Hiroshima - not all bad?

Suppose one or two people had decided to go on a picnic that day in 1945, and had left the city when the Americans dropped an atomb bomb on it.

Would that have been a good thing? A miraculous escape?

Let us see how prominent theologian Richard Swinburne, a Professor at Oxford University, answers that question on page 264 of his book 'The Existence of God'...


'Suppose that one less person had been burnt by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Then there would have been less opportunity for courage and sympathy;one less piece of information about the effects of atomic radiation....'


But Richard, wouldn't there be one more person alive to show courage and sympathy?

If everybody was killed, who would take advantage of these thousands of millions of opportuities to show courage and sympathy?

Perhaps God got the balance just right at Hiroshima? Not too many dead, and certainly not one person too few....?

And should dead people really be counted in terms of 'information about the effects of atomic radiation'?

A short Bible quiz

Here are four passages written by Jews.

One of them was written by somebody who believed God would restore corpses from the dust they dissolve into.

One of them was written by somebody who believed God would not restore corpses from the dust they dissolve into.

One of them was written by somebody who believed that if a corpse was totally destroyed, God would restore the corpse from the elements it was originally made from.

One of them was written by somebody who believed that if a corpse was totally destroyed, God would creare a brand new body from new materials.



Passage A


All the bodies crumble into the dust of the earth until nothing remains of the body except a spoonful of earthly matter. In the future life when the Holy One, blessed be He, calls to the earth to return all the bodies deposited with it, that which had become mixed with the dust of the earth, like the yeast which is mixed with dough, improves and increases and it raises up all the body. When the Holy One, blessed be He, calls to the earth to return all the bodies deposited with it, that which has become mixed with the dust of the earth improves and increases and raises up all the body without water.



Passage B



So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being" the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven.



Passage C


"I do not know how you came into existence in my womb; it was not I who gave you the breath of life, nor was it I who set in order the elements of which each of you is composed.

Therefore, since it is the Creator of the universe who shapes each man's beginning, as he brings about the origin of everything, he, in his mercy, will give you back both breath and life, because you now disregard yourselves for the sake of his law."



Passage D



Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.



Of course, it is quite easy. Paul wrote passages B and D, because he did not think resurrection involved the corpse being restored. According to Paul, the corpse died and people got a new body, made of new materials.

This totally contradicts the Gospels, where the resurrected body of Jesus was the body which went into the ground, complete with all its flesh, bones and wounds.

Paul clearly had no concept of a Gospel-type of resurrection.