Evidence of a cruel God?

[Audie]

But is it really better to die of cancer or a tornado? Pneumonia? A car crash?

Why are we in mortal bodies? There's a good question, and it's got an answer actually. It has to do with God not being willing to wrestle and struggle with individual human souls forever, but that we should resolve this way or that, either to trust Him or be against Him or indifferent, within a finite time. So...mortality. It seems this is a place of choice, for those that aren't already resolved. Perhaps it just takes 60 or 80 years for some, while others might become clear much sooner.

For those that get past the age of innocence, there is a redeeming rescue available though! This is why the Christ came: to suffer our evils in such a way as to break the power of evil over us, and allow us to reconcile with God, and have real change in our hearts.

And the common possum lives only 3 years brcause... .? PSN?

 

[Dave Watchman]

And the common possum lives only 3 years brcause... .? PSN?

I didn't know that until you said it.

Had to google it.

You right.

I caught one in my front room one day, a juvenile I do believe.

Caught him in a humane cage, cat just looked on unimpressed.

Let the dude loose in the back tree line.

God's creatures.

A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal.

 

[Audie]

I didn't know that until you said it.

Had to google it.

You right.

I caught one in my front room one day, a juvenile I do believe.

Caught him in a humane cage, cat just looked on unimpressed.

Let the dude loose in the back tree line.

God's creatures.

A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal.

I have a big tokay gecko that lives
on my terrace, I see it nearly every day.

I would give it food but I'm not sure I'd have anything it likes.

It sounds like a little dog

 

[Dave Watchman]

Pics, or it didn't happen.

We need the empirical.

Evidence?

Food and Water
Tokay geckos are usually voracious eaters and can be fed a variety of insect prey, including crickets, superworms, mealworms, waxworms, grasshoppers, and cockroaches. Larger tokays might even take pinky mice. Prey should be gut loaded (fed nutritious foods, which then pass to the gecko) and dusted with a vitamin supplement containing calcium. Juveniles can be fed every 24 hours; adults typically are fed every other day. Consult your veterinarian for how much to feed your gecko, based on its age and size.

Danger Audie
Furthermore, tokay geckos have a reputation for being pretty feisty, and they can deliver a painful bite. With regular interaction, they can become less aggressive, but they generally aren't good for handling. Thus, this is not a pet for the novice herpetologist or a home with young children. These geckos are clever and will bite if they feel threatened.

Cursed is he more than all the cattle and more than all the wild beasts; on your belly you shall crawl, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

My cat will eat him.

 

[Audie]

Pics, or it didn't happen.

We need the empirical.

Evidence?

Food and Water
Tokay geckos are usually voracious eaters and can be fed a variety of insect prey, including crickets, superworms, mealworms, waxworms, grasshoppers, and cockroaches. Larger tokays might even take pinky mice. Prey should be gut loaded (fed nutritious foods, which then pass to the gecko) and dusted with a vitamin supplement containing calcium. Juveniles can be fed every 24 hours; adults typically are fed every other day. Consult your veterinarian for how much to feed your gecko, based on its age and size.

Danger Audie
Furthermore, tokay geckos have a reputation for being pretty feisty, and they can deliver a painful bite. With regular interaction, they can become less aggressive, but they generally aren't good for handling. Thus, this is not a pet for the novice herpetologist or a home with young children. These geckos are clever and will bite if they feel threatened.

Cursed is he more than all the cattle and more than all the wild beasts; on your belly you shall crawl, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

My cat will eat him.

I can try for a photo. He is very suspicious
may think I want to make Chinese medicine out of him, so I can't get close.

 

[Audie]

See if you can figure out why the eye looks like that.

 

[Dave Watchman]

I couldn't figure it out.

Is it a reflection of the Yangtze River Delta?

 

[Thief]

Not that I'm an advocate for God,

Assuming God, this life is temporary. Nothing that happens here is permanent. When paradise/the end game is revealed, nothing that happened prior will matter.
It's like having a painful blister. It sucks in the moment, but as soon as it is gone, it is part of a past that is soon forgotten and inconsequential.

You wake in paradise and this life will be like a bad dream. Maybe feel a little relief when you realize none of it was real and nothing that happened in the dream had any importance.

I like and want to agree.......but
this life forms a unique spirit
and you are that unique spirit by cause of events in your life

we all have mishaps getting through this mortal coil
and I would greatly enjoy a spiritual labotomy to erase the lesser.......qualities

but how much of .....me.....
goes to the edge of the sword?

it is written.....if your hand offends you
cut it off

if your eye offends you.....gouge it out

better to enter heaven maimed
than to enter gehenna whole

and what level of self discipline is required for that?

