Why does my God allow children to die? Is he evil?

[crystalonyx]

If one assumes there is a god that has some interest in the lives of homo sapiens, the fact that it allows needless suffering of children or any person proves at least it cannot be benevolent, at best, it is neutral.

 

[CG Didymus]

I also noted some very extreme missunderstandings concerning revelation, and what God requires of us in your first post but I will certainly elaborate as soon as I have time.

Extreme? Who me? Misunderstanding Scripture? I can't wait to hear what it is. See you tomorrow.

 

[1robin]

I'd like to just focus on a couple of points, things are getting so long and drawn out. So I don't believe Genesis literally. The "fall" is from Genesis. It's a fine story. It is enough to get the point across that we can't fight against God and hope to win. He knows best and we should follow him. We are stubborn and want to do all sorts of bad things. We have free will and choose to do bad things. It's our fault then, when God, for our own good punishes us.

As promised and for better or worse I am responding. I agree at least in spirit so far.

That's okay if we are the chosen people, but what if we lived in Sodom or Jericho? What if I was a four year old in those cities? Why didn't God love me? We didn't he reveal himself to me? Why didn't he spare me and let me be adopted by a good Hebrew family that taught me about the true and living God?

Here is where it gets off track a bit.
1. God interacts with all people. Every person no matter where they live has nature to examine.
(Rom 1:20) For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
If we look at nature and just reason a bit we arrive at some conclusion very consistent with God. That is part of the reasons almost all cultures believe in a God.
2. Another is the moral dimension we apprehend. Plus many many more.
The Bible says that we are only responsible for our response to the revelation we have available. The 6th century slave in the Congo will not be judged on his faith in Christ but on his response to the reality he apprehended.
3. Jericho was occupied by Canaanites. The Bible says that God tried in vain to get them to repent. It says he waited until their cup of iniquity was full. In spite of his efforts they were walling up children alive in buildings, making their children walk through fire, and simply killing them as a sacrifice. They were openly hostile to Israel, they later raided every year only at harvest time and starved thousand to death.
4. Sodom was located near the border with Israel. In fact they were in large part relatives to the Hebrews. It was not because the Sodomites did not obey Levitical law that they were destroyed. It was because they flagrantly violated the basic laws concerning humanity contained in their God given conscience. Even if Christ, a prophet, or the church never existed we should know better than what the Sodomites were guilty of.

The problem most of us have is with a very literal Christian interpretation of Scriptures, because it makes things seem unfair. We talked about Native Americans earlier. When Christians came to America many native people did convert. But what about all those that lived in died without knowing about Jesus? They all, out of ignorance, worshiped a false god. By literal Christian standards, they should all go to hell. By literal Christian standards all people that don't have a "saving" knowledge of Jesus should go to hell. A Jew, right now, can follow the Torah, love God, but be doomed to hell. Same with good people from all non-Christian religions.

If you assert a system of fairness you have automatically assumed an objective standard that would not exist unless God does. See the above for the evangelized. It was not God that fought the Indians it was Europeans. Hell is the absence of God not the symbolic fire and brimstone. If we respond to what we see be resenting and rejecting God then we will get what we wanted, no God.

That is too harsh for a lot of us to swallow. But too find a kinder, gentler alternative, this means we have to reject the Christian interpretation of God and reality. Is there a better way to explain why there is evil in the world? Nature does what it does, earthquakes, floods etc. We are just in the way. Nature has no conscience. We do bad things to each other because of our "lower" animalistic nature. Killing, fighting, arguing can get us what we want, but then there is a higher nature. Kindness, love, compassion--where did all those things come from? It makes me think there must be a God.

You only need to become more familiar with the Bible to find what you seek. I do not agree with your lower animal claim. It is worse than that. A lion may kill a Zebra but no lion has tried to wipe out all the Zebras and other lions on the whole Earth. We have. We have a problem that nature alone does not explain.

So now what? I can be loving, kind, forgiving to others. I can respect people from all religions and see the good it has brought them. I can also see how people that truly believe their religion is right that, for them, the loving and kind thing to do is to try and convince others of this truth. But what does that do? It makes all the different religions fight and argue amongst themselves. I look at them and ask, "What are they fighting about?" It seems like they're all taking their religion too literal. It makes God and religion look stupid. It makes religion a source of even more evil in the world.

