Episode 34 - Lousy Hands

One of the age old questions gets a hard look today: If God is good, why do birth defects exist? Reach out for help or advice here: willhelpmail@gmail,com Patreon: patreon.com/icouldhelp Youtube channel: youtube.com/couldhelp

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Over the course of my life, I've heard a lot of argumentative talk against the existence

(00:20):
of a creator, in which they point to children being born with disabilities, to circumstances
beyond people's controls, the idea that awful things happen to good people without seemingly
any reason.
I think we've all heard one of the most famous and popular trilemas out there, Epicurus's

(00:43):
Trilemma, which by the way, a trilemma is when there's three choices, dilemma is when
there's two.
It's posed as the following.
One, if God is unable to prevent evil, then he is not all powerful.
Two, if God is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all good.

(01:03):
Three, if God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?
This is such a narrow viewpoint that it hurts.
I mean, okay, human beings are near mastery level when it comes to lopping off the details

(01:28):
of a subject so that it fits into a nice, neat category in our brains.
Then we argue the details that we chopped off, we reasoned away.
Sadly, this does seem to be a practice that increases in frequency and how deep we're
willing to cut to make something fit as we age.

(01:50):
Not everyone, mind you, but definitely those who invested in chopping off those pieces
when they were young and never really saw the value of filing things away as they are
without it fitting neatly into a file box.
But hey, we've all done that a fair amount in our lives.
I mean, how else would someone expect us to store the vast amounts of information, memory,

(02:17):
and understandings that one accumulates over the span of one's life?
It's part of how we store so much information.
No.
Oh.
It's… that.

(02:47):
Okay, sorry, I apologize here.
I literally just stepped away to write down the core ideas for a film treatment, which

(03:09):
just I had the idea off talking about this and this is going to be such an amazing film.
But yeah, sorry.
Where were we?
Right.
So we simply categorize and catalog, right?
When we're forming our opinions on something, we lean more and more towards making that

(03:33):
something fit the rubrics rather than take it in as it is all the little nuances.
Imagine trying to put together a puzzle with very intricately cut sides to each piece and
only being handed a couple of them at a time.
You'd have several pieces that almost fit together, but not quite.

(03:53):
And a lot of people will apply that extra pressure and make them fit together.
Heck, some of them go for the scissors, even though the right thing to do would be to set
those pieces aside and check back and on them as you get new pieces.
And we say in the parallels, okay, anyways, back to the matter of God intervening in unfair

(04:16):
situations.
Let me, let me postulate this to you.
What if God is not impotent or indifferent in the slightest?
I'm guessing you're not shocked.
That's part of my argument, but let's really think about this because there's some not
so obvious stuff here.
I mean, is it not possible that God refuses to intervene in a way that takes away man's

(04:44):
choices slash free will that are free will and decisions are rather crucial to us, to
the purpose of us.
This is not news to anybody that listens to the podcast that, you know, these are some
thoughts that I have on that, but play along that mindset and say, you know, what if God

(05:07):
set the world and the universe and our creations into motion and is letting our free will shape
the world, but it's also of huge importance what we do with the hands that were dealt.
You know, what if that is part of the whole process?

(05:28):
What if he is hands off on the world for the most part?
And so many of these things are things that happen largely as a result of these systems.
They're so intricately and carefully put together to allow for life or are influenced by decisions
made with that sweet, sweet free will that we love so much.

(05:51):
Because we do know that an absolutely flawless system that never once hiccups or has any
unpredicted variation whatsoever, how that would go over with us, right?
I'm thinking that you would have, we would not be able to have free will in a system
like that, as there is no possible way for any system to run perfectly when there are

(06:18):
humans involved or around it.
We love to test the limits of things, don't we?
Try and mess with things.
So, so of course there has to be flaws and bad stuff and balance.
You know, light has to have dark, warm has to have cold, fullness has to have emptiness
because without the contrast, quite simply gets boring as hell.

