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cf9a2d2
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The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
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evolution
suffering
fear
science
indifference
design
starvation
disease
purpose
natural-selection
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Richard Dawkins |
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8b04cfa
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It has to be admitted that starving nations never seem to be quite so starving that they cannot afford to have far more expensive armaments than anybody else.
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war
nations
starvation
weaponry
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T.H. White |
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ee300f3
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She realized that being starved for words was the same as being starved for food, because both left a hollow place inside you, a place you needed filled to make it through another day. Rachel remembered how growing up she'd thought living on a farm with just a father was as lonely as you could be. (130)
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words
loneliness
interraction
speach
starvation
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Ron Rash |
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338a657
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God is not glorified when we keep for ourselves (no matter how thankfully) what we ought to be using to alleviate the misery of unevangelized, uneducated, unmedicated, and unfed millions. The evidence that many professing Christians have been deceived by this doctrine is how little they give and how much they own. God has prospered them. And by an almost irresistible law of consumer culture (baptized by a doctrine of health, wealth, and prosperity) they have bought bigger (and more) houses, newer (and more) cars, fancier (and more) clothes, better (and more) meat, and all manner of trinkets and gadgets and containers and devices and equipment to make life more fun. They will object: Does not the Old Testament promise that God will prosper his people? Indeed! God increases our yield, so that by giving we can prove our yield is not our god. God does not prosper a man's business so that he can move from a Ford to a Cadillac. God prospers a business so that 17,000 unreached people can be reached with the gospel. He prospers the business so that 12 percent of the world's population can move a step back from the precipice of starvation.
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compassion
greed
stewardship
evangelism
giving
sharing
starvation
gospel
hunger
prosperity
need
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John Piper |
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4170748
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One-third to one-half of humanity are said to go to bed hungry every night. In the Old Stone Age the fraction must have been much smaller. This is the era of hunger unprecedented. Now, in the time of the greatest technical power, is starvation an institution. Reverse another venerable formula: the amount of hunger increases relatively and absolutely with the evolution of culture.
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evolution
stone-age
starvation
hunger
culture
hunters
technology
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Marshall Sahlins |
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c0be49c
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Tolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, starve and go to hell.
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compassion
change
stewardship
tolstoy
indifference
rationalization
starvation
conviction
hunger
conscience
power
guilt
hell
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Randy Alcorn |
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3223aa0
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"No, we love war. War. Starvation. Plague. They fast-track us to enlightenment. "It's the mark of a very, very young soul," Mr. Whittier used to say, "to try and fix the world. To try and save anyone from their ration of misery." We have always loved war. We are born knowing that war is why we're here. And we love disease. Cancer. We love earthquakes. In this amusement-park fun house we call the planet earth, Mr. Whittier says we adore forest fires. Oil spills. Serial killers."
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war
starvation
plague
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Chuck Palahniuk |
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86affc1
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No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where the hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in the breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, i do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonor, and the perdition of one's soul than this kind of prolonged hunger.
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starvation
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Joseph Conrad |
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97922f2
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The boy's candlecolored skin was all but translucent.
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the-road
starvation
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Cormac McCarthy |
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485899f
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North Korea is a famine state. In the fields, you can see people picking up loose grains of rice and kernels of corn, gleaning every scrap. They look pinched and exhausted. In the few, dingy restaurants in the city, and even in the few modern hotels, you can read the through the soup, or the tea, or the coffee. Morsels of inexplicable fat or gristle are served as 'duck.' One evening I gave in and tried a bowl of dog stew, which at least tasted hearty and spicy--they wouldn't tell me the breed--but then found my appetite crucially diminished by the realization that I hadn't seen a domestic animal, not even the merest cat, in the whole time I was there.
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dogs
dog-meat
famine
hotels
korean-cuisine
north-korean-famine
pyongyang
the-pyongyang-times
starvation
north-korea
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Christopher Hitchens |
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264f0b6
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Feeding the family trumps conviction every time, Mary though, a basic law of the human condition.
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human-condition
starvation
hunger
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Karen Essex |