I can agree that Christians have at times done a great disservice to God. Or at least people claiming to be Christians. The Crusades, witch hunts, and the Inquisition have done more to alienate people from God than anything else. They have some merit in their motivation but their methods were abhorrent. I would only argue that the merits of a religion must be separated from the acts of some of its adherents. However the Christian religion also has a hyperbolic record of doing good. Building hospitals, being the most generous demographic, and being involved in every form of community service outweighs by a thousand times over what men like Raynald of Châtillon did in Syria. When disaster strikes who is always first on the scene? The Christian west not the Islamic middle east nor the atheistic far east is who helps even its enemies in most cases.

We can't eradicate evil. We can only try and contain it. We make laws and come up with rules of behavior, but we are always changing our rules. As society changes so do our rules. Can we trust the laws of any one religion? I don't think so. Religions take things too far and get too strict. I'm sure you see the rules of "liberal" thinkers as being worse, that their moral standards are way too low. But still, to think that this, the world we live in, with all its pain and suffering, is the best plan God could come up with? I don't know. It seems extreme.

Well with modern morality evil does not even mean anything. When you reject God you have ruled out the only force that can sufficiently ground the sanctity of life, the equality of man, relative Human worth, morality its self, meaning, purpose, or the most comprehensive explanation and cause of evil itself. It is unwise to rule out infection (sin) as a cause and penicillin (Christ) as a treatment and pass out band aids instead.

 

[1robin]

I'm half Mexican, which by itself can contain both Native and Spanish ancestry. Another quarter is pure Spanish and the last quarter is Welsh. Going back to Spain, I could have Islamic or Jewish ancestry.

The question you answered here was predicated by someone’s saying that the Aztecs were really a great people. Unless you are rewriting very solid history as well I am unsure why you answered. You do however have a colorful heraldry.

Did I have ancestors that "converted" through the Inquisition?

Again in the context of the Aztecs there was no inquisition and I reject the inquisition as it was carried out in any context.

Did I have ancestors that plundered, raped and killed the Natives? Maybe. So what are we going to do about it now? With all this talk about slavery, it got me thinking. So many of us felt enslaved by Christianity.

If you did, it was not true Christianity that enslaved you. Christ came to free the captives not imprison anyone. You may have felt that way because of diabolical acts of Catholic Church doctrine at that time but blaming that on God is misplaced.

I was Catholic and was glad that they don't have the power over people like they used to. The Church seemed irrelevant and very superstitious.

Not irrelevant. Evil at times maybe.

Many of the people you're arguing with, or "debating", were probably also raised some type of Christian. An important thing to know is--Why did they fall away?

I regard any claim that they were once born again Christians but no longer believe to be about the most self-contradictory and illogical concept possible. It is like saying you were sick and a doctor gave you some medicine that healed you and later you decided to no longer believe medicine and doctors exist. I think they only had a superficial (intellectual consent to a proposition) faith and were never born again, their faith had no roots or something similar.

Unfortunately, the way God is presented and the way Christians actually live their lives pushes them away. It is easy to say that they loved the darkness more than the light or that they were "slaves" to their sin, but I think you know it's more than that. If church just isn’t doing it for them and no one can answer the tough questions, then why stay? Why not look elsewhere for answers?

Your are complaining about religion as man practices it and while I disagree with some of your claims my faith is not placed in religion but in God and the Bible. The Bible clearly says we are faulty (even Christians) and pointing out that is true is not an argument against God but actually shows the Bible as accurate. I am getting the impression you are judging God, based on man. That will never work.

So why, in spite, of the "hard" questions, the unanswerable questions, do you believe?

Two reasons but the first is a lot more meaningful than the second.
1. When for various reasons finally was open to God I had studied the major ones and had selected Christianity as the most probable and the first I would pursue. I did this for philosophic reasons and most importantly I met some of those people in that rare group that walked the walk and I could literally see the effects in their lives. Anyway i was studying the Bible and at some point I supernaturally began to KNOW it was true. One night I became so convinced I did as it suggested and asked Christ to forgive me. I could not have been more surprised to actually feel him erase years of depression, emotional pain, guilt, and confusion in an instant. I will give you a list of the supernatural things that happened that night if you wish. I literally had subjective proof God and Christ existed. I have since then had maybe a dozen experiences of being in God's presence and seen others speak in tongues and pass out in the spirit (but rarely believed them) I reject 90% of miracle claims unless I experienced them or witnessed them.
2. Since then I have spent close to 20 years absorbing every debate and book on comparative religion I can find and have found that if the Bible were a 10 on the believable scale, the next most likely was Judaism at maybe 7, Islam at 5 and all others less than 2. Any method I used to established the reliability of these religions can be explained if you wish.

