Stephen Fry Asked About God

[KnightofChrist]

Here is something Bishop Sheen had to say on Free Will, a little long but if one is truly searching for an answer that shouldn't matter.

 

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You may ask, "If God is power and Love, why does He 

create this kind of world and why does He permit 
evil?" 

We are not going to give here a complete explanation 
of evil, and a complete explanation cannot be given 
here below. We will only give certain indications why 
evil is possible. 

Let us begin with the question: Why God made this kind 
of world. 

We must realize that this is not the ONLY kind of a 
world that God could have made. He might have made 
10,000 other kinds of worlds, where there would be no 
pain, and no struggles and no sacrifice. 

But this world [in which we live] is the best possible 
kind of world that God could have made for the PURPOSE 
HE HAD IN MIND. 

Notice the distinction we're making. For example, a 
little boy says to his father who is a distinguished 
architect, "I want you to build me a bird house". The 
architect designs a bird house. It is not the best 
house that that skilled father could design, but it 
may be the very best house that the architect could 
design for the PURPOSE THAT HE HAD IN MIND; namely, to 
build a house for sparrows. 

Now that brings us to this other question. What 
purpose now did God have in mind in making this world? 


The answer is that God intended to build a MORAL 
UNIVERSE. He willed from all eternity to build a 
stage, on which characters would EMERGE. 

He could have made a world without morality, without 
virtue, without character. He might have made a world 
in which each and every one of us would have sprouted 
goodness with the same necessity for example, that the 
sun rises in the east and sets in the west. But he 
chose not to make that kind of a world. Not to make a 
world in which we would be good, as fire is hot and 
ice is cold; He willed to make a MORAL UNIVERSE, in 
order that by the right use of the GIFT OF FREEDOM, 
characters might emerge. 

What does God care for things piled into an infinity 
of space, even though they be diamonds? For if all the 
orbits of heaven were as so many jewels, glittering as 
the sun, what would their external but undisturbed 
balance mean to Him, in comparison with a single 
character, which could take hold of the tangled stains 
of a seemingly wrecked and ruined life, and weave out 
of them the beautiful tapestry of saintliness and 
holiness? 

The choice before God in creating the world therefore 
lay between creating a purely mechanical universe, 
peopled by mere automaton machines, or creating a 
SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE in which there would be a choice of 
good and evil. 

Alright, grant it then that God chose to make a moral 
universe, in which there would be character. What was 
the condition in such a universe? HE HAD TO MAKE US 
FREE. 

That is to say, He had to endow us with the power to 
say YES and NO. And to be captains of our own fate and 
destiny. Morality implies responsibility and duty, but 
these can exist only on condition of FREEDOM. 

Stones have no morals, because they are not free. We 
do not condemn ice because it is melted by heat. 
Praise and blame can be bestowed ONLY ON THOSE who are 
masters of their own will. It is only because you, for 
example, have the possibility of saying "NO" that 
there is so much charm in your character when you say 
"YES". Take the quality of freedom away from a man, 
and it is no more possible for him to be virtuous, 
than it is for a blade of grass to be virtuous. And 
there would be no more reason to honor the fortitude 
of martyrs, than there would be, for example, to honor 
the flames which kindle a pile of wood. 

IS IT THEREFORE ANY IMPEACHMENT OF GOD, that He chose 
not to reign over an empire of chemicals? 

If God has deliberately chosen a kind of empire, not 
to be ruled by force but by freedom, and if we find 
that His subjects are able to ACT AGAINST His will, as 
stars and atoms cannot, does this not prove that He 
has possibly given to those human beings the chance of 
breaking allegiance, IN ORDER THAT THERE MIGHT BE 
MEANING AND PURPOSE in that allegiance, when they 
FREELY choose to give it? 

Here we have then a mere suggestion as to the 
possibility of human evil. It's bound up with the 
FREEDOM of man and woman. Man, who is free to love, is 
free to hate. He who is free to obey is free to rebel. 
VIRTUE in this concrete order, is possible only in 
those spheres in which it is possible to be VICIOUS; a 
man can be a saint only in a Church in which it is 
possible to be a devil. 

You say, "well, if I were God, I would destroy evil". 

Well, if you did that, you would destroy human 
freedom. God will not destroy human freedom. If we do 
not want any dictators on this earth, certainly we do 
not want any dictators in the Kingdom of Heaven. And 
those therefore who blame God for allowing man human 
freedom to go on hindering and thwarting His work, are 
like those who, seeing blots and smudges and errors in 
a student's notebook would condemn the teacher for not 
snatching away the book and doing the copy himself. 
Just as the object of the teacher is sound education 
and not the production of neat and well-written copy 
books, so the object of God is the DEVELOPMENT OF 
SOULS and not the production of biological entities. 

