The Problem of Evil and the Texas Church Shooting

Why would an all powerful, and loving, being who can, according to Christian accounts, miraculously save someone from being killed if he wants to, allow babies to be murdered in a place of where his followers worship? (Texas church shooting)

Common Christian responses include, and God has called them home to his kingdom in heaven, that god has a plan for each and every one of us. God has foreseen everything that will unfold according to his plan weather we understand it or not. We can’t by our actions fuck up God’s perfect plan.

It makes no sense to punish someone, the gunman, for carrying out God’s perfect plan for each of us, including those innocent babies.

Most Christians simultaneously believe God gave us “free will,” and god has a perfect plan for each of us, in spite of the obvious contradiction.

Either God is powerless at stopping the gunman (because of free will) or he planned for the gunman to do this. He foresaw all outcomes and his perfect plan which led to the killing of innocent babies is a moral one.

The most common Christian response is we can’t possibly understand God’s plan or his morality.

If you admit to not possibly being able to understand the motives of this super being, you cannot know that he is all loving, and you have no way of justifying your belief that following this god is the moral choice if you can’t even show you understand God’s morality.

There has never been a satisfying answer to the problem of reconciling an all loving god with a plan for each of us allowing atrocities on innocent people, partly because we all know that even if a gunman tells us he is killing for god, every humans first response is to try to stop him. A god worth believing in and following would too. Just claiming we can’t understand it is shows your willingness to follow blindly in spite of your own moral compass and do so without the justification of understanding why.

Don’t be a gullible believer who makes circular arguments and has to practice major cognitive dissidence to keep believing falsehoods.