If I were to guess I'd say you probably got tired of fighting God. A life without Jesus is meaningless and empty. But still, why Christianity? Why not Buddhism or Scientology?

When my mom died if God existed I hated him. I did not eventually give in to Christ because I thought life meaningless without him. It was because he truly existed and what he said is actually true and I could see it unmistakably in a few people I knew. I also could see that me way of doin things just was not working.

We all are looking for answers and some degree of comfort in our beliefs.

I was looking for truth and unexpectedly found comfort as well.

 

[1robin]

Extreme? Who me? Misunderstanding Scripture? I can't wait to hear what it is. See you tomorrow.

After answering your posts there were only two areas. You are apparently unfamiliar with the doctrine concerning the unevangelised and you seem to view God through the lens of fallen and corrupt man.

 

[kjw47]

If one assumes there is a god that has some interest in the lives of homo sapiens, the fact that it allows needless suffering of children or any person proves at least it cannot be benevolent, at best, it is neutral.

God is allowing the issues raised against him in the garden of Eden to be fully resolved, so they can never be raised against him again. humans chose for this world --to know both good and bad--God only wanted us to know good. The suffering was chosen by humans, it is not Gods fault. Gods kingdom will remedy all of this and Gods original purposes will resume.

 

[Katzpur]

God only wanted us to know good.

How would we recognize that something was "good" if we had nothing with which to compare it? For instance, if you had never had one single hour of illness in your life, do you think you would really appreciate your good health? (Assume that you had never even known of someone who had poor health; the concept, in other words, was entirely foreign to you.) It is only because you have had to experience illness that you are able to know what a blessing good health really is.

 

[CG Didymus]

1. God interacts with all people. Every person no matter where they live has nature to examine.
(Rom 1:20) For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
If we look at nature and just reason a bit we arrive at some conclusion very consistent with God. That is part of the reasons almost all cultures believe in a God.
2. Another is the moral dimension we apprehend. Plus many many more.
The Bible says that we are only responsible for our response to the revelation we have available. The 6th century slave in the Congo will not be judged on his faith in Christ but on his response to the reality he apprehended.
3. Jericho was occupied by Canaanites. The Bible says that God tried in vain to get them to repent.

So let's go to the Native Americans again, but not the Aztecs. Let's say they believe in the Great Spirit and believe the he speaks to them in dreams and through animals. Let's say one of them is a decent guy and according to his religion was an upstanding individual. How does the real God judge him?

Jericho raises another problem. It is the real God that told Joshua to kill them all. I asked this earlier. God so knew their hearts and knew that even the little children, all of them, would grow up evil? Considering God had already flooded the world, annihilated Sodom and Gomorrah, killed the first born Egyptians and drowned their army--Why would he think this would eradicate evil? Assuming the Bible is correct, we know it doesn't. It is his own book. We read it and know that the Adversary is causing us to do evil. We know that without the Spirit of God in us we can't help but do evil.

So if we are the problem and our free will and the evil one is the problem, why does God allow it to go on? Is he evil? He can stop it and is going to stop it. And for the rest of eternity there won't be evil or the evil one. Why now? And, really why did he make a flawed Creation in the first place. And to say it was perfect in the beginning doesn't work, because it lasted only a short time. The evil one was already evil and Adam and Eve were not perfect, they had an inherent flaw and were destined to disobey. To say it's all part of his divine plan is fine, but because he created it with evil and suffering, he has to take part of the blame doesn't he?

 

[1robin]

So let's go to the Native Americans again, but not the Aztecs. Let's say they believe in the Great Spirit and believe the he speaks to them in dreams and through animals. Let's say one of them is a decent guy and according to his religion was an upstanding individual. How does the real God judge him?