 

[firedragon]

Onchocerca volvulus is a nematode worm that spends most of its life in the tissues of a host organism. In humans this can lead to the condition onchocerciasis, which manifests itself as severe skin and eye itching and often leads to visual impairment or permanent blindeness. According to the wiki entry onchocerciasis is the second leading cause of blindness in the world. The first is trachoma, also caused by a parsitic organism - a bacterium in this case (the same little bugger that cause chlamydia).

If you take the existence of nebulae, rainforests, the seasons, in short the beauty and complexity of the natural order as evidence of a creative and intelligent God then what do you make of the existence of a little roundworm that lives in lesions in the eye and cause the blindness of millions of children every year?

If the green grass and the blue skies suggest that there is a God and that he is great and that he loves us doesn't onchocerca volvulus point to a cosmic sociopath?

Nightmare fuel: List of parasites of humans - Wikipedia

If a worm creates rhetoric against, the "SUN" then creates rhetoric for.

 

[Clara Tea]

Onchocerca volvulus is a nematode worm that spends most of its life in the tissues of a host organism. In humans this can lead to the condition onchocerciasis, which manifests itself as severe skin and eye itching and often leads to visual impairment or permanent blindness. According to the wiki entry onchocerciasis is the second leading cause of blindness in the world. The first is trachoma, also caused by a parasitic organism - a bacterium in this case (the same little bugger that cause chlamydia).

If you take the existence of nebulae, rainforests, the seasons, in short the beauty and complexity of the natural order as evidence of a creative and intelligent God then what do you make of the existence of a little roundworm that lives in lesions in the eye and cause the blindness of millions of children every year?

If the green grass and the blue skies suggest that there is a God and that he is great and that he loves us doesn't onchocerca volvulus point to a cosmic sociopath?

Nightmare fuel: List of parasites of humans - Wikipedia

I've spent a lot of time writing about the African Eyeworm (Onchocerca volvulus), the leading cause of blindness in the world. Hundreds of thousands of eggs per day hatch when they are in the intestines, and, because humans are likely not the original host (possibly extinct for millions of years), the larva migrate throughout the body seeking the intestine of its original host (which it can't find in the human body). So, they migrate into every part of the body (through the heart, lungs, etc). When they enter the eye, body tries to kill it with antibodies, and those antibodies are the cause of eye damage (not the worm, itself). They call these worms "larva migrans" because they travel throughout the body. The worms can be seen by the naked by (or magnifying lens) inside eyes (not to be confused with vitreous floaters which can sometimes look like worms). It is called volvolus because it looks like a woman's body part, including stripes which look like crinkles.

The worms, while crawling just under the skin, cause itching so severe that some commit suicide to end it. They get stuck going over bones, so form nodules by elbows (and other places). To diagnose, those nodules are cut off (painfully, without anesthesia, which would knock out the worms), then put into a liquid to watch if worms come out. The Guinea and Ghana studies (which I read 20 years ago, so I'm a bit rusty) detailed the search for medicine to cure the infestations.

Humans are human-centric. We think that everything is made for us. Have you considered that humans are made of meat, and a lot of organisms eat meat? Could it be that we are worm food? Maybe the world is made for the worm?

I see your point that God made a world of organisms eating each other (sometimes a water buffalo may scream in pain as a lion eats it alive). It is, indeed, a cruel world.

President Jimmy Carter wanted to eliminate the Guinea worm. It sticks its head through the skin to breath, usually by the ankles. Africans usually tie a string around that head to slowly pull the worm out over a period of months. Through millions of years of evolution, it has evolved to fool the human immune system, so it won't be attacked. But don't we have a use for such an ability? What about eliminating rejection of artificial hearts? Currently, those mechanical hearts are made with a rough surface that gets human cells to stick to it (making it appear to be part of the body), but still there is rejection (despite anti-rejection drugs). We should not exterminate the worm, but confine it to labs for study. But that would lead to bio-warfare labs and accidental escapes of pathogens, which some people claim occurred with COVID at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (which wrote a research paper in 2015, published 2020, about creating a bat coronavirus/SARS gene spliced hybrid that attacks Hela (human lung cells in a petri dish) and has a 96% DNA match to the current COVID virus (source: Wikipedia, Wuhan Institute).

Follow Christ and cure all.

