Surely the world we live in proves there is no [loving] God.

[suzy smith]

if you believed in God, would you be willing to turn to him and do what he asked of you if the result would be that no children would ever be in hospital suffering from any affliction?

With all due respect I have to say this is missing the point on a grand scale!
Almost unbelievable………almost.

 

[monti]

Picture the scene, “Mummy why am I dying of cancer? Why does it hurt so much?”
Mummy, “Its O.K. darling, its just God testing us” or “we have messed up the world and you have to suffer and die for it” or “God is a loving God and he could cure you and bring you back home to mummy if he wanted to but you are not that important to him it seems”

I am I missing the point here?

The apologist will no doubt point out to you the book of Job. Particularly Jobs test.
I think this was a terrible thing to do for a bet and the amusement of the Gods.

Read this and see what a sadistic pair these two are:

One day the members of the heavenly court came to present themselves before the LORD, and the Accuser, Satan,[came with them. “Where have you come from?” the LORD asked Satan.
Satan answered the LORD, “I have been patrolling the earth, watching everything that’s going on.”
Then the LORD asked Satan, “Have you noticed my servant Job? He is the finest man in all the earth. He is blameless—a man of complete integrity. He fears God and stays away from evil.”
Satan replied to the LORD, “Yes, but Job has good reason to fear God. You have always put a wall of protection around him and his home and his property. You have made him prosper in everything he does. Look how rich he is!11 But reach out and take away everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face!”
“All right, you may test him,” the LORD said to Satan. “Do whatever you want with everything he possesses, but don’t harm him physically.” So Satan left the LORD’s presence.
One day when Job’s sons and daughters were feasting at the oldest brother’s house, a messenger arrived at Job’s home with this news: “Your oxen were plowing, with the donkeys feeding beside them, when the Sabeans raided us. They stole all the animals and killed all the farmhands. I am the only one who escaped to tell you.”
While he was still speaking, another messenger arrived with this news: “The fire of God has fallen from heaven and burned up your sheep and all the shepherds. I am the only one who escaped to tell you.”
While he was still speaking, a third messenger arrived with this news: “Three bands of Chaldean raiders have stolen your camels and killed your servants. I am the only one who escaped to tell you.”
While he was still speaking, another messenger arrived with this news: “Your sons and daughters were feasting in their oldest brother’s home. Suddenly, a powerful wind swept in from the wilderness and hit the house on all sides. The house collapsed, and all your children are dead. I am the only one who escaped to tell you.”
Job stood up and tore his robe in grief. Then he shaved his head and fell to the ground to worship.

Job kept asking what he had done to deserve this sadistic treatment but the gods simply continued to play their game of who is best god and who has the loyalist of servants.

One day the members of the heavenly court came again to present themselves before the LORD, and the Accuser, Satan,came with them. “Where have you come from?” the LORD asked Satan.
Satan answered the LORD, “I have been patrolling the earth, watching everything that’s going on.”
Then the LORD asked Satan, “Have you noticed my servant Job? He is the finest man in all the earth. He is blameless—a man of complete integrity. He fears God and stays away from evil. And he has maintained his integrity, even though you urged me to harm him without cause.”
Satan replied to the LORD, “Skin for skin! A man will give up everything he has to save his life. But reach out and take away his health, and he will surely curse you to your face!”
“All right, do with him as you please,” the LORD said to Satan. “But spare his life.” So Satan left the LORD’s presence, and he struck Job with terrible boils from head to foot.
Job scraped his skin with a piece of broken pottery as he sat among the ashes. His wife said to him, “Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die.”
But Job replied, “You talk like a foolish woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” So in all this, Job said nothing wrong.

It goes on to tell us that god reimbursed Job and so he should have, after all, this suffering was only to prove a point and give a massage to the ego of a megalomaniac sadistic psychopath.
Yes reimbursing Job made everything all better, nice and dandy. oh and he "blessed him with more children " to replace the innocent ones who had been killed when an house was dropped on them.

 

[Pegg]

With all due respect I have to say this is missing the point on a grand scale!
Almost unbelievable………almost.

so you weren't really asking for a christian perspective to you question?

Im sorry, i thought you were sincerely asking for an answer.

 

[suzy smith]

so you weren't really asking for a christian perspective to you question?

Im sorry, i thought you were sincerely asking for an answer.

Yes but the answer has to make sense.
Sorry but I have JWs in the family and have debated with them most of my life.
To me you make no sense at all so I will move on.

 

[Pegg]

Yes but the answer has to make sense.
Sorry but I have JWs in the family and have debated with them most of my life.
To me you make no sense at all so I will move on.

yep, no worries.

 

[monti]

Whom God created in the first place and has the ability to destroy at any given time, yet chooses not to for some reason. I guess he enjoys watching people starve, kill each other, and get ravaged by diseases such as cancer. What a top-notch guy. :sarcastic

the bible explains why these things are permitted... people arnt' listening.

No the bible tells us what the gods deemed we only need to know according to many here, so this is not to say it tells us the whole truth or puts us in the picture in any way. Hence all the awkward questions many religious bible studiers evade like a plague.

