Ian Dominic C.

Sadia Position Paper

Why doesn’t God interfere?

Since the dawn of time, mankind have struggled and been wondering about every
single thing all around us. Questions have been asked and may have been answered
but until this day, people still search for answers. Even with the advancements of
technologies, there will always be arguments, debates, and bouts about some form of
questionable stand stated by on party to another in search for answers, meanings, and
explanations. Teachings have passed and after everything there is always thing we are
all looking for yet seemed to never have been found and to this day we are still looking
for this and searching for this. Investigating, doing whatever it takes to get answers.
Who is the significant being who created this world? Shall we call Him God? Does God
really exist? There is never really any solid, great, justifiable answer to these questions
but assuming that there is a God is He really omnipresent? Is He really
omnibenevolent? Is He really omniscient? Is He really omnipresent? Is He all of those
mixed up? Or if one of those disappeared, would He still be who He is? With all that
being said, there was this one question based off of an article by a professor and a chair
of philosophy at Wayne State University, Why doesn’t God interfere?

It was an argument that points out that if God indeed exists then there would be no
suffering but as we see around us there is indeed suffering, destruction, hatred, war,
violence, crimes, and all that illegal stuff which means and that it shows that there is no
existence of God. God being stated as omnipotent meaning He has the potential or the
ability to do whatever He may intend to do but He is also stated as omnibenevolent
which entails Him being all-loving so the question still remains that why is there evil
around us? Is it because of Him being and all-knowing God to do this for He would
know what is right and what is wrong? Questions like these fuel arguments and stands
as to the existence of God if He indeed does exist. With the all-knowing and all-powerful
God, if He does exist, illegal doings would not exist for He may be able to stop them
without any hesitation and with ease. If He exists, why doesn’t He act to remove evil
and pain from the face of the universe? These are question that are very unsettling
because answers may not be what we want them to be. The truth of the matter forces
us to reconsider our ideas about God and His existence.

Crimes may span from simple littering or public urination to as something as horrible as
murder and rape but crime is crime which means evil is in fact evil no matter what form
it is being shown or given. Assuming that a God exists and He did create us, there is
this factor of free will or freedom of choice. God, if He does exist, granted this freedom
and over the millennia we have proven ourselves to be woefully inept stewards of this
precious and ever great gift and its responsibility. We will always have the freedom to
choose right but that doesn’t mean God should not interfere with everything we do. We
may have the freedom but we are never free. So again, is there really a God? If so, then
why is there pain, suffering, hatred, war, destruction, horror, broken hearts, and bad
grades? Why doesn’t God interfere with all the evil around us?

God’s existence has long been being researched and studied upon yet nobody has
really seen, heard, touched, smelled, and tasted God. He is said to be omnipresent yet
how come there is no evidence of having such encounter with God? People have
searched high only for proof yet have only came up with simple principles to argue with.
Is it safe to say that if you can not see, hear, touch, taste, or smell God that he doesn’t
exist already? There is that very tough question.

“Sometimes not seeing something is a reason to believe it isn’t there” This argument
was stated by Steve Wykstra who then followed with another statement “It is a matter of
seeability”. Based on this we can say that God does not exist for we can not see God
but also based from this we can say that just because we can not see something does
not mean it does not exist. For example, just because we can not see our brains does
not mean we do not have one. It would just require a certain instrument to see it but as
for God, there is no single instrument in the world that can prove, or can give proof to,
His existence.

If there is ever a reason to think that one would not see something even if it was there
then failing to see it is no reason to believe it is not there but it is not simply just having
a reason think one would not see something even if it was there that eliminates the
reason-giving force of one’s failure to see the object. It’s kind of like just because I didn’t
see something over there does not meaning it can not be there. We can not simply
speak something into existence like when a person lies and lies and lies a lot it
becomes real until the person becomes the lie itself and the other people around would
also become a lie to the person. It is kind of like when you are sad, mad, angry,
depressed, or even really furious then you start to force yourself into a smile. The brain
will read the smile as to be that of a positive situation and you start to become less mad,
less furious, less depressed, less angry, and start to become happy and happier until it
all balances out.

One justification does not entail another. For this the question is asked “Is there a good
whose realization by God would justify him in allowing sufferings?” There is either one
justifying good or there is not. Let’s say that there is no justification that one should do
something that would break the physical attributes of a person just for the gains. For
example, a basketball player gets injured and broke his leg at a season opener which is
a potential career ender, would there be a good to justify whether or not a doctor should
cut open his leg to repair the leg causing it to potentially not heal properly and or it
would. There is no telling of which. There is no saying that there will be a greater
purpose for this or not because the future does not exist for it may just be happening or
it may not.
Suppose that one grants that there is absolutely no reason to believe that God exists.
Assume that leaving the problem of evil, there is no reason to think He DOES exist. It is
better off to have identifies that there is no such good of why we fail to see one than the
justification that there is such a good in which is hidden to us.

It is a good reason to believe that one’s failure to see something explains why
something doesn’t exist but not in all circumstances. Having argues that we are in a
position to judge that there is a suffering if and only if there is enough reason to believe
God exists, one may now criticize an argument meant to show that we are in no position
to judge that there is no good that would justify God in allowing such suffering for He is
all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving, and so in no position to judge that God does not
exist on the basis of apparent suffering. We are in a position to judge that there would
be enough and ample reason for God to allow such suffering because we are in no
position to judge that allowing all that suffering is not needed to realize goods of which
we are aware or ones of which we are not.

If there is no reason to believe God exists then there is a reason to believe that there is
suffering, hatred, war, pain, destruction, and all that bad happenings which means that
there is reason to believe God does not exist. Come to think of it, it is like a
mathematical equation where a=b, b=c, therefore, c=a. If there is a lack of reasons to
believe in God’s existence we should be atheists, not agnostics.