On the subject of wider religion, I decided to for a moment entertain the idea of a "god" existing. Ramble incoming so uh, prepare for that I suppose.
Let's take a moment to assume that there is, indeed, as most religious people say a "higher being".
Let's also take the assumption that this being is responsible for the creation of existence in some form.
How in the world would such a creature be:
- Interested in humanity. We're nothing but a single grain of sand in the grand scheme of the universe. Why in the world would such a creature even be aware of our existence and more importantly: why would they care. Such a being would have to operate on a much larger scale than just the whims of a bunch of monkeys on a tiny planet.
Let's twist this argument around - if such a being existed and was the creator of the universe, why would ANYTHING in the universe exist? It's all so small and (according to your assumption) insignificant in comparison, after all. The assumption here is that big = important. This is a logical fallacy. An emotional argument in a sense - the world is so big and vast and mysterious and intimidating therefore it "must" be more important, more valuable than humanity. But apply the same faulty logic to anything else and you suddenly have basketball players who are "more valuable" than short people and adults that really shouldn't care about the small, frail, ignorant kids. Because they're "less".
- Assuming such an all-powerful ominpotent creature would exist, and taking the general assumption of most religions that this creature would be beneficial to mankind, what would be the beneficial part of people starving in Africa, people waging wars in the name of their religion, and general human misery. If a higher being would beneficial to mankind. What would be the beneficial part of all that? We can take the reasonable conclusion that a creature capable of creating existence would have the power to end all human misery. Why doesn't it do that.
And here it is... How is this argument not dead after having been refuted repeatedly for centuries now, I swear.
Do you have the means to board a plane and fly some food to those starving African children? I assume you have or at least it wouldn't took too much effort to save a bit of cash for a ticket. Why don't you then? Are you a hypocrite? Are you using the tragedy of many people less fortunate than you to paint an emotionally charged picture to avoid actually refuting an argument?
Probably not, actually. Still, this is actually the crux of the argument.
This argument is an argument from laziness. "God is all-powerful and all-knowing and all-loving, why would we, humans, need to do anything, act properly, help each other, be responsible when He could just snap His fingers and make everything okay, reverse every f*ck-up of ours?" Well, why do parents allow their children to make mistakes and to meet with bad consequences of their actions? Why do they not control their every movement, every action, every relationship? What's that? Freedom? Good job, you've found your answer.
God is not gonna fix everything up with magic, because He doesn't WANT to take our free will away. That is what makes us capable of all the best things, even if at the cost of making us capable of all the worst things.
Besides we're already spoiled enough as it is. He's already delivered salvation for us, meaning even the worst possible result of our stupid actions here in the physical reality - death - is not a dealbreaker as far as eternal happiness goes. In the grand scheme of things, these starving people in Africa may be better off than the most privileged of us video-gaming Internet-using couch potatoes. Sure, we should try to make this world as close to Heaven as possible (aka try to return it to its original state, morality-wise), which includes (or rather almost entirely consists of) helping others, but it's wrong to consider all suffering evil, just like it's wrong to consider all pleasure sinful.
Side note, I'd like to ask you where you got that idea that people suffering and starving and killing each other and all that is "wrong" or "evil". I mean, if there is no Good - as in Goodness with a capital G, a supernatural "measuring stick" - then nothing can really be "more good" or "less good". We can only say a game is like Zelda because Zelda games exist. We can only say a city looks like New York, because there is a place called New York. If by saying "Zelda game" we all imagine our own arbitrary games, the conversation becomes nonsense. I'm not saying that atheists can't be morally outstanding people, wonderful people - but denying the supernatural moral standard renders it pointless. Might as well say that using words starting with a "p" is a virtuous thing to do or that eating bananas is a horribly evil thing to do.
As you can hopefully see, even if I take the assumptions (aka 2 times in assuming that a higher being might exist and that it's a creature worthy of the designation of god and 2 more in that it would be "beneficial" to mankind) and considering that, it would put any higher being firmly in the spot of "a massive dickwaffle".
But you're not actually making those assumptions, only saying you do. "Let's say there's a God", you say, "so why is the universe horrible, a statement I believe to be true because people die and that's the end of life, there's nothing after death, no Heaven possible". You ask "why, assuming that God is the creator of the universe, would He care about us, considering there is no god that we would have been made in the image of and therefore be immensely valuable?"
don't base the creation of the universe on assumptions. Science so far has managed to back up the origins of the universe to the event of the Big Bang which was started by the Big Foreplay, which is able to get backed up by facts and modern physics (the universe is gradually expanding from a central point, which is measurable, and other evidence that goes under "empirical" evidence).
Really? You think the Big Bang "explains" the origins of the universe? Tell me then, how could the Big Bang have happened, if things can't "happen" outside of time and time itself didn't exist before the Big Bang? How could all the mass that now is our universe have been concentrated in one tiny point, if there was no "space" in which a "point" could exist in?
The Big Bang is a scientific theory that holds some water, sure - but believing it explains the origin of the universe (space, time, life, free will, all that) is nothing short of a religious belief. It
describes the origin of the universe, that's what science does. It tells us "how", but never "why". Even if we eventually reach a point in time when we'll know everything about how the universe works, we "complete" all science - we'll still be nowhere near finding out "why" all that stuff works, what the purpose behind it was and what's the point. These are questions outside the field of science and the modern belief that science can actually answer those is a very illogical one.
