Here's a random quasi-philosophical thought:
Though I'm still a skeptical thinker and an ardent agnostic, I nevertheless take pride in my deliberate humility on this issue especially. I know I could be wrong so I'm aggressively open-minded. I recently arrived at an interesting idea (notice I didn't write "I came up with it" because I'm sure someone else has thought of this before me).
Here it is...
There's a logical/internally coherent response to the atheist's perennial question:
"How can an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent god still allow so much evil in the world?"
Personally, I never found the "free will" justification compelling.
The trick I like here is in boldly challenging the premise that there is "so much" evil. (Basically, I'm merely reformulating the "Afterlife" argument - theodicy). I call this idea "All Evil Reduces to Zero".
NOTE: Assume the position of the faithful (i.e. believe that god exists and is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent and also believe that heaven exists for all eternity) and still recognize all the evil that exists in the world (e.g. crime, war, famine, disease etc.).
Point#1) As you age, your perception of time changes such that periods of time that seemed like eternities as a child (e.g. a car ride) seem like trivial blips when you're older. (q.v. Cracked.com's article on immortality if you had to live forever on earth http://www.cracked.com/article_18708_5-reasons-immortality-would-be-worse-than-death_p2.html )
Point#2) Similarly, we recalibrate our concepts of pain and justice as we age.
PAIN: The needle of an inoculation shot seems terrifying and excruciating as a child but for adults seems absurdly inconsequential compared to the benefits.
JUSTICE: A teenage girl stealing her sister's boyfriend seems perfectly fair (to herself) in the moment but is viewed differently (e.g. it's not "right" but also it's just not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things) as she matures and gains a greater understanding of the world.
Point#3) Given points #1 and #2 and the assumption that the eternity of time in "heaven" is truly infinite then one must necessarily conclude that a given human's entire time on earth will thus "reduce to zero" (as will all of humanity's time on earth) compared to the infinite afterlife.
Consider this: a child's perception is that "this one-hour car ride took forever" and "the doctor's needle shot is the worst pain in my life" but by the time he's 30 years old both seem absurdly meaningless. Given those assumptions, isn't it reasonable to extrapolate that all such pains/crimes/atrocities will similarly recalibrate downward when viewed along a broad-enough timeline?
One murder is a tragedy for the victim's family and friends but it's merely a statistic to the rest of the population in that time period. Even worse, that statistic is likely less-and-less known while becoming more-and-more irrelevant to subsequent generations. The Holocaust is still relatively fresh in our collective minds because some people who survived it still testify and, as a culture, we remember to retell the history. Compare that to slavery in America hundreds of years ago or Stalin or Mao where multiple times as many human beings were killed (q.v. Who killed the most humans; Hitler or Stalin or Mao?).The further back in time the evil goes the less relevant it is to us, necessarily.
Even if you live on earth for 100 years, remember that 100 divided by Infinity = Zero.
That isn't meant to be a nihilistic criticism that life is meaningless but rather, to the faithful, life on earth is relatively meaningless compared to the eternity of life in heaven. Thus making "getting into heaven" (q.v. faith) all the more important and "good deeds"/"repairing the world" much less important.
So while this whole argument ("All Evil Reduces to Zero") is interesting to me for its internal coherence it is still fatally flawed from a fully rational point of view. That's because it requires its assumptions (e.g. the existence of God & Heaven) to be correct in order for the conclusions (e.g. have faith in the existence of God & Heaven) to be correct. Such a circular argument is both irrational and without evidence and thus dismissible by any critical thinker who requires evidence.
NOTE: To my friends who genuinely have faith - please forgive me. I don't mean to offend. Perhaps you can take, as an amends, my explicit recognition that I could be wrong.
