Could God have created a radioactive-free world?

Those who believe him omnipotent would certainly say so. And those who don't believe him to exist would certainly say that he had nothing to do with it. Regardless of my own personal stance, there is room for both beliefs, I think.

This article touches on religion and nuclear power (sorta) and so it touches on two topics of endless interest to me. As a disclaimer, I generally like Slate.com, question the existence of God in a Buddhist "we can't know" kind of way, and support nuclear power. I believe there there are certainly good questions about God. This is not one of them:

Those who believe that suffering and evil can be explained, even justified, by the fact that man has free will and thus the ability to choose evil (the "blame-it-on-the victim" school of theodicy) and argue that courage and goodness would not mean anything if mankind did not have that free choice, still have to answer the question: Is this really the best of all possible worlds? Couldn't God have made it a little better? A little less suffering, fewer of those earthquakes, say, a slightly smaller number of childhood cancers, a little less heartlessness, a little more humanity in human nature? Whenever I hear people echo Voltaire's mocking (in Candide) of Leibniz's assertion this is "the best of all possible worlds," I hear Leibniz with a different, sardonic, anti-Candide questioning tone: "This, THIS is the best of all possible worlds?" This is the
best you could do, God, Mr. Big Shot burning-bush guy?

Asking questions like "couldn't God have made it a little better" begs the question. And while we are at it, couldn't he have made it a little worse? It's a juvenile argument, as far as I'm concerned. It really adds nothing to the conversation. If you think God is silly (as the author appears to), you should consider how silly discussing whether or not he could have created a "little better" world is really dumb. Even allowing that the author concedes the existence of God for this discussion, the discussion itself is entirely myth-based and unknowable.

"Could God have created a "little better" world by not including radioactivity" strikes me as a smoke-filled dorm-room/freshman philosophy question.

So, this is your god

You hear all the time about how Church goers tend to live longer, healthier lives. What you never hear is this tid bit from a Slate.com story (emphasis mine):

Christians, of course, don't limit their prayers to the deceased—they also pray for the sick, and several recent studies have tested whether this practice contributes to recovery. The answer appears to be no.

As part of a study published in the American Heart Journal in 2006, researchers asked Christian congregations to pray for two groups of cardiac patients—the first group knew the Christians were praying on their behalf, and the second thought they might be. As a control, researchers told a third group that Christians might pray for them, but the Christians did not do so.

Mortality rates were comparable across the three groups, but the unprayed-for group experienced the fewest complications.

I'm not convinced it mattered one way or the other. The fewer complications were probably an anomoly or some other issue with the study. But if you are going on faith alone that a omnipotent, benevolent god exists, intervenes, and listens in any way to prayer, this can't be good.

Of course, maybe God knew it was a study, had fun with it, and is sitting up their laughing at us as some kind of practical joke. Since we can't know the plan the man in the sky and his super-marketer have for us, he pretty much has carte blanche to do whatever, doesn't he?