More random stories from Pangloss' best of all possible worlds... incontrovertible evidence of a good, all-knowing, all-powerful God in action.I'm sure some of you will have heard of the story already. For 24 years a woman was held captive by her biological father and continuously raped. Held in a windowless cell tract in the parental home she gave birth to anywhere between 5-7 of his children. He seemingly raped the girl for the first time when she was 11 years old. Remarkably, in that very same house the man's wife and grandparents lived. There were no less than 6 adults going in and out of the house. It goes without saying that they claim to have had no clue as to what was going on in that house of horrors. All of this happened in a small Austrian town... -
On a slightly - just slightly - more cheerful note, the German news magazine DER SPIEGEL has unearthed the rules governing stoning-to-death activities in 21st century Iran. Kinda cute. Basically the convicted evil doers (say someone who slept with someone other than her husband) will be dug in up to their waistlines. Then their heads will be covered, then finally the crowd can go about the stoning to death business. You know, I was always a tad bit worried that that just might be too easy a death for such a heineous crime. Indeed, that's what the religious authorities in that country seem to have thought, too. The problem is basically this: how can we ensure that people don't die too easily or too quickly, because someone uses too big a stone. Thankfully, and in true testimony to the creative spirit of the Iranian justice system, the size of the stones that people may throw during the various stages of the stoning-to-death festival, is strictly regulated. Little did Monty Python's know when they produced the LIFE OF BRIAN that their mocking of the stoning-to-death ritual actually reflected 21st century Iran.
Thank goodness, having been educated in Germany, I know my Leibniz, so I know, much like Voltaire's Pangloss, that none of this should take my eye of the big truth: This earth was created by God. God is good. God is omnipotent. God is omniscient. It is precisely for that reason that this is the best of all possible worlds. Praise the Lord, imagine how bad it would be on earth if our paradise hadn't been created by HIM etc etc etc