I do not have the slightest idea. The Bible does not expound on this further, perhaps because no one reading it would have it apply to them. The one example I am aware of is, what about the Hebrews before Christ came? It is easily seen that the blood of animals pointed forward to something it could never do its self. It was only a type and shadow of a future truly capable thing. It pushed sin's debt forward year by year until eventually Christ came and his true blood retroactively applied to all the faithful Hebrews that existed prior to his arrival. I am sure there as many flavors of this as people. Some good sources would be William Lane Craig’s papers on the unevangelized or books like:
The Revelation of God Among the Unevangelized: An Evangelical Appraisal and ...
By Christopher R. Little

Jericho raises another problem. It is the real God that told Joshua to kill them all. I asked this earlier. God so knew their hearts and knew that even the little children, all of them, would grow up evil? Considering God had already flooded the world, annihilated Sodom and Gomorrah, killed the first born Egyptians and drowned their army--Why would he think this would eradicate evil? Assuming the Bible is correct, we know it doesn't. It is his own book. We read it and know that the Adversary is causing us to do evil. We know that without the Spirit of God in us we can't help but do evil.

You are assuming that God thought this would remove Evil. That is not the case here. Israel was to be the nation that God would reveal himself through and eventually Christ. His goal was to destroy local influences that Israel would adopt and lessen the impact of his revelation. He tried to get them to repent and they refused. Within the context of what he was doing he had no choice but to eliminate them. Unfortunately the Hebrews never did follow through, in general, and they were punished severly for it. An example is when God told Israel to wipe out (I think the Amorites but maybe mistaken) Saul spared the king, Queen, and many others. The queen was pregnant. I believe it was Samuel who showed up and condemned Saul and hacked the kings head off but the queen escaped. Her son (Haman) grew up in Persia and was a high legal official. He talked Xerxes into killing every single Jew in Persia. Persia controlled 4/5ths of the known world. It was only Esther that prevented it from taking place. How many Haman's were stopped in the cradle. BTW all the children went to heaven instead of becoming as corrupt as their parents.

So if we are the problem and our free will and the evil one is the problem, why does God allow it to go on?

If he instead came down and said anyone not currently saved was doomed and that was it, would you prefer that? If he took away freewill, would our loyalty be love, and would you want that. What within the bounds of the context of freewill and his purpose would you have him do? You are trying to use a faulty and fallable extremely limited mind to contemplete what a divine, perfect, infinite mind was thinking. I gave that up a long time ago. A fly might as well tell Newton his calculus was wrong.

Is he evil?

First you have to have a God and goodness to contrast evil with to condemn him.

Second was this man evil:
"The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may be truly said, that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind, than all the disquisitions of philosophers and than all the exhortations of moralists."
William Lecky One of Britain’s greatest secular historians.
He was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men, yet he spoke of coming on the clouds of heaven with the glory of God. He was so austere that evil spirits and demons cried out in terror at his coming, yet he was so genial and winsome and approachable that the children loved to play with him, and the little ones nestled in his arms. His presence at the innocent gaiety of a village wedding was like the presence of sunshine.
No one was half so compassionate to sinners, yet no one ever spoke such red hot scorching words about sin. A bruised reed he would not break, his whole life was love, yet on one occasion he demanded of the Pharisees how they ever expected to escape the damnation of hell. He was a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions, yet for sheer stark realism He has all of our stark realists soundly beaten. He was a servant of all, washing the disciples feet, yet masterfully He strode into the temple, and the hucksters and moneychangers fell over one another to get away from the mad rush and the fire they saw blazing in His eyes.
He saved others, yet at the last Himself He did not save. There is nothing in history like the union of contrasts which confronts us in the gospels. The mystery of Jesus is the mystery of divine personality.
Scottish TheologianJames Stuart

Also see my previous arguments in this thread.

He can stop it and is going to stop it.

Yes

And for the rest of eternity there won't be evil or the evil one. Why now?

Did you mean why not now?

And, really why did he make a flawed Creation in the first place.

he didn't read Genesis. He made us perfect but with the ability to chose to reject him because anything less is not love. The rest is all on us.

And to say it was perfect in the beginning doesn't work, because it lasted only a short time. The evil one was already evil and Adam and Eve were not perfect, they had an inherent flaw and were destined to disobey.

The length of time it lasted is irrelevant. If it was 100 years would that be better, or a thousand? Why?

To say it's all part of his divine plan is fine, but because he created it with evil and suffering, he has to take part of the blame doesn't he?

Even if true what do you expect will happen? He already died on a cross in an agony that can't be comprehended. What more do you require. In a movie Doc Holiday was asked why Johnny Ringo was so angry and wanted revenge. He said for being born. You are not in that camp are you? I have to go but will continue tommorow or as soon as I can. Have a good one.