It would behoove us to eradicate human pathogens (things that can harm us) around the world. Why should we spend our money to help someone halfway around the world? Because what goes around, eventually comes around to us. Take, for example, tuberculosis. The US eliminated it through the US, and almost the entire world. It mutated, and now is antibiotic resistant, and coming back with a vengeance. If it had been eliminated around the world (perhaps with some held in labs), we wouldn't be in these dire straights. This is why following Christ is such a great idea.

We have an odd political alliance. Religious Right Christians vote for Republicans, and Republicans are for "me first." They generally vote for the billionaires (H. Ross Perot, Malcolm Steve Forbes, Donald Trump), and most of those cut taxes for the rich (promising trickle down to the poor, which never happens....just factories outsource jobs for cheaper labor, increasing unemployment). So, universal health care (where everyone can get cured) is voted against.

Christians vote against Christ.

 

[Dave Watchman]

I've spent a lot of time writing about the African Eyeworm (Onchocerca volvulus), the leading cause of blindness in the world. Hundreds of thousands of eggs per day hatch when they are in the intestines, and, because humans are likely not the original host (possibly extinct for millions of years), the larva migrate throughout the body seeking the intestine of its original host (which it can't find in the human body). So, they migrate into every part of the body (through the heart, lungs, etc). When they enter the eye, body tries to kill it with antibodies, and those antibodies are the cause of eye damage (not the worm, itself). They call these worms "larva migrans" because they travel throughout the body. The worms can be seen by the naked by (or magnifying lens) inside eyes (not to be confused with vitreous floaters which can sometimes look like worms). It is called volvolus because it looks like a woman's body part, including stripes which look like crinkles.

The worms, while crawling just under the skin, cause itching so severe that some commit suicide to end it. They get stuck going over bones, so form nodules by elbows (and other places). To diagnose, those nodules are cut off (painfully, without anesthesia, which would knock out the worms), then put into a liquid to watch if worms come out. The Guinea and Ghana studies (which I read 20 years ago, so I'm a bit rusty) detailed the search for medicine to cure the infestations.

Humans are human-centric. We think that everything is made for us. Have you considered that humans are made of meat, and a lot of organisms eat meat? Could it be that we are worm food? Maybe the world is made for the worm?

I see your point that God made a world of organisms eating each other (sometimes a water buffalo may scream in pain as a lion eats it alive). It is, indeed, a cruel world.

President Jimmy Carter wanted to eliminate the Guinea worm. It sticks its head through the skin to breath, usually by the ankles. Africans usually tie a string around that head to slowly pull the worm out over a period of months. Through millions of years of evolution, it has evolved to fool the human immune system, so it won't be attacked. But don't we have a use for such an ability? What about eliminating rejection of artificial hearts? Currently, those mechanical hearts are made with a rough surface that gets human cells to stick to it (making it appear to be part of the body), but still there is rejection (despite anti-rejection drugs). We should not exterminate the worm, but confine it to labs for study. But that would lead to bio-warfare labs and accidental escapes of pathogens, which some people claim occurred with COVID at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (which wrote a research paper in 2015, published 2020, about creating a bat coronavirus/SARS gene spliced hybrid that attacks Hela (human lung cells in a petri dish) and has a 96% DNA match to the current COVID virus (source: Wikipedia, Wuhan Institute).

Follow Christ and cure all.

It would behoove us to eradicate human pathogens (things that can harm us) around the world. Why should we spend our money to help someone halfway around the world? Because what goes around, eventually comes around to us. Take, for example, tuberculosis. The US eliminated it through the US, and almost the entire world. It mutated, and now is antibiotic resistant, and coming back with a vengeance. If it had been eliminated around the world (perhaps with some held in labs), we wouldn't be in these dire straights. This is why following Christ is such a great idea.

We have an odd political alliance. Religious Right Christians vote for Republicans, and Republicans are for "me first." They generally vote for the billionaires (H. Ross Perot, Malcolm Steve Forbes, Donald Trump), and most of those cut taxes for the rich (promising trickle down to the poor, which never happens....just factories outsource jobs for cheaper labor, increasing unemployment). So, universal health care (where everyone can get cured) is voted against.

Christians vote against Christ.

That's grizzly.

I bought some drug called ivermectin for covid, a Japanese anti parasite and anti viral. It's cheap, off the patent.

The African Governments should throw the anti parasite drug book at this thing.

