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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]to 12:20

I don't see any evidence that "he" "loves" us.  good things happen to some of us, some of the time, but really awful things happen to some people, whether or not they are devout followers of a religion.

A god isn't needed to explain what happens to humans.[/quote]

Sorry, I did not see your post. It is true that for centuries people have been asking, "Why, God, why?" when disaster strikes and also saying that if there really were a perfectly good, all-knowing, all-powerful God, then there would be no evil and suffering in the world. For believers, this life is both sacred and transitory to the next life, in which pleasure exists independent of suffering, and we will be recompensed for what was taken from us in this life.

The common picture we have in our minds is of the skeptic non-believer calmly presenting a logical, intellectual, and scientific argument while the religiously-inclined defendant becomes emotionally charged and tries to beat around the bush. However, the strength of this argument does not, in any way, have to do with logic or rationale but rather is emotionally charged to the core . Nor is it a new question. In fact, we find the angels asking something similar even before man was created: “When your Lord told the angels, ‘I am putting a deputy on earth,’ they said, ‘How can you put someone there who will cause damage and bloodshed, when we celebrate Your praise and proclaim Your holiness?’ but he said, ‘I know what you know not.’” Qur’an 2:30 In other words, God was asked, “Why would you allow this human, who will do bad things, to exist? Why not create someone who won’t do anything bad, like us?” The answer was, “I understand the wisdom in what I am doing, and you don’t.”

That, in a nutshell, is the answer to the so-called problem. There is no logical contradiction between God being Infinitely Good, Infinitely Powerful, and allowing bad things to happen.The rhetorical questions now change to inquisitive questions. Rather than blurting out, “How could God do that?! What kind of God does these things?!” the question now is “Why is the world this way and what wisdom lies in that?”

The first thing is, we have to go back to the premise and purpose of our existence:

1-This Life is a test :

Life is a test. Man has been given a limited free will to do good or bad. Look at the following statement of the Prophet: “The life of a believer is truly amazing. Everything that happens to him is good. If something pleasant happens to him, he is thankful and that is good for him. If something bad afflicts him, he is patient and that is also good for him.” Affliction is part of the test of life. If God were to interfere and prevent every bad thing from happening to each individual, it would be like taking the test away from a student. Saying that the bad that exists in the world is necessary does not mean that it is justified or praiseworthy. Believers are always commanded to enjoin the good and forbid the evil, which is another test in itself.

If you see a child about to be crushed by a car and you are in a position to stop this, then your test from Allah is that you stop it. If you choose not to then a sin will be on you, and the child will live in the eternal bliss of paradise. If you deny the existence of Allah then what you are saying is that people can get away with crimes that they commit if the fallible law system does not find them, and that innocent victims have lost their lives for no reason- in fact the innocent victim will find his reward with Allah. Another question we get is, why would God kill children, give them cancer, etc ect.. Do we know what that child would’ve become had he lived? Maybe he would’ve grown up to be a serial killer and by letting him die as a child God saved many innocent people. By assuming that every seemingly tragic event is not “humanly decent”, we blame God for not changing it. The supposition is that we know the outcome of every event and their interrelationships and that the “humanly decent” thing to is what? Save the child and let him become the serial killer.

2-Wisdom is behind the scenes:

Being able to see the big picture often affects how we perceive what is good and bad. Someone with little foresight may claim that the injection of a vaccine into a patient, which contains traces of disease, is a bad thing while the injection of heroin, which leads to euphoria, is a good thing. Not being able to understand that the vaccine will help develop immunity to that disease or that taking heroin will develop into a drug addiction is due to a lack of medical knowledge and experience.

God said:

“Do people think they will be left alone after saying, ‘We believe’ without being put to the test? We tested those who went before them: God will certainly mark out which ones are truthful and which are lying.” (Qur’an 29:2-3)

Another thing that we should note   in a discussion of making sense of evil is that the intellect only comprehends matters in a confined set of parameters. What Surah Kahf teaches us is that God created the Universe in wisdom which may not be manifest to intellect nor understandable through system manifest law and order.

‘In other words, why doesn’t God have the simple human decency to do good deeds well within His reach?’ The simple answer to your question is He could if He wanted to. He could make it so that nothing bad ever happened, but even then, would non-beleivers believe?

The appreciation of ease and comfort could only exist and be appreciated if the feelings of hardship also existed and were known or experienced. In Chinese Philosophy, the concept of yin and yang is employed to explain this phenomenon. Each part is necessary to understand the unity of the whole. They are in equilibrium: if one disappears, the other must disappear as well, leaving emptiness.[/quote]

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