One of the cornerstones of debate about religion is the idea of God’s plan. A common objection to the idea of God is the ‘Problem of Evil‘, which questions how evil can exist in a world governed by a benevolent god. One of the prime responses is that what we see as evil isn’t really so, it’s just our lack of understanding of God’s plan that makes it appear evil.

I can’t argue against that (well actually I can, but for our purposes I won’t now). What puzzles me is that this is seen as a defense of religion. One person dies of malaria every 30 seconds. Now I consider myself quite an imaginative person, at least judging by the amount of daydreaming I do, yet I am utterly unable to conceive of a plan that requires a person to die every 30 seconds from a bug bite. One person every 30 seconds, almost all of whom will be unknown to more than a few dozen other people.

I contend that if you truly believe that, then you have lost all basis for, well, pretty much anything. If you think that a plan so utterly incomprehensible to mere humans is in play, then it seems unavoidable to think that literally anything could be part of that plan, including having your god lie to you about what he wants. Certainly I struggle to understand how God so loves us that he lets one of us die every 30 seconds, in or out of His faith.

Update: This is an old article that I finished off today, and the link no longer works. The latest figures I could find are around 1-3 million deaths per year, which is consistent with the one every 30 seconds)