{"id":7628,"date":"2025-02-21T18:00:36","date_gmt":"2025-02-22T02:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=7628"},"modified":"2025-02-21T18:00:36","modified_gmt":"2025-02-22T02:00:36","slug":"things-glen-found-interesting-volume-492-suffering-plane-crashes-and-near-death-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2025\/02\/21\/things-glen-found-interesting-volume-492-suffering-plane-crashes-and-near-death-experiences","title":{"rendered":"Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 492: suffering, plane crashes, and near death experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/a>\n\n On Fridays I share articles\/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things Glen Found Interesting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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  1. The Best Argument Against Having Faith in God<\/a> (Ross Douthat, New York Times): \u201cOne interesting point about [suffering] is that while it\u2019s often folded into the briefs for atheism that claim to rely primarily on hard evidence and science, it isn\u2019t properly speaking an argument that some creating power does not exist. Rather it\u2019s an argument about the nature<\/em> of that power, a claim that the particular kind <\/em>of God envisioned by many believers and philosophers \u2014 all powerful and all good \u2014 would not have made the world in which we find ourselves, and therefore that this kind<\/em> of God does not exist. The other interesting point about this argument is that while its core evidence is empirical, in the sense that terrible forms of suffering obviously exist and can be extensively enumerated, its power fundamentally rests on an intuition about just how much suffering is too much. By this I mean that many people who emphasize the problem of evil would concede that a good God might allow some<\/em> form of pain and suffering within a material creation for various good reasons.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Why Are So Many Planes Crashing?<\/a> (Lyman Stone, Substack): \u201cNow let\u2019s zoom out and just ask: are incidents of any cause<\/em> getting more common? They aren\u2019t.\u2026 [Also] I don\u2019t see any meaningful uptick over time in fatality incidents. Actually they\u2019ve clearly declined since the early 1990s or even early 2000s. Which is wild, since total amounts of flights have massively<\/em> increased! Note that I am including known incidents through February 18, 2025 in those figures above!\u201d<\/strong>\n