Re: I am affronted by the presence of god
Abdullah, you're right on one count. We shouldn't blame god. This is primarily because god doesn't exist, at least not on the terms that organized religion (of any denomination) would claim.
It's perfectly natural to feel joy when someone is born, and to feel sadness or even anger when they die. Sure. But I think that sadness or anger gets multiplied when the way in which they die is needlessly long, painful or cruel. I, for instance, can take solace in the fact that, while my brother died needlessly and while still young, he died very, very quickly. Doctors say he might not have even felt his body hit the floor; one minute he was making a sandwich for his work lunch, the next he was laid out on the kitchen floor. I know he didn't suffer. I know he didn't linger and languish. He had no time to process his own death, so the cruelty I speak of applies to those he left behind, not to the boy himself. But in GCW's case, and in several others of course, it's clear that death is taking its sweet time. And there is no justification in the world, absolutely none, that makes this okay.
God has a plan? Bullshit. Tell me what this plan is.
God has reasons for making people suffer. Bullshit. If you want me to believe that, you need to first tell me the reasons and then hopefully convince me they're valid.
Suffering toughens us. Bullshit. Yes, adversity can be enlightening in the big picture, but what exactly is GCW, or the rest of his family, learning from watching his grandmother die slowly? Because I gotta tell ya, most of what I see from the outside looking in is mounting frustration and nihilism, neither of which is good for the whole religion thing.
Seriously, the main takeaway I've gotten from this thread is simple.
Some deaths are quick, or expected and can be reckoned with. Others are just full of misery for absolutely no good reason. Some people will, even in the face of that obvious misery, try to defend religion, proving, to me at least, that their innate empathy has been rather badly warped by their belief in a supernatural being.
To my way of seeing it, this just no-doubt-about-it sucks, and there's not a lot that most of us can do, either when we see someone suffering as GCW is doing, or when it happens to us, as it inevitably must one day. That's why I suggested trying to improve life for the dying person however and wherever you can, even if it's at your own inconvenience. You will have decades, probably, to not feel demands upon your time; you can spare a little of that time now to help the dying. But in the meantime, there's no sense pretending that it's all for a reason, that there's some grand plan. It isn't, and there isn't. Life just hurts us sometimes. The sooner you can end your search right there, the better you will be at coping with the messy aftermath of tragedy.
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