“If Edmond Dantes hadn’t been sent to prison and then managed to escape, Villefort, Danglars and Morcerf would not have gotten what was coming to them.”
A friend who was watching the Jim Caviezel Count of Monte Cristo movie with me said this was why God would sometimes allow bad things to happen to good people. So what about Auguste Ciparis, a jailed criminal who wound up being the only one in Saint-Pierre, Martinique, to survive the eruption of Mount Pelée?
“Maybe God wanted the prisoner to live long enough to learn something.”
And what about all the people who died in the disaster? Especially the babies who clearly weren’t cognitively developed enough to be held responsible for any wrongdoing?
“Well, God called them to him that much sooner.” And presumably, the other people deserving of his grace were similarly blessed.
But what of the others? Did they deserve to die? Did Ciparis truly deserve to live? How could the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god come to these decisions and maintain his reputation for being perfectly just?
In a previous post, I spoke of why I had concluded that the biblical god does not exist. At the time I talked about that being having the following attributes: All-knowing, All-powerful and All-merciful. All-knowing means god knows everything even before it happens. All-powerful means god can do anything. Absolutely anything. All-merciful means showing absolute compassion or forbearance. I explained why I believed he could be two out of three, but not all three at the same time.
Recently, I was reminded that there was a fourth attribute: Perfectly just. Perfectly just means whatever one suffers or enjoys as a result of god’s act or omission is fair or deserved, such as a just reward or just desserts.
For the sake of argument, let’s say the process leading to the eruption of Mount Pelée was independent of god. The all-powerful and all-knowing god could, at the most, have decided to stop it, but he evidently didn’t. His next choice was to allow everyone to die, allow everyone to live, or pick and choose who should die and who should live. To be perfectly just, what should his decision have been? And in doing so, could he also exercise perfect mercy?
Is it possible to be perfectly just and all-merciful? If Ciparis was shown mercy, was he also given what he deserved? Was god both merciful and just when he allowed him to live? Did all those people actually deserve to die (even if some did make it to heaven)? Is that perfect justice?
And did Edmond Dantes deserve to be imprisoned just so his enemies could be punished later? I don’t find that very merciful. I don’t believe it was deserved either. True, he was imprisoned through human deeds. But if we follow my friend’s logic, it had to happen so he could exact his revenge later, and in so doing, see that his enemies get what they deserved.
They say god works in mysterious ways. His ways would also appear to be illogical.
(NOTE: Other sources say there were up to three survivors, including Ciparis.)
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