Haiti and the problem of evil

The devastating earthquake last week in Haiti has unsurprisingly caused much discussion in the press and on the airwaves between believers and non-believers as to how such tragedies can occur if there is an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God. Comparisons have been made to the famous earthquake of 1755 in Lisbon which destroyed the city and led to the same sorts of thoughts amongst the intelligentsia of the time. Voltaire famously said that such an event in a devout Catholic country proved false the argument advanced by Leibniz, that this world must be the best of all possible worlds, since God could not have created an imperfect world.

Pat Robertson, a well-known and controversial former minister in America, who has a regular show on the Christian Broadcasting Network has managed to upset almost everyone by claiming that the earthquake was no simple natural disaster but divine retribution for a supposed pact the Haitians made with the devil two hundred years ago in return for which they would be freed from French colonial rule. He has also said that it may be a blessing in disguise:




'Shock-jock' Rush Limbaugh managed to annoy the White House and quite a few others by also saying that Americans already are giving money to Haiti in the form of their income tax and that Obama was using the disaster to enhance his image with the 'light-skinned and dark-skinned black community' in America. MSNBC newscaster Keith Olberman was moved to make this response: