I’m surprised the folks at Debunking Christianity haven’t used this disturbing news piece to bolster their agenda. The Associated Press reports:
BANGALORE, India: Revered by some in her village as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, a 2-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs was undergoing surgery Tuesday to leave her with a normal body.
The girl named Lakshmi is joined to a “parasitic twin” that stopped developing in the mother’s womb. The surviving fetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped fetus.
A team of 30 doctors was removing the extra limbs and organs, surgery that if successful would give her a good chance to live past adolescence. . .
Children born with deformities in deeply traditional rural parts of India, like the remote village in the northern state of Bihar that Lakshmi hails from, are often viewed as reincarnated gods. The young girl is no different — she is named after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, and her parents say that some in her village revere her.
Genocide, natural disasters, disease and deformity are often used as proof of God’s non-existence — at least, the non-existence of a loving, personal God. So I’m sure little Lakshmi serves, in the mind of some, to support their atheistic presuppositions. After all, how could a loving God allow (inflict?) this type of twisted suffering upon an innocent child?
I’ve never entirely followed that reasoning. While pain and suffering admittedly press us — both theist and atheist — to the limits of our comprehension, how does it disprove the existence of God? Sure, it could give evidence that God is evil or impotent, as some assert. But couldn’t suffering just as much prove the world is fallen, abnormal, out-of-whack, as that God doesn’t exist? In fact, the admission that Lakshmi is abnormal — just like the assertion that someone is evil — assumes that something should be normal, or that someone should be good, which assumes an Order or Design larger than ourselves.
While atheists may hedge at the admission of mystery (a charge often made against Christians caught in a philosophical bind), the fact is that the universe is full of mystery. Lakshmi is one of them. Christianity may not have answers to all the world’s mysteries, but neither does atheism. Perhaps then, how we see and respond to the Lakshmi’s of the world is, in the long run, a better indication of the relevance, coherence, and accuracy of our beliefs.
But it begs the question: Is the story above proof of God’s non-existence?
These types of things *should* make us question God’s existence and/or nature. If he is all powerful like christians say then he should be able to stop this from happening, and if he is loving he *would* want to alleviate suffering. So it’s logical to assume God is neither. Bye.
But as I said in my post, deformity may prove God is NOT all-powerful or loving, but it doesn’t necessarily prove He doesn’t exist. There must be better evidence for the non-existence of God than simply the presence of pain and suffering. And if you go so far as to make judgments about the nature and character of God based on pain and suffering in the world, why not use the BEAUTY and ORDER and LOVE found in the world to inform that presupposition? The snow-capped peaks, the tranquil seashore, the child resting on her mother’s bosom, and the doctors who sought to heal this little girl could say as much about the nature and character of God than the presence of pain and deformity.
I can’t begin to understand… but I trust God.
The story above has nothing to do with the proof of God’s existence. In fact, I’d say that she’s a miracle… that we can thank God she was born to parents who love her and didn’t sell her to a circus, who were able to find doctors to help her, that doctors were willing to fund and perform all of her surgeries, that she’s been surrounded by loving people and seems to be a happy child. Like you said, if we say this is bad, then we know something is not as it should be. Lakshmi can show us that, despite our messed up world, there is still some good to be found in the mess.
I think it is the atheist’s strongest argument. My cousin died at age 9 of Cystic Fibrosis. Years of suffering for an innocent beautiful little girl who never got a chance at life. How could a loving God allow this? Which speaks to your point about it maybe proving that God exists but in a more evil form than Christianity.
I probably won’t be able to argue this to the satisfaction of your premise, but it does seem inherent in humanity that if God is not Love, then there is no God. The thought of a sadistic creator doesn’t fit into an acceptable mold even for atheists. Which is probably why atheist aren’t merely non-loving God believers. They are non-Christian God believers. The alternative is too illogical or horrible even for them.
As Christians, we must find a way to counter this argument. We can either go the Billy Graham route and simply state I don’t know But I know Love because Jesus dwells within me. That much is true so for the rest I’ll trust Him. And I want you to have this Love,too. (ala Janet)
For me, it’s the blink of an eye argument. We focus too much on this minute period of time called the human life span. God sees the bigger picture. When we are spending eternity with Him, the pains that we suffered during this lifetime will become that insignificant blink.
Besides, free will allows for pesticides and processed food and other man-made calamities which probably account for most birth defects.
Thanks for the comments Janet, Bonnie and Dayle. Bonnie, I agree with your layout of this scenario. In fact, I struggled over whether or not to post the picture of the deformed girl — it’s disturbing. But what struck me is the juxtaposition of her and the doctor. He’s sitting across from her, smiling and accepting and wanting to help, and it reminds me of Christ coming into the world, a Physician on the bedside of the sinfully Deformed.