Implications of all the available evidence
Modelling and field studies done since the start of this study suggest that annual mass administration of ivermectin could eliminate onchocerciasis in many African foci, while other areas need alternative strategies, including more efficacious drugs. Furthermore, there are concerns about diminishing susceptibility of O volvulus to ivermectin's embryostatic effect in areas of long-term use. The suboptimal responses to ivermectin we observed show that data on changes in the frequency of such responses with duration of community-directed treatment with ivermectin are needed for conclusions about reduced O volvulus susceptibility or emerging resistance to ivermectin. Our data suggest that moxidectin could accelerate progress towards the elimination of onchocerciasis in Africa, including in areas with suboptimal responses to ivermectin.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32844-1/fulltext

The effects of ivermectin on transmission of Onchocerca volvulus
E W Cupp, M J Bernardo, A E Kiszewski, R C Collins, H R Taylor, M A Aziz, B M Greene

Abstract
Ivermectin, given to onchocerciasis patients as a single oral dose of 200 micrograms per kilogram of body weight, substantially reduced the uptake of Onchocerca volvulus microfilariae by Simulium yahense, an efficient black fly vector of the parasite in the tropical rain forests of West Africa. Three months after treatment, patients given ivermectin infected flies at a significantly lower rate than those who had received diethylcarbamazine or placebo, thereby reducing the number of developing larvae in the vector population. This diminished rate of infectiousness was also evident 6 months after treatment. These results strongly suggest that ivermectin could be effective in interrupting transmission of Onchocerca volvulus for epidemiologically important periods of time.
The effects of ivermectin on transmission of Onchocerca volvulus - PubMed
​

Peaceful Sabbath.

 

[Yerda]

All it suggests to me is that I am not able to judge God's nature because I don't know why existence functions as it does.

Ok. So would I be right in thinking that you wouldn't make the claim that we know God loves us because of how creation sustains us?

I believe there is no such evidence and the example given is not correct. Gods love is expressed in many ways and sometimes those ways are for discipline.

What do you mean when you say the example given is not correct?

God's love blinding five year old children seems a bit harsh, no?

I find it problematic to excessively anthropomorphize the gods. Anthropomorphism is a great teaching device and a great way of telling the story - that's why it is widely used in the sacred stories of the world's traditions. But taking these literary licenses well... literally is just a poor idea in my experience.

I also find it problematic to project human value judgements onto the gods. Anthropocentrism is routine in the West in part because the dominant religious traditions here teach about humans being "special" or "apex" but this is not the case in all traditions and certainly not the narrative one learns by studying sciences.

It's some combination of anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism to suggest the gods care specifically about humans and that therefore their behaviors (or inactions) towards humans mean they are loving or cruel. I just don't look at the gods that way.

Ok. That's fair enough.

Not that I'm an advocate for God,

Assuming God, this life is temporary. Nothing that happens here is permanent. When paradise/the end game is revealed, nothing that happened prior will matter.
It's like having a painful blister. It sucks in the moment, but as soon as it is gone, it is part of a past that is soon forgotten and inconsequential.

You wake in paradise and this life will be like a bad dream. Maybe feel a little relief when you realize none of it was real and nothing that happened in the dream had any importance.

That's a perspective that would change how we evaluate the type of thing raised in OP.

Wouldn't this put you in the position where you couldn't make any claims about the morality of suffering and its prevention, however?

Holocaust sucked, but now it's done it's inconsequential. Hmm?

But is it really better to die of cancer or a tornado? Pneumonia? A car crash?

Why are we in mortal bodies? There's a good question, and it's got an answer actually. It has to do with God not being willing to wrestle and struggle with individual human souls forever, but that we should resolve this way or that, either to trust Him or be against Him or indifferent, within a finite time. So...mortality. It seems this is a place of choice, for those that aren't already resolved. Perhaps it just takes 60 or 80 years for some, while others might become clear much sooner.

For those that get past the age of innocence, there is a redeeming rescue available though! This is why the Christ came: to suffer our evils in such a way as to break the power of evil over us, and allow us to reconcile with God, and have real change in our hearts.

I don't know which way is best to die. I can tell you, confidently, it's best that millions aren't blinded.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Onchocerca volvulus is a nematode worm that spends most of its life in the tissues of a host organism. In humans this can lead to the condition onchocerciasis, which manifests itself as severe skin and eye itching and often leads to visual impairment or permanent blindeness. According to the wiki entry onchocerciasis is the second leading cause of blindness in the world. The first is trachoma, also caused by a parsitic organism - a bacterium in this case (the same little bugger that cause chlamydia).

