...Whenever bad things happen to innocent people, I see people trying to rationalize what happened. How could you live in a world where planes fly into skyscrapers, men are put into dark holes & tortured, or bombs are dropped on villages with women & children and not ask
WHY? My mother, who's very religious & a Democrat, said the day after Bush's re-election that she wondered why God would let someone like this continue? She told me that she believed that God had a plan, even if we can't understand. That in the end, everything would be Ok.
So I thought I would ask which do you believe? Is the Universe & everything in it part of a great plan, or do things "just" happen.
Most people who are religious or spiritual use their faith:
"It's part of God's plan". I once watched Holocaust Survivors being asked about their faith. They were given the question of
"how could they still believe in a benevolent God that would watch people be butchered?" One of them said that they believed God let it happen, so the world would never let it happen again.
On the other side is those that believe that bad things happen to good people because there is no divine order to the Universe. "Shit Happens". The world is what our free-will makes of it. Whatever happens, happens. If 7 millions Jews are killed, that's because we let it happen, not because of some sort of meaning.
Both views are beautiful & scary at the same time. If there is a divine plan for you, me, & the rest of the universe, then we really don't have free-will. You were always meant to read this sentence, & I was always meant to type it. Nothing we could desire could change it. On the other hand if "shit happens", there is no purpose or drive to the Universe. We are little more than semi-evolved animals, that are the result of a cosmic happenstance on a small rock in the Universe...