 

[Pegg]

No the bible tells us what the gods deemed we only need to know according to many here, so this is not to say it tells us the whole truth or puts us in the picture in any way. Hence all the awkward questions many religious bible studiers evade like a plague.

well, there is an explanation found in the bible. My experience is that people dont really care what answers it contains...they have their opinions and they are sticking to them.

 

[FearGod]

I bumped into a Plymouth Brethren the other day. Now I am not singling out that particular religion but the conversation highlighted a problem I have always had about the God of the bible.
I asked him “why would a loving God create smallpox for example, or river blindness [Onchocerciasis] or Malaria” and so on. His answer was ‘to test mankind’ ?

Surely the world we see around us proves behind all doubt whatsoever that if there is an intelligent creator he is not the loving God that the Christians believe in?

Are human a sentimental creatures ?

If we are a loving and peaceful creatures,then why there are many wars,crimes ..etc.
If we are a loving and peaceful creatures why we kill peaceful animals and eat them.

We love the animals which are close to us,see for example how humans love dogs when jumping and licking showing their love.

Love is a mutual feelings,in other words you can't love who hates you and then the question is how to be close to God.

My cousin is a sheep owner, one of the sheep loved him without a reason,the sheep was following him everywhere and everyday in the farm while the others were running away.

My cousin swore that he'll never sell it or slaughter it for whatever reason and it died the natural way and he was sad once it died.

 

[suzy smith]

Are human a sentimental creatures ?

If we are a loving and peaceful creatures,then why there are many wars,crimes ..etc.
If we are a loving and peaceful creatures why we kill peaceful animals and eat them.

We love the animals which are close to us,see for example how humans love dogs when jumping and licking showing their love.

Love is a mutual feelings,in other words you can't love who hates you and then the question is how to be close to God.

My cousin is a sheep owner, one of the sheep loved him without a reason,the sheep was following him everywhere and everyday in the farm while the others were running away.

My cousin swore that he'll never sell it or slaughter it for whatever reason and it died the natural way and he was sad once it died.

Your point being?

 

[monti]

My experience is that people dont really care what answers it contains...they have their opinions and they are sticking to them.

No, they have questions that need answering, and only then can they have an opinion. If the didn't care would they have asked in the first instance? Pegg

 

[FearGod]

Your point being?

My point is

Do you think humans are bad and not a loving creatures because they kill and eat the innocent animals ?

God isn't a human as the innocent animals isn't humans compared to us.

God is a merciful and at the same time he can cause harm,actually one of his names is the harmer.

Check for his 99 names 99 Names of Allah

 

[monti]

Are human a sentimental creatures ?

If we are a loving and peaceful creatures,then why there are many wars,crimes ..etc.

Not all human beings are "peaceful creatures" are they FG? No, some human beings believe they are loftier than others and more powerful, which is true unfortunately and some of the more powerful simply want more power which is usually driven by greed.
The gods are no different, we were after all, created in their image, so the bible tells us. And the Old Testament is riddled with bloodshed and slaughter and the wars of god's fought by men to satisfy and do the bidding of the gods at the cost of death and misery to mankind.

 

[George-ananda]

Would you expect a thread about highlighting the negative qualities of the world as evidence against the existence of a loving god, to be positive?

Imagine the people that actually live through it and can't go to sleep and forget about it.

Its a thread RE the problem of evil, what did you expect, sunshine and puppy dogs?

What is one positive aspect of being alive though (besides realising Brahman)? Only one thing is all I need.

I can't think of one good thing, but I can think of hundreds of bad things.

It's difficult to remain 'Pollyanna' in the face of all that. Where are all the 'human interest stories' gone?

How does one overcome all the troubles in the world to find their own degree of personal happiness and salvation apart from it?

Even Buddha said that the world is full of suffering and inequality and his answer was to just meditate and try and overcome/forget about it.

The whole of Buddhism is based on a negative world view...Hinduism too, to a degree (i.e everything is Maya).

It's easy to see how 'everything is Maya' when hate, greed, corruption, adharma is...but what about anything 'good'? if there is anything 'good'.

I want to try and find a positive thing...I really want to, but every time I try, I feel like the biggest hypocrite and ignoramus when I realise I am only kidding myself, by 'cold comforting' myself into a false sense of security, leading to even more delusion.

So, if yourself or anybody else has ideas on how to overcome this, I am all eyes. Thanks.

Good night, George.

Umm... The title of the thread itself is "Surely the World we Live in Proves There is no [loving] God." I'm not really sure exactly what you were expecting.

Good morning. My night's sleep is over and I've read your responses.

At least this post got attention. I put my true feelings into post #24 but then didn't get a single comment. I actually understand how the Christian omni-everything God doesn't make sense to everyone. I'm not in denial of anything about the world and realize I am one of the more fortunate ones. I guess my point was hasn't that subject been done to death. It seems to be people are comfortable attacking the Christian God and fine.

