[Acrylic-bob]

Isn't it funny? You have to laugh really> I watched a Newsnight discussion the other evening in which the same question was debated by a moslem, an athiest and the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. One would expect a chap of the Cardinal's standing to have the answer to the question of how a caring God could let such a terrible thing happen, down pat! After all is said and done, he is one of the people who will gather to elect the next Pope, for all we know he could even be the next Pope! instead we were treated to the most inept and bumbling series of half statements and bluster |i think I have ever heard. Basil Hulme must be spinning in his grave. And even after the athiest described god as a terrorist, the answers did not get any better. Strangly enough, it was the moslem who came out of the discussion with his credibility still reasonably intact, by saying that god was so different and removed from human expectations as to defy all attempts at understanding. Which is to say that; God moves in mysterious ways...etc. Which is nothing we have not heard before and is no more believable now than it has ever been.

The point about athiests that willow appears to have difficulty with is that, for the sake of argument, the athiests is prepared first to assume that the deity exists, and on that basis he then challenges the believer to account for the shortcomings of the deity. When the believer cannot, the athiest wins! The athiest has at no time during the argument accepted the existance of the deity, he merely takes a contrary position to prove a point.