136. Fate versus Free Will. Part Three

 

We were discussing the arguments against Fate.

 

3. It makes God, indifferent, cruel and unjust. There is cruelty, injustice, hunger, poverty, disease, and natural calamities, like earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, droughts, tornadoes and hurricanes. If everything is decreed by God, then is it not logical to hold God responsible for all of the above? If you believe in the hypothesis of Fate, then the best you can say in God’s defense is that he is indifferent, or He does not know, or He died. If He died then the universe and the earth are running on its own. The inhabitants of earth are responsible for their affairs. But that is hypothesis two (Free will). Same would be true if God did not know, because the mankind must be managing their affairs on their own.

 

If God was indifferent, then we have to imagine a scenario in which we envision God responsible for all the miseries that have been mentioned above and not caring about them. It would be like us, killing millions of animals every day for food, and billions of insects and microbes to make our life better. I have seen the kindest hearted persons devouring meat and killing mosquitoes and flies. How is it that we don’t think about it? Because we get desensitized to it. Maybe God has become desensitized too. At least, in our case we are compelled to do so because we need food and are protecting ourselves from disease and discomfort. There is no such justification for God. He need not worry about food or discomfort. And moreover he created the insects and microbes.

Can God be indifferent? The closest example is that of a writer of a play. Suppose the writer is also the producer, and director of the play. Whatever, the actors will do or say on stage, how the plot proceeds, how the drama ends, is what the writer has willed them to do. Can such a writer (and in this case also the producer and director) who wrote the minutest detail of the play be indifferent? No it is not possible. An indifferent writer would be an oxymoron, like hot ice. Let me quote Darwin again: “To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured”

 

God created those pitiable moans. God spilled the milk (see blog 134), in Maugham’s novel; ….. because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.”

 

Therefore, God is neither dead, nor indifferent. He is not responsible for all the miseries. We and a blind nature are responsible. And we have free will

 

4. Why is God hidden? His being hidden from us would only make sense, if he wanted us to live on our own, without the interference of any higher power. As if either there was no God, or if there was a God, He set everything in motion 13.8 billion years ago (see blogs 100-101).  The experiment, in our world, and billions of other planets with life, may proceed for other billions of years. We will discuss it in more detail when we discuss the hypothesis number two of Free Will

 

5. If everything is preordained by God, then what is the purpose of creation by God? Our job is not to find the purpose of creation by God, because with our limited intelligence we may never find it. Our purpose, now, is to determine, if a meaningful purpose can be ascribed to God, in hypothesis number one (Fate). According to this hypothesis God is like a play writer who is also producer and director. The outcome of the play is known to the writer. There is no suspense, unlike it is for a scientist who is setting up an extremely long and complicated experiment, for the first time, and does not know what the outcome would be. Whole drama (written by the play writer) becomes useless and rather silly.

 

Furthermore, this hypothesis will make God (the writer of the play) cruel, unjust and sadist. We will then sympathize with Swedenborg, the Swede, who said: “if I could only find that arch-tyrant God, who created so much misery in the world, I would strangle him to death”

 

6. It flies against our daily experience of events happening due to free will. This point has already been discussed. There is no evidence to support hypothesis one, except prophecies. Prophecies will be discussed again in Free will hypothesis.

 

7. Does not explain the cruelty of predator animals to prey. There is cruelty in animal kingdom. I think it was Darwin who remarked “Every living organism eats other organisms or is being eaten by it”

Now it is completely normal in nature. Predators have to kill other animals to survive. But all the animals that become prey, suffer, even if it is for few minutes. Ask yourself, would you like to be a deer being chased by couple of panthers. You run and run, but are caught by the predators and thrown on the jungle floor. They may start eating you while you are still alive. Or, how would you like to be a bird being carried away in the talons, which are digging in your body like iron nails, of the predator. Have you seen a cat playing with a bird for hours (I once saw our two household cats playing with a live mouse, like a soccer ball)? Bird predators have been known to throw fish in the sea from a height, and swooping in the water, catching the fish, and throwing it again and again, for sport.

Now, what if you are the author of this cruelty?

If you were the creator, you could easily have created a world, without carnivorous animal. Every animal could have an aversion to meat, like a cow or a horse. World would have been a peaceful place.

There is no excuse, whatsoever, in hypothesis one (Fate), for creation of carnivorous animals.

 

All living things arose by themselves, through the process of evolution, as I have explained in blog 99.

 

To be continued