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Dear God,
I'm so glad you wrote. People have been trying to contact you in search of answers for millenia without success, so I would be delighted if you would answer some questions for me. What a stroke of luck for us.
I suppose to be fair though, I should answer your questions first before I ask mine.
Where did you come from? Good question. You got me on that one. I think there are only two possibilities for answers, though. Either you came from nothing, or you always existed. You are probably in a better position than me to guess at which one it is.
***If you say that everything needs a designer and then say that not everything (Me) needs a designer, aren't you contradicting yourself?***
Some people may say that, and I would agree that those who do are contradicting themselves. But you have overlooked the possibility that you not only designed us, but you designed yourself as well. We are just now catching on to the workings of the process of evolution and we see that the design can be an iterative and recursive process. It can turn back on itself and modify and improve its own design. We have also just begun to learn to do that in our computer software. I'm sure that with the time you have had on your hands, you have figured out how to do that a long time ago.
***If you are saying that I don't need to ask where I came from because I am perfect and omniscient while humans are fallible, then you don't need the design argument at all, do you?***
Once again, you are right; those who use that argument don't need the design argument at all. But once again, again, I don't use that argument myself.
Which brings me to the main questions I would like to ask you. You didn't exactly state your position on the question of almightiness, perfection, and infinity. Since I am in a rare minority who believes that you are neither perfect, nor infinite, nor omnipotent, nor omnipresent, nor omnicient, I would like you to settle the question for me.
In case I am wrong, and you really are all those things, I would like you to answer some questions that puzzle me:
1. How come you have so much trouble communicating with people? From your post I can see that you have a good command of English, but yet what you have written has been so misunderstood that people have been torturing and killing each other for thousands of years simply because of their different interpretations. We have really been confused.
2. How come we humans have to provide hospitals, EMT teams, fire departments, and search and rescue teams in order to heal people and save lives? It would seem to me that if you were so almighty, you could do those jobs without so much help from us.
3. How come we have to have fundraisers and form charitable organizations in order to help people in need? It would seem that if you were perfect, you would have designed things so people wouldn't be so needy, and even in the current state of affairs it would seem that your omnipotence should allow you to help them without our involvement.
4. How come you can't carry out justice in our world? Many bad people live happy lives and many good people suffer.
5. How come you couldn't design plants and animals right the first time? We have dug out a lot of fossils and discovered that the course of natural history is rife with false starts, dead ends and other evidence of poor design.
6. How come you can't do a better job of controlling natural forces like weather or volcanoes? I know, you gave us plenty of warning with Mt. St. Helens and those who got killed knew they were taking a risk, and you might have had your own reasons for Pompeii. But it seems you were awfully lax in allowing the All Saint's Day earthquake in Lisbon in 1755 to crumble the cathedral just at the time all those devout people were in there worshipping you.
7. How come you let evil run loose on earth at all? That sure seems like a mistake to me.
8. Is anything about you infinite? It sure seems unlikely since there is nothing in nature that we have observed that is infinite. I will admit that the past extent of the time you have existed might be infinite, as I admitted at the beginning of this post. But anything else seems unlikely to me.
I am really hesitant to get my hopes up very high that you will answer my questions. After all, millions of people, for thousands of years, who have implored you for such answers have been ignored. But, then again, I don't remember you showing up on the internet before either. I really do hope you will answer me.
Warm regards,
Paul, a human |