 

[brucebroadwood]

Tomorrow is promised to no one. We lose our children every moment in their growing up. The moment we leave this life, our second estate or mortality is then complete. God has given us excellent gifts to reduce the infant mortality rate, but for those who leave us early, they are taken back to the very God that gave them life. We should ever be grateful for the gift of life no matter how short.

 

[Katzpur]

If one assumes there is a god that has some interest in the lives of homo sapiens, the fact that it allows needless suffering of children or any person proves at least it cannot be benevolent, at best, it is neutral.

No, actually, it just proves that you don't understand the whole picture to the degree God does.

I'm curious as to how much suffering you believe God actually should allow? Would He allow skinned knees? The common cold? Earthquakes? Make that just little earthquakes (1.5 on the Richter scale, for instance)? Temperatures below 30 degrees? (I actually begin suffering when the mercury drops below about 50.)

 

[Copernicus]

No, actually, it just proves that you don't understand the whole picture to the degree God does.

I'm curious as to how much suffering you believe God actually should allow? Would He allow skinned knees? The common cold? Earthquakes? Make that just little earthquakes (1.5 on the Richter scale, for instance)? Temperatures below 30 degrees? (I actually begin suffering when the mercury drops below about 50.)

Katzpur, it really isn't about how much suffering God ought to allow. If there is no God, then the amount of suffering that we find in the world is completely understandable. It makes sense, because there is no all-powerful, all-knowing being that cares for our well-being and can intercede to soften or eliminate suffering. If God does exist and is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, then even skinned knees would seem unnecessary. After all, parents do everything they can to prevent that happening to their children, although better parents realize that children have to learn to take care of themselves in order to survive future perils. God, OTOH, doesn't need to let there be future perils. He doesn't even need to allow skinned knees, although I can see where people of faith would think skinned knees aren't so bad (even while trying to keep children from skinning their knees). The problem is that suffering in this world goes orders of magnitude beyond skinned knees, and the putative God still fails to intercede to mitigate the suffering. You set the bar very low when you ask for the threshold to be at skinned knees and cold weather.

 

[NIX]

Are there any gods who don't allow children to die?

Just wondering.

 

[Katzpur]

Katzpur, it really isn't about how much suffering God ought to allow. If there is no God, then the amount of suffering that we find in the world is completely understandable. It makes sense, because there is no all-powerful, all-knowing being that cares for our well-being and can intercede to soften or eliminate suffering. If God does exist and is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, then even skinned knees would seem unnecessary. After all, parents do everything they can to prevent that happening to their children, although better parents realize that children have to learn to take care of themselves in order to survive future perils. God, OTOH, doesn't need to let there be future perils. He doesn't even need to allow skinned knees, although I can see where people of faith would think skinned knees aren't so bad (even while trying to keep children from skinning their knees). The problem is that suffering in this world goes orders of magnitude beyond skinned knees, and the putative God still fails to intercede to mitigate the suffering. You set the bar very low when you ask for the threshold to be at skinned knees and cold weather.

I'm actually not even attempting to set the bar. I'm just pointing out that when people say that God (if He exists at all) is evil because He allows suffering to take place, they are more than likely making an assumption themselves that a certain amount of suffering is probably within reason, but that God somehow crosses the line. And it's a line they are arbitrarily setting.

I think that most people who are of this mindset assume that God is either oblivious to the suffering that goes on in the world or takes some kind of pleasure in seeing it take place. From years of experience in trying to have a rational discussion with people who believe this way, I have come to the conclusion that it's simply an exercise in futility. According to my belief, God does have a greater -- a much greater -- in allowing suffering, and despite our inability to comprehend it, will be for the ultimate betterment of mankind. A recently published book, "The God Who Weeps", provides some superb insights into this topic from an LDS perspective. For someone who is absolutely convinced that God is nothing but a character in a man-made fairy tale, the book would probably have little value. But anyone who merely wants to understand how a truly loving God could allow such suffering in the world would likely benefit from reading it. I couldn't even begin to explain in a couple of posts what the author of this book does in 123 pages, and I'm not even going to try.

 

[MysticSang'ha]

I'm actually not even attempting to set the bar. I'm just pointing out that when people say that God (if He exists at all) is evil because He allows suffering to take place, they are more than likely making an assumption themselves that a certain amount of suffering is probably within reason, but that God somehow crosses the line. And it's a line they are arbitrarily setting.

