Letting God off the Hook.
I have an ambitious agenda: Defend God. At least on one count.
God has often been criticised for a number of failings, the most damning one being how he fails to treat people equally. Some are rich, others starving, some are healthy, others are limbless. There are hundreds of examples.
In my defence, I will use the tool of Mathematics, but nothing that anybody should find beyond their grasp.
A finite number is one that can be counted, at least in theory. The number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the world is finite. Assuming there are a finite number of planets (although this is not accepted universally) each have a finite number of sandy beaches, there would still be a finite number of grains of sand. The number of molecules of air, is likewise finite, as are the number of drops of water.
But what is infinite? Infinity is some quantity that can never be counted. If you think of a number with trillions of digits, it will still be finite, but a simplistic definition of infinity is a number such that whatever number you can think of, it is bigger. Paradoxically, the number of points on a line, however short is infinite. Interesting though this concept is, it does not enter my exposition here.
Let us think of the material things people on this earth possess, and let us admit that God has agreed to this. Let us just look at a Yemeni kid who has lost his arms, and has been blinded by Saudi bombs. And let us compare that child with a Russian billionaire who spends his time sailing around the Mediterranean in his two-billion dollars yacht. It is so easy to jump to the conclusion that God has been unfair to the dying kid, and over-generous to the oligarch.
The kid has no food, whilst the Russian has dined on lobster and caviar. One has to drink water in sips because of the wells have dried up, the other one uses Champagne to wash his Rolex. One shivers from the cold, the other is kept warm in his bed by … the reader can imagine. There is clear evidence of some sort of inequality here. I aver that this inequality is trivial, insignificant in the grand scale of life. If all the material benefits can be classified according to a basic number system, say x points for one item, y for another etc… the total points earned by the richest, the healthiest, the merriest, will be a very large number indeed. But finite.
Before looking at other blessings, we will need to think a bit more about infinity. Infinity, as I described it above, having no limit, when multiplied or divided by a finite number will still be infinity. In other words twice infinity is not bigger than infinity itself, nor half infinity for that matter.
Now consider the human fist. It is difficult, even impossible, to imagine a robotic man-made mechanism of similar size that can outdo what it, the human hand can do. Put this proposition to the oligarch: For crimes against humanity, you have been sentenced to an appropriate punishment, but you have the choice: (a) we chop off your hands, or (b) we deprive you of all your worldly possessions, leaving you with the means of making a reasonable living. We can vary this: (a) we blind you like Edmund blinded his father the Duke of Gloucester, or (b) as above. Or (a) We chop off your sexual equipment, or (b) as above.
I will let the reader draw their own conclusions, but will use a little mathematical notion against a possible counter-argument.
The non material things we all benefit from, sight, hearing, smell, sexual enjoyment, enjoyment of food etc…, are each undeniably, individually, of infinite value. So where is the equality between, on the one hand, one with all those gifts intact and, on the other hand, one who is sightless or limbless?
If this apparently underprivileged individual has at least one of these gifts, say just the power to breathe, albeit with difficulty, then he or she has an infinite number of points. A full-bodied human with all the available gifts will have no more. You can’t go against Mathematics.
