this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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So what's the argument for keeping cancer and other horrible diseases for babies around? An omnipotent benevolent god could have easily gotten rid of them before we figured out modern medicine, so nobody would have known. Yet, here they are.
That's a very narrow-minded way of thinking about the idea of a higher power... If something can be explained by science, it doesn't need an explanation based on anything else. But there are plenty of questions that science can't answer, not because it's not equipped to answer them, but because they ask things which cannot be known for certain; philosophical questions about reality and the meaning we assign to it. Like what is the value of a life? And again, that's not to say that I believe in a higher power; I just think it's impossible to be certain one way or the other.
Those are questions of metaphysics, and you're right they can't be answered by science. But you have to ask yourself, if they can't be answered by science, that is they can't be measured or falsified, then what meaning do they really have? If you think of an unknowable, non-interventional god, their existence is the same to us as not existing, so it has no meaning. Same with any meanings of life, or questions about whether we live in a simulation perhaps, anything you can't measure is just a story essentially, until you can measure it.
A lack of perfection, the existence of tragedy, and the hope of a better world, allow humanity to grow.
If there is nothing bad, there is no reason to struggle, to become better, to improve.
If there is nothing good, there is no reason not to despair, to cling to hope, to improve.
Obviously this is purely philosophical, but as that very Futurama episode states (and many other attempts to tackle the problem of evil), “you have to use a light touch.”
Other excellent examples of this notion are found in the ending of The Wheel of Time, wherein a world without evil and a world without good are explored. Another fine example is in the second era of the Mistborn books, where a deity discusses finding that balance.
I get that and didn't say there should be no cancer at all. There should be challanges to life.
But giving a baby a terminal disease ... that's just spawn-camping.