The other day I saw a Facebook post saying something to the effect of "If there is a God, why would he do this to these poor people?" (referring to the earthquake in Haiti.)
Certainly not a bad question. I mean, really—who does that? Is God some schizophrenic mother, coddling her child for years only to suddenly toss them into traffic?
For the sake of argument, let's say that there
is a supreme being—one who gave us life and created us in their image. It would then stand to reason that this entity, being supreme and all, would reside elsewhere in a supreme location or dimension of some sort. One could surmise that even the most lush Earthly Eden would pale in comparison to this supreme galactic real estate.
Despite being located in the paradise-esque Caribbean Islands, Haiti has the highest poverty rate in the Western Hemisphere. The majority of Haitians live a life inconceivable to anyone fortunate enough to be sitting in front of a computer, stumbling upon entries about God on some random blog.
Nonetheless, in our scenario here,
all inhabitants of Earth are beloved offspring of this supreme being, so it would compute that, upon termination of their visit to Earth, they would go back to this supreme residence.
The conceit is that only in a scenario without a God would death be a punishment—in which case there is no one to do the punishing to begin with. And where death and earthquakes are simply the natural order of an intelligent and ever-changing universe.