If you take the existence of nebulae, rainforests, the seasons, in short the beauty and complexity of the natural order as evidence of a creative and intelligent God then what do you make of the existence of a little roundworm that lives in lesions in the eye and cause the blindness of millions of children every year?

If the green grass and the blue skies suggest that there is a God and that he is great and that he loves us doesn't onchocerca volvulus point to a cosmic sociopath?

Nightmare fuel: List of parasites of humans - Wikipedia

Being a deist I start with the premise that a Higher Intelligence (although the "intelligence" part is open to discussion) kickstarted life and then went AWOL leaving evolution to complete the job. As in life, nothing is perfect and all sorts of nasty creatures that are parasitic or just plain dangerous evolved alongside us. These creatures cause tremendous--I mean IMMENSE suffering and pain along with being a threat to life. Does this HI care? NO! Not in the slightest. I doubt it's even aware of us. Why we are even here is the biggest mystery in the universe to me since it's obvious we don't serve any function to help the universe by our presence. If we destroy this planet it's lights out for our species. I doubt another one will come along. So I doubt this HI is sociopathic. It doesn't even know what the word means. It just is. Don't waste your time praying for mercy if you're bitten by one of these malevolent creatures because you're just talking to empty space. It won't hear you or respond to you with mercy. Just my HO.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

I don't know which way is best to die.

Best way to die IMHO is an unexpected stray bullet in the back of the head. One moment you're happy and the next you're worm food.

 

[PureX]

Ok. So would I be right in thinking that you wouldn't make the claim that we know God loves us because of how creation sustains us?

I wouldn't claim to know anything about God. Because I don't. I could, however, choose to believe that about God, if I wanted. Although, I would have to accept that God apparently loves all that exists, not just me, or humans, based on that reasoning.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Even so, I still have no idea how it all works, and why it is the way it is. So how can I possibly judge?
Only if you expected God to be a very hands on sort. But why would we expect that? One would presume that God created it as God wished it to be, to begin with. So would have no need to meddle with it, afterward.
And we're generally fine with it when we're the parasites. So why accuse God letting it happen when we're the victims?

The problem is the system is so dysfunctional. Everything is threatened by everything else. Did God's world have to be filled with so much misery in order for God's plan to function properly? Who in here thinks they could have done a better job designing it? I certainly think so.

 

[PureX]

The problem is the system is so dysfunctional. Everything is threatened by everything else. Did God's world have to be filled with so much misery in order for God's plan to function properly? Who in here thinks they could have done a better job designing it? I certainly think so.

Is this the only way existence could have worked? I don't know. And even if it was not, I don't know the purpose of it all, so I still couldn't stand in judgement of the methodology chosen. For all I know, our current experience of existence is only a very small, yet necssary part of a much greater whole; that has a purpose far beyond anything we could imagine from the here and now.

 

[SeekingAllTruth]

Is this the only way existence could have worked? I don't know. And even if it was not, I don't know the purpose of it all, so I still couldn't stand in judgement of the methodology chosen. For all I know, our current experience of existence is only a very small, yet necssary part of a much greater whole; that has a purpose far beyond anything we could imagine from the here and now.

Sad that such an omnipotent omniscience God couldn't come up with something we could at least comprehend.

 

[PureX]

Sad that such an omnipotent omniscience God couldn't come up with something we could at least comprehend.

Unless our not comprehending it at this stage of our existence is an important part of the whole. What you're wishing for may be exactly what could harm you most. This is my point: there's just no way for us to know. So there's no point in our passing judgments.

 

[Baroodi]

Onchocerca volvulus is a nematode worm that spends most of its life in the tissues of a host organism. In humans this can lead to the condition onchocerciasis, which manifests itself as severe skin and eye itching and often leads to visual impairment or permanent blindeness. According to the wiki entry onchocerciasis is the second leading cause of blindness in the world. The first is trachoma, also caused by a parsitic organism - a bacterium in this case (the same little bugger that cause chlamydia).

If you take the existence of nebulae, rainforests, the seasons, in short the beauty and complexity of the natural order as evidence of a creative and intelligent God then what do you make of the existence of a little roundworm that lives in lesions in the eye and cause the blindness of millions of children every year?

If the green grass and the blue skies suggest that there is a God and that he is great and that he loves us doesn't onchocerca volvulus point to a cosmic sociopath?

Nightmare fuel: List of parasites of humans - Wikipedia

lots of evil in this world is a product of unwise or malicious human activity. take for example COVID 19, HIV, global worming and health hazard, chemical and nuclear effects etc (Rottenness prevailed on lands and seas as a result of what was done by the people) Quranic verse