Re: I am affronted by the presence of god
I'm okay with the idea of a god, or godlike being, maybe not stopping a serial killer, or a rapist, or some other horrible act of human fuckery. Free will is important, and that means that some small few of us, as individuals and as small sub-groups, are going to do tremendously awful things to other people. I don't like that, but I know it's part of the human experience.
Where I've always run into a hard stop is with things like cancer, Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and half a hundred other nasty things our bodies can go through. If there really is a god worth believing in, as far as I'm concerned, this god is either all-powerful and cruel, or not all-powerful and as helpless to end unnecessary suffering as we are. Given that most of the main Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) try extremely hard to convince us that their god really, truly is all-powerful, then the accompanying caveat is inescapable. And so for me, it's as simple as this. You're asking me to waste time accepting the existence of a being you can't even prove to exist, and to sweeten the bargain, this creature is both so mysterious as to elude being found out, and so cruel as to ruin entire families due to things like sudden death or illness.
My brother died suddenly and with absolutely no warning at the age of 19. Someone made the mistake of telling me that he was in God's hands now. Without missing a beat, I shot back, "No. If he was alive, he was maybe in God's hands then. But God couldn't be bothered juggling this particular human life, so...oops. So sorry. But hey, at least the other son is alive. He's blind and isn't going anywhere in life, but hey, one out of two ain't bad." Seriously, if you ever talk to me or get to know me, and you ever directly or indirectly imply that my brother's death was a means of testing me, strengthening me or in some other way performing good, I will very likely cut ties with you completely and not look back...and I don't do that easily. Of course, I don't expect any of you to do this. My point here is to say that God often gets invoked by generally well-intentioned people with a religion-sized blind spot in their empathy field. And as an agnostic leaning far toward atheism, I am thoroughly tired of it.
Some religious folks have deep wells of empathy, and are wonderful human beings. We've got many of them right here on the forum (I won't name names specifically). But yeah, as far as I'm concerned, any deity's unwillingness to end these terminal diseases and thus diminish the suffering we experience is not a god worth any shred of belief or love.
GCW, what you're going through cannot be easy. And what your grandmother's going through can't be easy on her, either. I feel powerless. I wish there was something I could do. My only suggestion to you is something you may already be doing. If there are things she likes, things that bring her joy, do your best to bring her those things. If you play guitar and she likes that, play for her a little more than you once did. If she wants to sit and ramble a bit and feels comforted with you being there, then be there. When her time comes, she'll be gone, and you can go back to whatever else you were doing.
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