KNOW THAT THERE IS A CALLOUS STREAK BEHIND "ALL THINGS ARE PART OF GOD'S KINDLY PLAN" 

“This evil has happened. Because it has happened God must have a plan. A greater good will come. He never allows an evil to win, it only seems to.”

It is one thing to see that this is good doctrine and affirm it but you do not.  What you do is look at the horrors and then ad hoc.  That is mercenary.

You will see that this divine purpose doctrine and the concept of God being good go together. To deny one is to deny the other.

Evil cannot be too obvious otherwise it will be inviting action from good people.  It will put those who cherish it right off. Evil has to hide behind good to thrive and protect itself.  If so then this doctrine of the divine plan could be an example of that. If it is, it is the ultimate and extreme example.

The divine purpose doctrine is rife but people accept it in a lazy offhand way.  That people do not care about how important it is, is a bad fruit and indicates that the doctrine is very very likely to be bad.  How many line up to religion class for answers?   Nobody virtually.  We atheists in fact do the worrying about it.  If we are too lazy to do much good we are not lazy in trying to see the horror.  At least we look.  Looking is helping.  It sends a message.

Everybody has to admit that accidently condoning terrible suffering that you will never have to endure for it belongs to others is inexcusable. You do not own their pain to make an assessment. Guessing with something so serious is as terrible as saying, “That baby has burns and I have bandages but I will walk on for God will provide.” There is a difference but no difference in principle.  With certain guesses you cannot use, "I meant well," to polish the halo.  The nurse in desperation cannot use just any injection.

The good divine plan doctrine would be one thing if it were you carrying out the plan and knowing what you are doing. You would not be standing talking about "all will be well" from a place of relative safety and comfort compared to the suffering of others that you will never fully understand.  You would not be standing like some outsider "talking down" to the suffering of others.  There is no compassion unless you know the pain of the other.  It is true that none of us truly has much compassion.  The doctrine is a further ingraining of the lack of compassion we already have.  We ignore most suffering for we can only deal with so much.  And downplaying plays a role in the ignoring even if we do not realise it.  But that is no excuse for going further and glibly saying it is a divine plan. 

To say God can be trusted that much would be terrible if you at least had pizza with him for lunch one day.  But it is beyond terrible when you have no personal touch with him at all.

As the plan involves everybody, you are virtually nothing. And you are really saying that if you had the power you would dump this on everybody else. I mean you would implement God’s plan for you are supposed to do what he does for he is perfect. And this plan has a horrible side. That is too extreme. It is too much of a leap of faith. This is about the leap not the people.

Religion may answer that the doctrine of the good divine plan prevents us from thinking that doing harm does not matter. But it cannot persuade you from holding that if the plan is so great and God is so much bigger than evil that harming others in fact is not wrong. If you give a child a knife to cut bread you know the child may cut a finger off. You cannot use the excuse, “But I only wanted her to cut bread.” Religion cannot persuade so it must take responsibility for the moral crusaders in its fold who went to persecute the “wicked.”

The doctrine is not about a single act happening and a divine plan needing it or tolerating it.  There is no such thing as a single act.  It is only a summary for a collection of actions and thoughts.  You do something though you know it can change the direction of the future forever.   It could be just though it does not look like it, to beat up a child for it is part of the plan for the next life.  Justice is not an act in this scheme but a prolonged reality.  It is not a moment but a span of time, it can be decades.   It is a wheel with many spokes. Believers have to keep the focus on an "individual" act and blind themselves to the reality, to what they all know.

Despite all that, the doctrine is a placebo. Like every placebo it is a lie. We fear, “People may start thinking that anything goes for it is for some good cosmic plan.” So to avoid social chaos we project such a thing unto God instead. Why? It means we still have a motive based on fear. We could as easily project it onto the most powerful ruler on earth. Same thing. We think that by having one person inventing rules it keeps a form of order. This makes us feel safer. If we really think the plan despite appearances is for the best we would worry little if somebody attacks us.

Christianity says that God can make all things from evolution if he wants and this does not refute his beneficent nature. They add that any version of Darwinism that says that nature has to produce evil would. So they are telling science not to find evil in nature!  A theory of God that threatens science can hardly pretend to care about divine plans that honour truth and justice.

Possibilities do not count. Probabilities do. This sounds like a thinking matter. But it is a personal one. The person who tries to lure us into taking their guesses seriously is attacking our thinking power and trying to manipulate. They know that misleading can harm. So take it as a thinking matter and also as a personal one. You are a thinking being and they are attacking that aspect of you. They are attacking you. Possibilities do not count for people count.  So drop the divine plan theory.

The divine plan perspective demands the notion that God will enact laws of conduct.  A plan without such a foundation would not be a plan at all.  Do believers in God really want you to be spontaneously good? Do they want you to just do good and not for any reward from God or from the fear of losing God forever? Or the fear of being punished by God? No. They say they do. At the end of the day they think that rewards and threats help us behave like well trained dogs. The ten commandments say “Thou shalt not” not “Thou ought not.” What would be better? The latter. They should not be commandments or rules but warnings of the harms of doing certain things. They should try to inspire and trust people.

There is so much wrong with the divine purpose claim that we have to consider it an insult to our dignity as beings who need care and respect.  It maligns our intellectual powers.

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