(06:45):
There's no variation.
There's no passion and no interest in the light or the warm or the fullness.
It's part of what makes life worth living.
The understanding that one day you will not be living it.
It's that understanding that gives value to time.
The fact that there just is not that much of it.

(07:09):
And notice all these things that I mentioned here, the light, the warmth, the fullness,
the interest, these things all have their counterpart, their antithesis.
And those opponents, you know, dark, cold, emptiness, boredom, well, they all have something

(07:29):
in common that they are not a thing themselves, but rather only the absence of their counterpart.
So if nothing else, it makes us interesting and it gives us variety.

(07:52):
One of the things that I love about this world is its absolute complexity of interaction.
Every single person on this planet has a separate and completely unique experience.
And that is such a good thing.
Each person is far more unique than any fingerprint they may have or their DNA.

(08:21):
And when you couple that with free will decisions that each person makes daily, well, one can
see some of the wisdom in the popular phrase, bitch, you don't know my life.
And no one even gets to see like even 1% of the footprint in which they leave on the war
world, you know, the way they shaped it and helped shape it.

(08:41):
So technically speaking, bitch, you don't even know your life.
So part of that is because of, of course, the cacophony of cause and effect.
Free will decisions ripple outward at that which it touches, it affects, which sends
out its own ripples and changes and affects those that touch them.

(09:06):
And on and on it goes.
And then of course, we add back into the equation, the hands that were dealt.
There's a fantastically broad spectrum of hands you can be dealt in this game of life.
Literally every single one of you can attest to this.

(09:29):
And that compounds exponentially the incalculable number of randomizations in our lives.
It ensures that no two experiences could ever be the same.
And as an overall, it makes us fundamentally far more interesting than if everybody was
born on the same even playing field.

(09:51):
Besides that brings us back to the everyday was a sunny day.
What's a sunny day discussion?
The sweet not being as sweet without the sour.
We are infinitely more interesting and appreciative this way.
And I for one, well, I plan on giving him one heck of a story, a story that I navigated

(10:14):
through in the environments I was born into, that others free will brought me into.
And then those that I have chosen.
Why would he intervene in that?
It's part of what makes the system so incredible.
Well, there are times that he intervenes.

(10:37):
It's when he's asked for help.
He kind of really pointed at doing that.
We already know that our decisions and our interactions with others are one of the main
points of our existence here.
It's literally at the core of how someone obtains the feeling of importance.

(11:03):
Let's assume for the moment that the products of cause and effect and all the seemingly
chaotic quantum natures of things happened as they happen.
Unless there's an intervention.
And that intervention typically comes when asked for it, but not typically in the form

(11:25):
of our choosing or our prediction.
And perhaps that was the only fair way to deal the hands to us in the first place.
Some are born to wealth or love or into superior athletic or mental or beautiful genes.
Some are born into barely functioning bodies and broken households or with various limitations,

(11:50):
mentally or physically or aesthetically.
We all have different circumstances, different wars that we're fighting that no one has
any idea about.
We all have our bright spots somewhere in our lives.
Things that motivate us.
Things that have changed us fundamentally.

(12:14):
And yes, some of us have it way harder than the rest.
But those of us who do are the variation that makes life itself interesting and gives appreciation
to the light, the warmth, the fullness, the contentment and all the other counterances.

(12:42):
They are quite often a very large part of why we have such an interesting world.
And to that point, if God made the world who amongst men is worthy enough to call something

(13:03):
a mistake.
Let me postulate one more thing to you.
I don't leave you alone, but what if this is the perfect system?
I mean, a flawless perfect system would be by its very nature perfectly predictable, right?

(13:24):
It would never change any of its patterns during the exact same thing from start to
finish, right?
With our current set of systems that make existence and life possible, somehow we have
free will and the systems are still functioning for the most part.

(13:47):
And when we see our free will wreaking havoc on some of these systems, we typically have
the capacity to do something to help heal said system and get it back on track.
Little repairmen within the system.
Crazy, right?

(14:08):
So maybe after all, we are in the perfect system, which is why bad things must happen
to good people, and lousy hands must sometimes be dealt at birth.