil in the world? I have found #3, #4, and #5 from the list below problematic. Today, I will consider #6.

  1. God is not good.
  2. God is not all-powerful.
  3. There is no evil. In other words, while perhaps imperfect, this is the best of all possible worlds.
  4. Without the option to choose between good and evil, humans could never exercise free will. Free will is important for, among other things, discerning who deserves heavenly reward and who deserves punishment in hell.
  5. There is no contradiction, because God’s truth is different from human truth.
  6. There is no God, and therefore there is no theodicy problem.

When considering possibility #6, I think we need to consider what we mean by “God.” Many people, including people of faith, reject the notion of a male sky-god. Some believe that God set the universe in motion and has not done anything subsequently. If this were the case, the question of whether God exists would seem quite irrelevant. God would be so remote that God would have little, if any, impact on our lives. There would be no theodicy question, because God would not be active in the universe.

Is there evidence for God’s activity in the universe? Many people relate miracles as evidence of God’s action in the world. However, remarkable claims require remarkable evidence. As best I can tell the evidence for miracles attributed to Jesus and saints is not very compelling and is commensurate with the evidence for miracles performed by religious heroes of other faiths. Relatedly, people often argue that the remarkable qualities of the human body, such as the eye, cannot be explained by science and therefore represents evidence for divine intervention. Historically, many remarkable natural phenomena that religious people have claimed, prove the existence of God have been later explained by science. One thing that science seems unable to explain is our own existence. How did each of us become conscious, self-aware beings distinct from all the other beings in the world? The failure of science to offer anything resembling a satisfactory answer makes the proposal that God is somehow involved in the world a reasonable hypothesis. Having argued that God’s existence is reasonable, we will next consider options #1 and #2.

Stephen R. Kaufman, M.D. 

2. From All-Creatures.Org Ministry

We hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter. It includes how Why aren’t self-declared feminists vegan? — Cods’ skins for human skin grafts? — thrill killing of Wildlife in the U.S. — Allied Scholars for Animal Protection [animal defenders on your campus?] — Pigeon racing ‘abusements’ — lawsuit: plant vs. cow milk —another new institute expands human models for human diseases — sharing when Cows are my friends and I don’t eat them — Buddhism and Animal liberation — appreciating Swans and Cygnets — horseracing’s black market doping — and more...

All-Creatures.org Newsletter for June 14, 2023

Do you have things that you would like to see included? Then send it to us at veda@all-creatures.org. 

In the Love of the Lord,
Frank L Hoffman
All-Creatures.org

and

Kindness,
Tams Nicholson
Executive Directress
All-Creatures.org 

2023 Newsletters Archive