I think that most people who are of this mindset assume that God is either oblivious to the suffering that goes on in the world or takes some kind of pleasure in seeing it take place. From years of experience in trying to have a rational discussion with people who believe this way, I have come to the conclusion that it's simply an exercise in futility. According to my belief, God does have a greater -- a much greater -- in allowing suffering, and despite our inability to comprehend it, will be for the ultimate betterment of mankind. A recently published book, "The God Who Weeps", provides some superb insights into this topic from an LDS perspective. For someone who is absolutely convinced that God is nothing but a character in a man-made fairy tale, the book would probably have little value. But anyone who merely wants to understand how a truly loving God could allow such suffering in the world would likely benefit from reading it. I couldn't even begin to explain in a couple of posts what the author of this book does in 123 pages, and I'm not even going to try.

I think where I wonder about certain perspectives of God are that IF God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, that it would stand to reason that God potentially can end suffering instantaneously. But that's only within the framework of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God.

Obviously, one can change the definition of what God is, but if we're working with that common definition, I see a wide jump of logic between all-seeing and all-powerful to choosing suffering for God's creation. It does come down to a choice, apparently.

Answers that surmise the "why" range anywhere from not even trying to understand (since God works in mysterious ways), to cherry-picking Scripture, or to throwing in one's own opinion on the necessity of suffering and thereby simply prescribing one's own personal ethics in the process.

Not to bash anyone or to bash the concept of God (granted, if I saw this being, I'd want to give him/her a Big Squishy Hug ). But it's difficult to justify the kind of suffering that some theists are willing to forgive at the hands of their God. From eternal torture to kids getting shot, when you have the ending of a life or eternal torture being compared to a parent who swats his kid on the backside for being bad, I'd say that person never really went through physical torture or was shot execution-style to truly compare the two.

Again, that is IF we assume God is all-knowing and all-powerful. To allow torture and suffering would safely create another assumption, perhaps one from the many process theologies instead of an immutable and unchanging nature of God.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

3. OT slavery was not even in the same realm as what we think of as slavery nor in the same ball park as the slavery practiced by all other cultures of the time. It has more in common with servitude than slavery. It was almost always voluntary. Met a real social need of the day. There was no welfare or unemployment.

Two thoughts:

- for this "tame" version of slavery you're talking about, the Bible still allows owners to beat their slaves to death as long as the slave takes at least a few days to die from their wounds.

- regardless of how well the slave is treated (though I sure wouldn't want to be a slave under the system you're praising), you're still talking about owning other people as property. There are plenty of passages in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that read like "you may do _____ to your slaves, for they are your property."

4. The allowance for a less than ideal practice was practical and consistent with God's purpose, consistent with the over all biblical narrative, and incompatible with the claims he is evil.
5. The alternative was for God to declare them all cut off from those servitude type relationships. It is very easy to see that this would have caused drastically more harm than good in many ways.

The alternative would have been to stop people from owning other human beings as property. Exactly what "harm" do you think this would have caused? Since you say it's easy to see, I'm sure you could give us some examples.

And none of this changes the fact that according to the Bible, God endorsed slavery.

Also, you used the analogy of divorce before: that God allowed it as a temporary measure to address certain circumstances. The New Testament has Jesus declaring that this really was a temporary measure, and people shouldn't divorce any more. Can you point me to the verse where Jesus or any other Biblical figure gives a similar declaration that slavery is no longer acceptable?

Summary: OT slavery was not an ideal practice. However, it was practical given freewill and arguably benevolent in the context of OT Israel's conditions.

If you really think that any form of owning other people as property is "benevolent", then I'd say your moral sense is so warped that it's useless.

This is getting a little absurd, so I will make one final and clear attempt to illustrate my claims about 19th century US slavery. IT WAS WRONG and it did not in any way resemble OT slavery.

Exactly which Old Testament laws did 19th Century American slavery break, and how did they break them? How much would they have had to dial things back for them to be A-OK by the rules that God set out? Please be specific.

