God and Evil

Here is an email I received in response to one of my essays.

God and Evil

I could never understand how a just and merciful God could create a universe in which evil could exist and then penalize his creations for exercising their free will in choosing evil. What’s the point?

The usual response I get: ---"Well, the ways of God are sometimes mysterious and not for us to understand"---

In other words, end of discussion, I guess.

Morality is such a human thing. It does not seem to apply to any other species. Animals kill without any regard to the suffering they create. They happily practice cannibalism or infanticide. Morality seems to me to be a human creation. I find it even stranger that God would direct me in ethics via a band of lying scoundrels (aka creationists). My own thoughts on the motivation for behaving ethically are in my essay on CCism.

On another subject, you might be interested in a book that was just published: Bearing Witness (To AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome)) is a collection of photographs taken by my aunt’s husband, Tom McGovern. He worked on this book for years and I believe the emphasis is on depicting supportive relationships between persons with AIDS and their loved ones (I haven’t yet seen the book).

Amazon says it won’t ship until 2000-12, but Tom told me it would probably be available before then. I’ve ordered some copies for our local libraries; some people react differently (hopefully with greater compassion) to photographs of real people than they do to the printed word, especially if that word isstatistical in nature.

Book referral for Bearing Witness (To AIDS)

	recommend book⇒Bearing Witness (To AIDS)
	by	Thomas McGovern	978-0-923183-24-0	hardcover
	birth	1922 age:95
	publisher	A.R.T.
	published	1999-10
Online bookstores carrying Bearing Witness (To AIDS) abe books anz abe books.ca abe books.de amazon.ca amazon.de Chapters Indigo amazon.es Chapters Indigo eBooks iberlibro.com abe books.com abe books.fr amazon.com amazon.fr Barnes & Noble abe books.it Nook at Barnes & Noble amazon.it Kobo junglee.com Google play abe books.co.uk O’Reilly Safari amazon.co.uk Powells other stores
Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock. Try looking for it with a bookfinder.

Thanks for providing a thought-provoking website.

Kurt Kaufman

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