"Evil is as Evil does ..."

Why I bother to even put myself through the torture of watching Forrest Gump for the umpteenth time, I really don't know. I tear up every time ...…at all of the predictable moments during what has to be a classic answer to the question that atheists and others eager to point out the fallacies of Christianity put forth, "since God created evil, doesn't that mean that God must be evil!"

Yeh, "Evil is as evil does ..." as Forrest Gump's mother put it early in the movie, but I have always enjoyed the attached spam that rolls around in webspace every now and then. It goes as follows:

(begin quote of email spam)
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DID GOD CREATE EVIL?

Did God create everything that exists? Does evil exist? Did God create evil?

A University professor at a well known institution of higher learning challenged his students with this question. "Did God create everything that exists?"

A student bravely replied, "Yes he did!"

"God created everything?" The professor asked.

"Yes sir, he certainly did," the student replied.

The professor answered, "If God created everything; then God created evil. And, since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are, then we can assume God is evil."

The student became quiet and did not respond to the professor's hypothetical definition. The professor, quite pleased with himself, boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, "May I ask you a question, professor?"

"Of course", replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked, "Professor, does cold exist?"

"What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?"

The other students snickered at the young man's question. The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is, in reality, the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy and heat. What makes a body or matter have or transmit energy? Absolute zero (-460 °F) is the total absence of heat; and all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat." The student continued, "Professor, does darkness exist?"

The professor responded, "Of course it does."

The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact, we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present." Finally the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?"

Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course, as I have already said. We see it everyday. It is in the daily examples of man's inhumanities to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist, sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat, or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down.

The young man's name??? Albert Einstein............

A true story.
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(end quote of email spam)

Well, I happen not to believe that this is an actual "true story" taken from the life of Albert Einstein ...… whose words (I suppose) might well (but not likely) be recorded in this manner in some obscure German language diary --…but I do believe that it is an accurate portrayal of the meanings of many words in our come-lately English language to include hate, war, violence, stupidity and even death.

Watching Forrest Gump this afternoon on TNT (a Cable TV station) made that point abundantly clear to me.

It also brought memories of Vietnam (actually two words -- "Nam" means "south," as I recall, and all Vietnamese people -- north and south of the old boundaries regard themselves as "Viets"). And it also brought to this old man a reminder of the randomness of life as portrayed by the white feather in the final scene of Forrest Gump.

I will probably return to the theme (if that's what it might be called) of that incredible flick later in the summer since I finally ordered the DVD from Amazon and will surely see it a couple of times in July or so.

At the very least, I will argue that President Bush is NOT a caricature (real or imaginary) that could be portrayed as Forrest Gump's evil twin.





Not exactly an accurate comparison ... and quite mean, besides!

Despite my wish that we had never become embroiled in a needless war against the Sunnis in Iraq (I think we are on the side of the Shiites, but don't really know, since a war strategy has yet to be revealed to us), I truly believe that President Bush is just as sad as we all are at the deaths of both our youngsters there and the Iraqi civilians. I also think that he is just a tad smarter than most of us give him credit for being, although a tad more likely to listen to the bad advice given him by his closest advisors.

Just musing ...