BENEVOLENCE OF "GOD" QUESTIONED ?
"For centuries and with immense glee,philosophers have been pointing out that the attributes we paste on Him entangle God in contradictions.He is compassionate,we say. How then,McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie wonders,does He create a torture chamber in which people are boiled in oil,held to the fire,dismembered and skinned forever ?[*].Not only does He devise an
"For centuries and with immense glee,philosophers have been pointing out that the attributes we paste on Him entangle God in contradictions.He is compassionate,we say. How then,McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie wonders,does He create a torture chamber in which people are boiled in oil,held to the fire,dismembered and skinned forever ?[*].Not only does He devise an
d fabricate such an eternal torture chamber,He has people do such deeds that he can keep it well stocked. Compassionate?Is He per chance deficient in what we are taught is a divine virtue-forgiveness?Or is that the problem lies in His very strength?Is it that as the car-stickers say,'power corrupts.Absolute power corrupts absolutely. God has absolute power'."
[Arun Shourie,Does He know a mother's heart?How suffering refutes religions? Page 360].
[*]Alexander McCall Smith,the comfort of Saturdays,page 70 reads-"She had never been able to understand how anybody could reconcile the existence of Hell with that of a merciful creator; he simply would not have embarked on us in the first place to send us to some Hieronymous Bosch-like torture chamber or its more modern equivalent (a place of constant piped music, perhaps). Hell might be an airport, she thought lit with neon and insincere smiles. No, she told herself; she was prepared to accept the possible existence of a creator, in the same way she was prepared to accept curved space, but he or she would not invent Hell, whatever twists and turns on the subject of free will and choice were resorted to by the concepts apologists. (page 70)"
[Arun Shourie,Does He know a mother's heart?How suffering refutes religions? Page 360].
[*]Alexander McCall Smith,the comfort of Saturdays,page 70 reads-"She had never been able to understand how anybody could reconcile the existence of Hell with that of a merciful creator; he simply would not have embarked on us in the first place to send us to some Hieronymous Bosch-like torture chamber or its more modern equivalent (a place of constant piped music, perhaps). Hell might be an airport, she thought lit with neon and insincere smiles. No, she told herself; she was prepared to accept the possible existence of a creator, in the same way she was prepared to accept curved space, but he or she would not invent Hell, whatever twists and turns on the subject of free will and choice were resorted to by the concepts apologists. (page 70)"
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