https://wist.info Wish I'd Said That! Fri, 15 May 2026 18:38:51 +0000 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://wist.info/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/little-w-little-box-60x60.jpg https://wist.info 32 32 43606282 https://wist.info/ingersoll-robert-green/84125/ https://wist.info/ingersoll-robert-green/84125/#respond Fri, 15 May 2026 18:38:51 +0000 Dave https://wist.info/?p=84125 For me, it is hard to see the plan or design in earthquakes and pestilences. It is somewhat difficult to discern the design or the benevolence in so making the world that billions of animals live only on the agonies of others. The justice of God is not visible to me in the history of this world. When I think of the suffering and death, of the poverty and crime, of the cruelty and malice, of the heartlessness of this “design” and “plan,” where beak and claw and tooth tear and rend the quivering flesh of weakness and despair, I cannot convince myself that it is the result of infinite wisdom, benevolence, and justice.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, freethinker, orator
Essay (1881-11) “The Christian Religion,” “Part 2” North American Review, Vol. 133, No. 300
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Collected in Allen Thorndike Rice (ed.), The Christian Religion, ch. 3 (1882). ]]> https://wist.info/ingersoll-robert-green/84125/feed/ 0 84125