Ok...

Alright, so the speech didn't turn out half as bad as I thought it was going to be. "Rupert" showed up and I talked to him a bit before the speech, so I was able to add a few details that I hadn't been able to remember from before.

However, I'm still bummed out about the yoga class.

I talked to Kimberly last night and we worked a few of her math problems together. She always has something funny to say that makes me laugh. It's good to have friends like that.

In philosophy we talked about belief in (a conventional Christian, Muslim, Hebrew) God and how it can/cannot be justified considering the evil in the World. Despite having premonitions of headaches and stress, the discussion turned out to be really good. I think my philosophy prof is a Christian. He looks at the problems from as many sides as he can, but he always comes back to the fact that you can't prove or disprove God in the end, because it takes faith.

Here are some of the arguments for the existence of God despite the evil in the world:

1) The Knowledge defense =the reason God allows evil is so that we can know love; so that we can understand what is good by knowing what is bad.

Counterargument: Way more evil is present in the World than is necessary for us to simply know what is good and what is bad.

2) Free Will defense =God wants us to be able to have control over our own actions; He wants us to choose good over evil and not to just be puppets of His will.

Counterargument: Why didn't God make us want to do good all the time; or at least most of the time? why didn't he snuff out Hitler and Stalin and all those terrible people before they were even conceived and make more people like Mother Theresa, Able Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr.?

3)Soul Building defense =What doesn't kill you just makes you stronger. God would never give you anything too hard for you to bear.

Counterargument: Some people, including Christians break down under stress and pain and aren't ever able to get back up.l

4)Finite god defense =a god who is limited (not all powerful, all loving, and all knowing).

5) Ideal Humanity defense =God allows evil because it builds humanity up and makes us better people. natural disasters and WW II brought people together to do good.

counterargument: How long does the goodwill really last? Most changes only last a short while before we move on with our lives and forget the hardships. Also, it isn't right for some to benefit from the suffering of innocents, either.

6) Leap of Faith =Christianity is illogical, so you must just believe.


is there such a thing as rational or irrational faith?


Anyways we concluded that each of the arguments taken singly didn't make complete sense, but that when you lumped them together (with the exception of "finite god") they made more sense.

A few points the prof didn't bring up was that the Bible has a perfectly good explanation of why there is evil in the World; man embraced it when he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and we have been sinning ever since. The World will one day be made new and all this sin and ugliness will pass away. A second point is the Law of Entropy =everything slowly deteriorates, or slows down without an outside force acting upon it. So, God must exist, for without Him the World would cease to run.

On Thursday we will be discussing existentialism.

*sigh* That is all.

Christine