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Things happen for a reason4/9/2023 ![]() ![]() It would be better if Lisbon and Port-au-Prince were not subject to hauntingly similar and equivalently tragic natural disasters on either side of modern history. It would be better if everyone suffered a little less. The Problem of Evil begs an answer to the puzzle of how a world run by an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God could contain evil.Īll it takes is to discard the vain notion that everything happens for a reason is to imagine one small way that one small thing could be better. ![]() It is impossible that things should be other than they are for everything is right.” If there is a volcano at Lisbon it cannot be elsewhere. Here is a scene from Candide in which the stand-in for Leibniz explains his worldview after witnessing the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake and volcano eruption, in which up to 100,000 people painfully died: “All that is for the best. In his darkly comedic masterpiece, Candide, the great Voltaire shows exactly how stunning a lack of imagination one has to be possessed of to believe that everything happens for a reason. For: Would a god with those characteristics not, by definition, know about evil, be able to stop it, and want to stop it? Leibniz’s solution to this puzzle, needless to say, is not the most credible one. The Problem of Evil begs an answer to the puzzle of how a world run by an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God could contain evil. Leibniz made his famous claim about “the best of all possible worlds” in response to the so-called Problem of Evil.Īll it takes is to discard the vain notion that everything happens for a reason is to imagine one small way that one small thing could be better. The only conclusion is that whoever or whatever designs and plans those reasons is utterly cold, capricious, heartless and cruel. I, personally, simply cannot imagine how it might be a good thing to tell myself, if I were to indulge in wish-thinking, that everything happens for a reason. Other forms of this include: “There is no such thing as coincidence,” and: “It’s all part of the great plan.” They are all the intellectual offspring of Leibniz’s ludicrous claim that “this is the best of all possible worlds.” Each form betrays the same enormous conceit and the same willful negligence. It manages to combine the maximum of ignorance with the maximum of arrogance. It is bad philosophy, bad theology, bad thinking, and bad advice. “Everything happens for a reason” is my very least favorite thing for someone to say. ![]()
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