According to the latest figures, there were 22,000 poor souls who lost their lives as a result of the cyclone in Myanmar (Burma). In my estimation, in the end, the final tally will anywhere from 35,000 to 40,000 dead, along with about another 50,000 displaced and homeless. For those who know nothing of Myanmar (Burma), it is truly a "basket case" of a country. It is a country ruled by a vicious military junta - a collective of brutal, sadistic, paranoid thugs. And, no, I'm not talking about Bush and his administration; I'm talking about another collective of brutal, sadistic, paranoid thugs. Another collective of paranoid thugs who exert total control of one of the poorest nations on earth. My point is that those more than 50,000 people who will find themselves displaced are, in effect, screwed. As the Bible says, many of those now living in Burma "will envy the dead." Even if the military sadists in control of Myanmar were to want to help their people [which is not the case], they would still lack any and all means to do so. In the coming days, weeks, and months, there will be tens of thousands dying of disease, starvation, and dehydration [Maybe it's hard for people in North America to imagine, but typhoons and cyclones in Asia disrupts and destroy both water and food supply. Crops are washed away, and potable water is contaminated. As a result, there develop diseases such as cholera, dysentry, and malaria.]
And I wonder, where could God be now?
There are people who will say: "But, what happened in Burma is not God's fault! That cyclone was not a moral evil; it was a natural evil!" However, in my opinion, natural evil is moral evil; in my mind, there is no distinction between moral and natural evil. In my mind, the eistence of both moral and natural evil precludes the existence of God, or at least the existence of God as God is conceived in traditional theology - both benevolent and omnipotent.
According to Lactantius, Epicurus went straight to the heart of the matter, which is:
1.) Either God wanted to eliminate evil and could not
2.) Or he could and did not want to
3.) Or he neither could nor wanted to
4.) Or he could and wanted to
This could be termed the tetralemma of religion. If option number one is the case, then God is impotent. If option number two is the case, God is evil. If option number three is the case, God is both impotent and evil. Which leaves option number 4 - the only hypothesis which corresponds to the cherished, traditional concept of an all-powerful and benevolent God. This leads to the question: "Where does evil come from, and why does God do nothing to eliminate it?
In his Theodicy, Leibnitz asks: "If God exists, whence evil? If God does not exist, whence good?"
"Theodicy," a phrase first coined by Leibnitz, refers to the problem of the existence of evil in the world. The term is based on the Greek words theos ["god"] and dike [justice]. I find the juxtaposition of the words God and justice to be ironic - an oxymoron, in fact. As the French philosopher Emile-Auguste Chartier [also called the pseudonym, "Alain"] said: "Justice does not exist, which is why we need to create it."
To conclude, let me quote Prometheus who exclaimed : "I hate all the gods."