No I did not. I used the verses given in the form as they were given to me. This claim is what is absurd. I copied the verses as they were posted by your side and I even said twice that other versions may have used slave in the translation. I can show this claim more absurd still. Not one Bible verse God ever revealed contained the word slave or slavery. Not a single one. Slave and slavery are English words and the Bible was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Kione Greek. Slave is a translation that may or may not be correct and was certainly not in the verses that were GIVEN TO ME BY YOUR SIDE. More absurd still, I gave the actual original word and it is a general word that means servitude of all kinds. Slavery only being one of many and not even meaning what you think at all even if used in a translation.

Like I mentioned above, there are many Biblical passages where they also explicitly state things about the slave/servant like "he is your property." In these cases, it's unreasonable to interpret the word as "servant" as opposed to "slave".

Also, I think it's worth pointing out that our own word "servant" has changed a bit over the centuries, too. IMO, a first-century concept of servitude would be closer to serfdom (which was itself a form of slavery) than to the modern idea of freely chosen employment.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I'm actually not even attempting to set the bar. I'm just pointing out that when people say that God (if He exists at all) is evil because He allows suffering to take place, they are more than likely making an assumption themselves that a certain amount of suffering is probably within reason, but that God somehow crosses the line. And it's a line they are arbitrarily setting.

I don't think that's it. From my perspective, it's just a realization that the actions of an omnipotent god would meet up with his/her/its goals. Limited mortal beings like us can fail to accomplish our will because of our physical limitations, but those limitations don't apply to the all-powerful.

Once that's established, it's a matter of simply recognizing that if it was God's will for there to be no suffering, then there would be no suffering... and also recognizing the flipside of this: that the existence of suffering implies that it isn't God's will for there to be no suffering.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

How would we recognize that something was "good" if we had nothing with which to compare it? For instance, if you had never had one single hour of illness in your life, do you think you would really appreciate your good health? (Assume that you had never even known of someone who had poor health; the concept, in other words, was entirely foreign to you.) It is only because you have had to experience illness that you are able to know what a blessing good health really is.

If human beings have access to an all-knowing God, why would we need to have had actual people suffer in order to appreciate what we had? Wouldn't this God be capable of getting his points across and eliciting understanding in us without real people getting hurt?

 

[CG Didymus]

...The moment we leave this life, our second estate or mortality is then complete. God has given us excellent gifts to reduce the infant mortality rate...

Ironically, the "gifts" come from modern science. Some religions still reject procedures or medicine that can restore the health of a child. At the extreme end of it, does literal religion reject atheistic science? If the atheist scientist found a remedy for cancer would the extreme believer take it? And, if the scientist got a disease that was killing him, would he let the religious person lay hands on him and pray for him?

The other thing you said:

...but for those who leave us early, they are taken back to the very God that gave them life.

Is a question I had earlier. Kids of atheists, kids whose parents are from other religions, where do they really go? Why would a loving, just God take them in? He ordered the killing of the kids in Jericho. Why didn't he let the Hebrews take them captive, so that they could be taught the truth? Were they untrainable? Would they have been a burden to raise? To kill them then was better, because he could save them then, because they were too young to know better? To let them get older, old enough to reject him, then he would have no choice but to condemn them to hell?

I don't expect a great answer or even a good one, because most of the arguments are coming from a Christian worldview. Christians are limited to coming up with answers that can be backed up by Scripture. Which I think is the whole point of what is happening here. Christians don't have all the answers. The simple answer isn't good enough. All the evil happened so God could send his Son to save us. If it were really that simple we'd all believe. But it's not that simple.

If Jesus is the answer. Why 4000 years of suffering before God sent him? Jews didn't know God had a Son. Jews didn't know about being saved by grace and not by the works of the Law? Their concepts of hell and Satan and who God is are way different than NT Christians. Why didn't God tell them the real truth from the beginning? There are inconsistencies, so it makes it difficult to believe any one Christian interpretation. And none of the reasons why a loving creator would create this world, in the state it's in, are adequate. It's too bad Christians can't go beyond the limits of their understanding of the Bible to find answers.

 

[kjw47]

How would we recognize that something was "good" if we had nothing with which to compare it? For instance, if you had never had one single hour of illness in your life, do you think you would really appreciate your good health? (Assume that you had never even known of someone who had poor health; the concept, in other words, was entirely foreign to you.) It is only because you have had to experience illness that you are able to know what a blessing good health really is.

I can live without knowing illness, or disease, or hatred--when the alternative was --- living forever at a young age on a paradise earth, knowing only good. The same that Gods kingdom brings with it for mankind.