Problem of Evil: Losing Your Leg

Earlier this year, one of my friends lost most of his leg due to an infection of sorts. This was pretty traumatic for him and put him through a great deal of suffering. Obviously, being suffering, if you believed in an all loving god, then this would need to be explained within that paradigm.

With the problem of evil, theists invent theodicies in order to explain why there is suffering at all. One of the options presented is skeptical theism, whereby suffering happens for a reason; but since we don't know the mind of God, we can't fathom what that reason might be. As a result, theists propose different theodicies in the absence of really clearly communicated reasons as to why there is suffering.

Returning to the example of my friend, we have a situation whereby it is deemed necessary that he should suffer that way in order for a greater good to come about. Unless theists are happy that my friend is being used as a means to an end, whereby his suffering is instrumental in somebody else's greater good, then we must assume that the greater good should come to my friend himself.

Now, if he had to suffer the loss of a limb in order to get that greater good, then surely for all of humanity to get that greater good, they would need to lose their legs. I know very many good people, some of whom are Christian and you would assume that some of them would qualify for heaven of sorts.  However, of these good Christian people whom I've known and who have died or will die, none of them have lost their limbs or, I wager, will lose their limbs.

The sheer range of suffering that can and does take place on Earth amongst people who are, for all intents and purposes, the same, we have a problem for the idea of a just and fair god in terms of this problem of evil. My friend appears to be a decent human being, but for his greater good to come about, he had to lose his leg. I know very many other people who have had no such terrible loss of human capability. Likewise, I know many other people who have suffered far worse than losing a limb.

Can the greater good equally vary in such a way? There seems to be this idea that a similar greater good can be arrived at with different levels of suffering, which seems inherently unfair.

There is definitely no parity in suffering on this earth, it seems, and sorting out this problem of evil leaves the theist with so many ad hoc contrivances that the whole thing is a Gordian knot that can only be undone with a slice from the Sword of Atheism. And trying to second guess God's mind is particularly hard. But it should surely be easy since those same theists appear to so often profess to know exactly what God thinks and wants.

Funny that.

It's all funny until someone loses a leg.

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