I guess my frustration last night is that this was put in as a 'debate' but nobody wants to really tread ground that hasn't been tread so many times already.

Hmm, I apologize and say I should have created my own thread worded differently and bypassed this whole thing as a same old, same old thread.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

all mankind alive today descended from 3 forefathes, shem, ham and japheth.

Provide scientific evidence for that, please. I'm tired of Christians claiming all sorts of stuff that supposedly happened but giving zero evidence for it.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Well, again, this is basically the lack of separation that i'm talking about. I don't have to view life badly and think that i won't get anywhere. Part of recognizing reality for what it seems to be is recognizing that some people do in fact get to great places. Ignoring that part of reality would not be what i'm talking about, but rather a particularly selective negative perception of reality, which is something you're continually reading into what i'm saying despite my repeated clarification that this is not what i'm saying, and that's in my view because you're trying to explain how a simplistic statement is in fact not so, so you sort of have to brush over the detail i'm pointing out.

Viewing life negatively (or positively) doesn't necessitate doing so simplistically.



And this is what Penumbra pointed out in the beginning of her post. By neglecting a crucial element of the situation, and oversimplifying the issue, it begins to sound like blaming the victim, even if that's not the intent, and even if it's not always apparent.

You're saying 'choose to be a defeatist' and 'it's your fault at least partially', in some people's cases, and that is many people, these statements would be most unfair to describe their situations.

It's like I said in this thread before, I can only generalize. If someone comes to me with an issue that they need to talk about, I'll give them the best advice that I'm able to, as I've done many times before. I've talked people out of suicide more than once. But I have to know what the person's specific situation is. Plus, I'm not a mental health professional so they really need to be taking that to a therapist, but I'll try to help if I'm able to and can handle it at the moment.

But as for me, I've suffered from severe depression for most of life and am in therapy again and on medication. I've been suicidal a ton of times and have fallen into despair and nihilism. But I'm still here. Some of this more positive attitude at the moment is probably due to the Zoloft I'm on.

 

[suzy smith]

Good morning.

Hmm, I apologize and say I should have created my own thread worded differently and bypassed this whole thing as a same old, same old thread.

Good morning to you.

Well I am new here so its not ‘the same old debate’ to me. You are obviously of a higher intelligence than most of us but could you please make allowances for a simple woman like me?

 

[Penumbra]

[Any of you that promote a loving God care to get up off your butts, drive over to a hospital and visit the children’s cancer ward?]

In most places except for a small handful of countries, if they did that, they'd find they're in good company. The patients, visitors, doctors, nurses, janitors- statistically would mostly be theists.

The existence of suffering on its own doesn't seem to affect people's perceptions about the existence of a deity too much, especially because as was mentioned in this thread, most large religions already say that the world is messed up and that the real life exists somewhere else after death. Indeed, one of the primary activities of religion is to be a comfort to the believers when they or their loved ones suffer, such as promising an afterlife or promoting prayer.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Sometimes emotional arguments find their way into what could be a more detached debate about the issue itself.

There exists a set of claims, made by many, that a loving god exists. Along with that claim are generally some details depending on the religion, like a description of how personal or impersonal it is, being anywhere from highly anthropomorphized to being described as almost lacking consciousness and being synonymous or nearly synonymous with the physical universe, or a clarification of what "love" means, generally revolving around caring for the well-being of conscious things rather than being sadistic to conscious things or entirely ignoring conscious things.

And then there exists discrepancies for that claim which are pointed out, like the existence of things that cause great suffering to conscious things that don't seem to result in any good and don't seem to need to exist. The people that then made that claim can try to answer these or not. It depends how robust and informed their claim is, I suppose.

To talk openly about not liking the seemingly gloomy arguments, is basically emotional appeal, a form of losing the debate or more specifically not coming up with answers in defense of the claim. And to assume that most of the people that are questioning this claim about a loving deity go around all day gloomy and thinking about death and suffering, would be missing the point of the discussion, where people are agreeing on a context about a specific claim and then discussing that claim, which requires making gloomy arguments and asking people how those things are resolved in their worldview.

I tried to frubal you for this, but it wouldn't let me, so... I'm fruballing you in my mind. (and if that sounded slightly dirty well... good)

 

[suzy smith]

In most places except for a small handful of countries, if they did that, they'd find they're in good company. The patients, visitors, doctors, nurses, janitors- statistically would mostly be theists.

The existence of suffering on its own doesn't seem to affect people's perceptions about the existence of a deity too much, especially because as was mentioned in this thread, most large religions already say that the world is messed up and that the real life exists somewhere else after death. Indeed, one of the primary activities of religion is to be a comfort to the believers when they or their loved ones suffer, such as promising an afterlife or promoting prayer.

I appreciate you comment here and you are right of course.
Its just the thought of a God with the power [presumably] of curing a child with cancer not doing so.
Overly simplistic perhaps?

 

[Penumbra]

I tried to frubal you for this, but it wouldn't let me, so... I'm fruballing you in my mind. (and if that sounded slightly dirty well... good)

:flirt: