Precisely at the time
And justify the ways of God to men…
Ah yes, very excellent integration of science and faith. What a kind and careful and scientifically alert god it is, to wait to inflict a new virus on us until…um…there were plenty of ICUs to handle the cases? No. There were enough hospitals everywhere in the world to handle the cases? No. There were responsible governments everywhere in the world that knew how to protect their people from a new virus? No. People had become reasonable? No. No, apparently this god waited until it knew a vaccine would take a year to develop and many more months to distribute. REASON TO BELIEVE.
Unless of course you then ask yourself why unleash a new virus at all. Unless you wonder what the point is, when there are already plenty of causes of death and they operate quite well, with especially brutal efficiency in the poorer countries, and when death does the job 100% of the time anyway.
And unless you wonder how the nice man knows that this is how the timing and motivation went. I, for one, wonder how he knows the god didn’t time this for when the US and UK and Brazil have reckless clueless fools in charge, and for when the poorer countries can’t afford the infrastructure to provide hospitals and doctors and ventilators and medicines, and an infinite number of other specifics of that kind.
And what of the epidemics, plagues, pandemics that ran rampant through the Earth’s human population before the advent of anything remotely resembling medical science? The tens of millions of humans in North and South America who died of introduced European diseases might have had a different perspective as well, which would have been unlikely to include the word “providential.”
The God of Convenience, ready for whatever credit or blame that needs assigning.
If they want to believe it was God wot dun it, here’s a better explanation of the chain of events.
He decided it was time for another clear-out of humans but thought the idea of a flood to be just too Old Testament, and besides, a flood is far to quick for him to be able to enjoy watching the suffering. This time around, he went for something slower so he could kick back with popcorn and a drink for maximum viewing pleasure.
Once again, however, his enormous ego let him down. Too convinced of his own omniscience he refused to accept that the humans’ ability to think for themselves might just be the flaw in hiis plan. His Trumpian inabilty to learn from others caused him to ignore the schooling he was given by Eve, and once again it has cost him dear.
Alternatively, here’s one that the God-bothering crowd could never imagine. God has grown bored with humans and wants a new pet. That new pet is the Covid-19 virus, and just for shits and giggles, God wants his new pet to kill off his old one.
I think I know the answer to question #1. I think it’s that Those Old Past-people don’t matter, because they’re so past. They weren’t even really people. Have you seen those pictures of them in medieval portraits? Do they look like people to you? And then all the ones in places where we don’t have portraits at all. Not really people. See?
Such rationalisations aside, the believer is none the less still stuck with the Problem of Evil. If God created everything, he must have created evil as well as good. And if he was/is omniscient, he must have known what the outcome would be from setting up that deadly combinaion of a Temptation Tree with forbidden fruit, a talking snake who could leave any used-car salesman in the shade, and two freshly-minted, gullible and naive humans who had curiosity galore built-in and running. What a setup..! God definitley did not have to be Einstein to figure out how it would all play out.
God-botherers have to come up with a better explanation that the standard one on issue as to why the God they bother is not 100% RESPONSIBLE for the whole mess in which the whole world now finds itself wholly immersed in, or perhaps more accurately, baptised in.
This year’s holiday season happened at precisely at the time that advances in my baking technique allowed me to bake a cheesecake with a perfectly uncracked surface. It’s a miracle!
Hey Fuz Rana, at least Leibniz (co) discovered calculus. What have you done?
This year’s holiday season happened at precisely the time that I fell down the stairs and injured my foot so my husband had to do all the work, while I lounged with my foot elevated. It’s a miracle!
Pah! You call that a miracle, iknklast? For years I have asked why we couldn’t have Christmas scheduled for when the shops weren’t so damned busy. This year, my wish came true. Now that’s a miracle. :-))
And I hope your foot recovers soon.
Ah yes, the Argument from Incomplete Devastation. Reminds me of the answer to the question “Where was Jesus when 6 million Jews were killed by Hitler?” Apparently, he was empathetically sharing their pain as he suffered alongside them.
Once you get people to believe stuff based on nothing other than your saying “it is so” the possibilities are endless.