One Question: No Answer.

As I began reading “Candide”, as early as the introduction I could connect with Voltaire. In the introduction he uses the rhetorical questions technique. For, with me at least as a reader it was very effective. The question which most impacted me, and I always ask myself he addressed as, “If the creator is good and all-powerful, as we are told he is, could he not have made a better world?” This question will never have an answer for we believe what we are told, yet what if it was all made up like some myths and legends from different cultures.

Even though I do think about this question constantly, never do I need a more urgent answer than when something bad happens. As Voltaire said, “In times of widespread disasters such questioning becomes more general and more urgent.” This is due to the fact that in a moment of desperation, you can’t seem to understand, how someone who supposedly is so good can’t prevent so much harm. I had this feeling Voltaire describes exactly with the September 11 attacks. Millions of questions like his kept draining in my head. How can such good creator, create such harmful beasts? Why do innocent people have to pay the consequences, for what some bastards decided to do? Why does evil exist if we were created by such good creator? I keep repeating the word good to emphasize that apparently he is not that good after all.

I find it really amazing and brilliant how Voltaire came up with these ideas all the way back in 1758, when there was a diminutive portion of the knowledge there is today. I admire him. I nowhere find him tragic, he is just a person who is not scared to face reality, like most are.

Yet, this is a topic that has gone on for centuries with many different opinions and perspectives. The point is no one will ever know the truth of our creator if there is any, but we are left with this uncertainty we must live on with.