God, the absentee landlord

I left the following note in response to an entry posted by Ryan Wednesday

I think your cop out answer is in itself a cop out. According to the scripture, God is supposed to be all knowing, all powerful and all good. That’s the problem right there, if there is such thing as an almighty being that is both all powerful and all good, then why does evil exist? It’s a catch 22 that is impossible to answer without contradicting scripture.

If God is all powerful and doesn’t stop evil, we can’t consider him to be all good. That basically means He’s letting the house fall apart like and is no better than an absentee landlord. Or God is all good but can’t stop evil, which would mean he isn’t all powerful. An all good God with the power to stop evil wouldn’t hesitate to do so… you can’t argue against that. So which is He, all good or all powerful? You can’t have both in a world where evil exists…

Later, [Peter_24601]

This note stems from a stance I like to take whenever I talk religion with people and debate the existence of an almighty being. This is what I call the ‘absentee landlord’ theory. It works more often than I’d like to admit. It’s a hard one to topple. When you read the scriptures, and it doesn’t matter which one of the zillions out there you read, there are examples of God (whomever that might be) stepping out of their place and doing something to right a wrong. People believe in the existence of a higher being, but if these beings exist they haven’t stuck their heads out and have been hermits for thousands of years, if not longer.

The best example would be Zeus. The God of Gods. The kind of guy who would shot a ligtning bolt at your ass if you stepped out of line anytime anywhere. He was also the Bill Clinton of supreme beings, using his power to get a bit on the side whenever possible, and in my forms of species. Not don’t get me wrong, Zeus is one cool dude. I loved reading his stories when I was attending religious studies courses, but know that he doesn’t exist. Zeus was the kind of being who cared too much to sit on his hands and do nothing. I tell people that if Zeus existed, a lot of pedophile preists would have been struck by lightning and smitten off this planet. He wouldn’t tolerate something like that, and would care too much for the children to sit back and let people get away with it. The Gods in the Greek tales are cool, but they don’t exist which accurately explains why they haven’t been hands on these days.

But Zeus isn’t not the only entity that wears the ‘absentee landlord’ label. The Christian God is just as guilty and I have a wonderful example I use often that works. When the hebrews suffered from slavery, God sent Moses and helped him perform miracles to save them. Now that’s a cool God… someone who sees injustice and does something about it. Zeus would be proud. When talking religion, I point out to the slavery of the Africans by the Europeans and Americans, which compared to the slavery of the hebrew was a lot worse and on a grander scale. God was willing to part the seas for the hebrews to save them, but refused to lift a finger to aid the Afrians slaves who were in just as much if not more peril. Rather than accuse an almight being of being spiteful and negilgent, I prefer to work on the assumption that the tale of the freed hebrews is just that… a tale. A tall one at that.

The same goes for the quote I made above… evil cannot exist in a world that has a God that is both all good and all powerful. It’s a case of those trying to worship being greedy. You can have one or the other, but you can’t have both. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but that’s how I feel regarding the alledged existence of an almighty father figure in the sky. How can someone worship the existence of a being that is quoted to have been hands on in the distant past, but is anything but in at least the last thousand years? And still many people still pay the rent, hoping one day the landlord will come back and repair that window that never opens or rescrew in that door handle that squeeks. I guess a good quote to use at this time would be from a classic Janet Jackson song: What have you done for me lately?

The answer: not much.

Peter

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