Dayle, I think your point is brilliant. “. . .if God is not Love, then there is no God. The thought of a sadistic creator doesn’t fit into an acceptable mold even for atheists.” Though some HAVE resorted to the notion of a “sadistic creator,” most opt for a non-deity. Perhaps this says as much about our intuitive conception and need for Absolute Love as it does the weaknesses of atheism. Good point.
The Judeo-Christian worldview explains that the world is damaged, so that a child should be deformed fits into the idea of a broken cosmos, where there is hope for one day a REDEEMED and renewed cosmos. The problem is one of intervention. Why does God not intervene?
Then I turn it around? Would the situation be horrible if we lived in a world where we loved each other consummately, so that the ones now called ugly, deformed, less-than, were as wanted, cared for, desired, cossetted, pursued, valued as the healthy and normal, wouldnt’, in that world, the deformity itself become so much less. Yes, the physical difficulties would remain, but I suspect that what makes these people suffer so, and make parents want to abort them, is that they will be looked down on, affect parental status, be inconvienient, evince repulsion. We think, “Oh, they can never be happy.”
But if so, then we are at fault.
I turn it around. If the poor and disabled and deformed suffer, it’s mostly because WE cause them to suffer by not taking proper care of one another, by not being as loving, as accepting, as egalitarian, as so on as WE should.
Perhaps God is saying, “There is a door to open yourself up to becoming greater than you are. There is an opportunit to love what you think is unlovely. This is not a test of me. It’s a test of you.”
I know that in this life, which is ridiculously short in terms of actual existence, I might have a horrible time of it, and most of that will be due to the unkindness and selfishness of others and myself. If a man or woman rots in some nursing home, we are to blame, not God. We are here and can do something. If a woman with a deformed body goes unmarried and unloved, then men who cannot see beyond ideals are to blame. If a child is abandoned to prostitution, the adults who exploit him or her is to blame and the parents who sold him or left him out of selfish concern are to blame. Not God.
Once we take care of our end, then let’s see what marvels will pour down to say, “Yes, you’ve done as you should. Now, look what I can do.”
If we don’t have a paradise, we are mostly to blame.
Mir
We, as the human race, had a perfect state after Creation. No sickness, deformity, even bad weather and other calamities were non-existent in our initial existence. We had one apparent condition to this perfection, and we blew it in disobedience. Sin entered this world in all its horror in one bite. God didn’t want it for us. He gave us perfection. And He will again–not because He doesn’t love us, but because He does. Enough to give the life of someone far more precious than we are in our sinful states–Someone who is and was and will always be perfect paid the price for us to be able to experience absolute perfection for not just a lifetime on earth but forever.
God told man he would be without excuse because all he has to do is look around, take it all in, gaze upon this earth no matter where he is and decide if there is a Creator. God says you can’t miss it/Him if you see with you eyes. Then if you search with a pure heart to know the God who created all this, you will find Him because He will make sure of it. No matter what little or how much you know, He alone is capable of saving your soul through His sacrifice for your sinful state: His Son Jesus Christ.
It’s not complicated until you engage in the philosophy of it and play the mind games that were perpetrated on the first humans who didn’t recognize who was lying to them. God is still the Truth. He is still seeking hungry hearts who desire to know Him in every color, tongue, and language–none of which is a boundary for Him.
Our righteousness and hence our “logic” means nothing to Him–it is filthy and stained. His desire is to deliver us from evil, wash us with His cleansing Blood, and welcome us into His perfect world when it’s time to leave this deformed one.
The existence of evil and suffering disprove the existence of a loving god who is intimately involved in human affairs. If you want to postulate an evil, malicious god, or a god who created the universe doesn’t care about people at all, that might be consistent with the evidence. But you cannot look at a world in which 5 million children under the age of 5 die of starvation related causes and say that god has a plan that can ONLY or BEST be achieved through these children’s intense suffering and death.
You Christians are forced to come up with ad hoc arguments to defend your pre-suppositions about god. Or else you fall back on “faith” which means that the evidence undermines your theory but you refuse to admit it.
The intellectually honest position is to first LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE and second, formulate a hypothesis that takes the evidence into account. A naturalistic world that evolved and in which NO supernatural loving being is involved is consistent with the EVIDENCE.
That is 5 million children (or more) every YEAR.
At least 13,000 some a day.
24/7
At the same time you imagine god is helping you find your car keys, or manage some other trivial aspect of your daily live.
Think about it.
(Oh, and I support numerous charities, so don’t go there.)