With or without prayer, God does not discriminate: bad things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people--Bill Tusan
At the church service that followed the 9-11 bombing of the trade center. the reverend Billy Graham was the speaker. He said "As I travelled this great country
people everywhere asked always asked me "why do bad things happen to good people?" There was a hush in the great cathederal as people listened to find meaning from the terrible tragedy of 9-11.
Billy Graham paused and gave this answer to why bad things happen to good people. He said "I don't know".
The Tusanmi floods happend to all in its path. Hurricane Katrina devastated the path it followed and did not choose what it hit. No one prayed it and were spared. I believe in God but to believe that God is involved with the fate and the doings of mankind just does not reconcile with what happens to good and bad people alike irrespective if they pray or not.
The Armenian genocide happened to good and bad Armenians alike. The Jewish holocaust happened to good and bad Jews alike. All through history no one was spared .the tragedies of life just because they were good or bad people.
I agree with Spinoza when he said "
God is without passions, neither is he affected by any emotion of pleasure or pain . . . Strictly speaking, God does not love anyone. [V.17]
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return. [V.19]
Spinoza said what I believe:
My religious belief is the same as was held by Albert Einstein. Rabbo Herbert S, Goldstein sent a very direct telegram to Albert Einstein. The words in the telegram were "Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid. 50 words. "Einstein used only about half his allotted number of words. It bacmae the most famous version of an answer he gave often: "I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who conderns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."
I believe the same as Einstein well before I read the above statement. Further I do not call myself an atheist. Throughout Einstein's life he was consistent in rejecting the charge that he was an atheist. "There are people who say there is no God," he told a friend. "But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views." And unlike Sigmund Freud or Bertrand Russell or George Bernard Shaw, Einstein never felt the urge to denigrate those who believed in God; instead, he tended to denigrate atheists. "What separates me from most so called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos," he explained.