Does evil disprove God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
So apparently there’s this girl named Megan Rapinoe and she apparently plays some kind of sport or something and thinks we should care. She made the headlines on NotTheBee yesterday for a knock-down argument against the existing of God. Obviously, Aquinas and Augustine are being kicked to the curb here as we now have proof positive there is no God. So what is this argument? Let’s take a look.
Now if you can’t see that, her great argument is because she had a non-contact injury in a game where I suppose she tripped or something and had to leave her last game early, there is no God.
I mean, yeah, I went through a divorce where I lost the love of my life and plenty of people have lost children to diseases and horrible accidents and people are starving in Africa and other countries and we could go on and on.
But now, now we have it settled.
Rapinoe hurts herself and can’t finish her last game so yep, atheism is true.
Already, there has been some humor done in light of this. The Free Beacon had a funny tongue-in-cheek op-ed piece written. Nice to know the Almighty has His say in this. Still, I’d like to instead take a serious look at this as I think it demonstrates a flaw in an atheistic argument.
I think even the staunchest atheist is likely to look at what Rapinoe has said and think “Yeah. That doesn’t work.” There is no doubt for me that she is just a narcissistic whiner. I’m not denying that it would be painful to have happen what she has and it would suck to not get to play in your last game like that, but she has had a successful career already. Many people would be thankful.
Some could say that in some ways, this could read like a parody argument. You take something like this and say in light of all the suffering in the world, this is the dealbreaker. God doesn’t exist.
Okay. So we can all see that saying that you had this injury in your own personal life and therefore God doesn’t exist, is ridiculous. You should really take a look at the evidence pro and con a lot more. We can frame it this way.
If a good God existed, He would not allow Megan Rapinoe to get a non-contact injury in her last soccer game.
Megan Rapinoe got a non-contact injury.
Therefore, God does not exist.
If this is weak, and it is, we have to ask, when does it become strong? What is the point? If Rapinoe suffers more and more in her everyday life such that she becomes a Charlie Brown type character, does it ever get us a good argument? Do we ever get to the point in her individual life that we say, “Okay. God doesn’t exist.”?
If we don’t, then does that every happen on a collective scale? If two people suffer greatly, does that mean God doesn’t exist? Ten? 6,000? 5 million? 2 billion? Is there a number along the way?
This is my problem with the problem of evil. It is way too subjective. The person has to decide at some arbitrary point along the line that yes, this evil is too much and now God doesn’t exist.
Compare that to the Thomistic arguments that I use. These are not based on subjective criteria. These are based on philosophical data and the argument is deductive, not inductive. If the premises are true and there is no flaw in the form, the conclusion is certain.
And if one of these arguments works, the problem of evil automatically doesn’t. You can’t have it that this argument is flawless and proves that God exists and this argument is flawless and proves that God doesn’t exist. One is wrong.
And if one is wrong, I think I will reject the one that is not subjective.
Meanwhile, let’s hope Megan’s self-obsession ends soon. In the past, athletes were supposed to be role models for others. Frankly, we need a lot less people like her.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
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