Gee George, you show great respect for my foolishness in asking me such lofty questions.
The Taoists say (roughly), "The more one speaks of the Tao(God), the less one says." However I will address this issue of God's fairness--that which you apparently feel He betrays by infecting the world "with monstrosities like cancer."
Everything is everything. All organisms are machines. As such, we are created, and one day cease to function. Cars die. Their "deaths" are the result of specific failures of one or more of their parts: blown transmissions, clogged fuel lines, broken axles, etc. From order to disorder, function to dysfunction -- entropy -- scientists have long observed this as a fundamental law of existence. And humans are not immune. Our "parts" become weak too -- our hearts become diseased (dis eased), our arteries clog, our spines broken.But whereas we look at the car's entropy dispassionately, we view the failure of human bodies through a lens of emotion.
We don't speak in terms of the "horror" of balding tires, the "monstrosities" of rust--we accept these things as natural and predictable eventualities. When I look dispassionately at human life I see Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Heart Disease, etc. as analogous afflictions to the human machine.
We all must die, and we will certainly die of something. No death bringing affliction will be any more "fair" than another. God didn't create "good" and "bad" diseases. I believe He created a world ruled by the eternal circle of birth, growth, decay, death, and rebirth. It's that simple, and any values we assign to the particulars of this process are our creation, not His.
Rick |