And you say, "well, if God knew I would sin, why did 
He make me?" 

God did not make any of us as sinners, we make 
ourselves, in that sense we are creators; therefore 
the greatest gift of God to man short of grace, is the 
gift of HUMAN FREEDOM and the power to LOVE HIM IN 
RETURN.

[Ice_nine]

if you believe love is the greatest force in the world, then answer me this: what is love without pain?

[Luigi]

I think God doesn't believe in Stephen Fry either. 

[BarbTherese]

I guess the important point might be not so much whether we believe in God - as long as God goes on believing in us. 

[veritasluxmea]

Here's an interesting blog article about it. It's not a terribly long read. 

 

 

The Christian answer is a holistic one. That is to say, the whole cosmos is caught up in the network and pattern of evil and suffering. St Paul put it like this: “The whole creation groans for redemption.”

 

How to explain this?

The best metaphor is a theological application of the Butterfly Effect in Chaos Theory. Simply put–one very small event can alter outcomes significantly later. We experience this all the time. We say one small negative word. It turns into a viral gossip chain. We make one small bad decision when we’ve had too much to drink when we’re seventeen and the whole course of our life is changed forever. Furthermore, that change affects everyone else in our family and network of friends.

We say the bad choice of our first parents infected the whole world. From that one bad choice an epidemic of evil was released like a horrible virus or an unstoppable infection. Like the horror film Bodysnatchers–a tiny and seemingly insignificant seed produces a terrible and all pervasive weed.

So all of nature is riddled with an evil and suffering that cannot be understood and eradicated. It has become part of the system, and it does not necessarily have a logical link anymore with any human choice for evil. We can’t understand how this works any more than we can understand how the butterfly flapping it’s wings in the Amazon might influence a hurricane in the Philippines. We can’t understand the pattern and we can’t explain it and we can’t prove it. It remains a theory….but a good theory I think.

Why does a child get bone cancer? We don’t know, but use the butterfly effect and it will all come back to bad or at least ignorant human choices. Maybe there is a chemical in our modern diets that causes cancer and nobody knows about it. Maybe there is radiation emitted from the technology we have which we don’t know causes cancer. Maybe a person is genetically disposed to certain cancers like some people have mold allergies and others don’t. Why? Maybe because a family carries a genetic disposition because thousands of years ago their tribe was under perpetual stress through threat of violence and fear. Maybe that genetic disposition in the modern world makes them vulnerable to cancer.

...

Why doesn’t God do something about it? Christians believe he has, but the way he has is far more profound and far reaching than him simply stepping in and saying, “Now, that’s not very nice is it? Let’s make things better. Here. I’ll use my magic wand.”

The problem with Fry’s complaint is that he hasn’t taken the time to really ponder the question. He’s satisfied with a superficial atheism.

 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2015/02/why-does-god-allow-bone-cancer-in-children.html

 

And he wrote a follow-up too. 

 

 

So let’s begin with another question that Stephen might be asked in his sophomore year: “If God is perfect and good why didn’t he create a perfectly good world?”

The way to answer that question is to ask what a perfectly good world would look like.

Surely a perfectly good world would be like Disneyland would it not? Is that really the sort of paradise we want to live in? Would it be real?

 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2015/02/why-is-there-disaster-not-disneyland.html

[Oremus Pro Invicem]

There is no greater gift God could have endowed us with than free will. Authentic love must be an act of the will. Without it any reality and universe, while there maybe less pain, would not be equal or better in value than a universe with free will. Ask yourself which would be better: 1.) a child hooked up to a comfortable bed induced with so many painkillers nothing will ever hurt him or bother him, or 2.) a child who goes outside and who has the ability to make choices, some which may result in scrapes and bruises? Pain and suffering are not evil things.

Edited February 8, 2015 by Oremus Pro Invicem

[Amppax]

http://www.strangenotions.com/stephen-fry-job-and-the-cross-of-jesus/

The above is Fr. Robert Barron's response to Stephan Fry.

On another note, the problem of evil is not something that we should dismiss. Aquinas lists it as one of only two objections to God's existence, and he doesn't just put forth poor arguments to dismiss them. It's ultimately answerable only through faith, which isn't something we can manufacture for ourselves. We should pay that Stephan Fry be given this grace.