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

[InformedIgnorance]

I would love to hear the 'reasoning' used to justify punishing disbelievers by familial cannibalism as the act of a benevolent deity.

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Back to the OP though... children die, innocents die, sometimes horribly and without any apparent rhyme or reason - there exists tremendous suffering. The question is, does this suffering conflict with the idea of 'god' and the answer is no. It may however conflict with the attribution of different charateristics to that god concept though, for example any one of the characteristics below, if not attributed to god would allow for the existence of suffering.

If any of these three are not attributed (or if so, have the capacity for error), then events which cause suffering can occur
-God knows that the event will cause suffering
-God is able to ensure the event does not occur
-God desires to avoid the event

If any of these three are not attributed (or if so, have the capacity for error), then suffering can occur unabated
-God knows that someone suffers
-God is able to mitigate the suffering
-God desires to mitigate the suffering

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The simple fact that suffering occurs does not negate the existence of god, nor suggest it must be evil. Instead it could be a comment on the limitations of its awareness or power, or else a comment on the priorities (and yes potentially personality) of that entity.

 

[Ingledsva]

1A. LOL! Well you haven't been paying attention have you. I'm usually the one translating and arguing the text. I've made quite a few posts in this thread - AND you yourself made commentary to me. Did you forget?

I was joking around but have no idea what your contending here.

Baloney, You made a snide aside - and I just stated the facts.

1 & 2. The stories in the Bible which have YHVH killing the innocent babies for the supposed infractions of adults - makes him EVIL. Also, the idea that your "God" told the Hebrew to kill innocent people - is only in the minds of the war machine - excusing their murder of the innocent - by claiming "God told me to do it."

That is far too broad to contend. Give an example of what story your are talking about.

We have had this discussion before. You know exactly what I am talking about.

Bible story says YHVH killed King David's son. The death of the Egyptian children for their parent's actions - in reality it says YHVH wouldn't let him set the Hebrew free - which means YHVH is a murderer in that story. Flood story-death of the innocents, including dumb animals, etc. Then the war stories where they kill everyone including the children, and again the dumb animals, etc.

BTW is God evil or non-existent in your view. Context is important.

I am not a believer in the Abrahamic religion's God. We are discussing a story, and how CHRISTIANS believe their God to be. Technically I would fall under Agnostic.

3 & 4. Is your YHVH Law (and all that that logically implies) or a skitzo murdering the innocent?

I do not know what that means. Nothing you have said even implied God did not have morally sufficient reasons for anything he did. At best you only know that you do not know enough to know one way or the other.

As stated; to me it is just a story. However, Christianity preaches a loving, just, God with a set of laws. Then the story has that God breaking all those laws. Jealous, covetous, murderer, angry, sadist (killing people's infants,) etc.

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[I.S.L.A.M617]

Why are children so important that allowing a child to die specifically makes you evil?

 

[RJ50]

If the deity exists, and could prevent human suffering, surely if it had an iota of goodness it would endeavour to do so!

 

[Ingledsva]

After my wife's sister and our brother in law died in a 1999 car accident we adopted their 4 year old son. Years later when he was 7 or 8 he would ask me why God "Took his Mom and Dad away". I told him that we have it all backwards. God doesn't "take away", we have to think of it from God's point of view. God knows that a baby or a child may only have a handful of years to live. So he searches all of humanity to find the most noble hearts to have the privilege of holding and loving that child. God knew that my son's Momma only had 25 years to live. So He looked out and picked the child that would come to love and cherish her memory the most. That is definitely my son. I believe that God handpicked me to be his second dad because God saw my heart from an Eternal perspective.

Even with my own situation...How could God let me be born to an abusive alcoholic? I believe God knew I would be instrumental in my mother's sobriety, in the happiness of my sibling's lives, and as a mark of nobility in my own soul.

This is what I feel very deeply to be true.

What about the 1 in 5 molestation rate for girls, and up to 15% of boys?

And that isn't taking into account all that are beaten and abused in other ways, or murdered.

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[Ingledsva]

I would love to hear the 'reasoning' used to justify punishing disbelievers by familial cannibalism as the act of a benevolent deity.

-

Back to the OP though... children die, innocents die, sometimes horribly and without any apparent rhyme or reason - there exists tremendous suffering. The question is, does this suffering conflict with the idea of 'god' and the answer is no. It may however conflict with the attribution of different charateristics to that god concept though, for example any one of the characteristics below, if not attributed to god would allow for the existence of suffering.

If any of these three are not attributed (or if so, have the capacity for error), then events which cause suffering can occur
-God knows that the event will cause suffering
-God is able to ensure the event does not occur
-God desires to avoid the event

If any of these three are not attributed (or if so, have the capacity for error), then suffering can occur unabated
-God knows that someone suffers
-God is able to mitigate the suffering
-God desires to mitigate the suffering

-

The simple fact that suffering occurs does not negate the existence of god, nor suggest it must be evil. Instead it could be a comment on the limitations of its awareness or power, or else a comment on the priorities (and yes potentially personality) of that entity.

However, the Bible stories have YHVH personally killing babies.

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[InformedIgnorance]

There are an enormous number of 'god' concepts - I don't get hung up on particular ones such as the certain concept as espoused by Christian denominations, their version(s) of the Abrahamic God.

 

[Ingledsva]

There are an enormous number of 'god' concepts - I don't get hung up on particular ones such as the certain concept as espoused by Christian denominations, their version(s) of the Abrahamic God.

Whom are you replying to?

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[InformedIgnorance]

I was replying to your comment about the god concept YHVH.

 

[Ingledsva]

I was replying to your comment about the god concept YHVH.

Do you mean the post which states that the Bible says YHVH personally killed innocents?

If not, I need the post number. I have a lot of posts in this thread.

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[SkepticThinker]

That is not only wrong. It is impossible. What standard are you using to judge God? On what basis is that capacity of a finite and very fallible human able to determine the objective moral quality of the actions of an infinite and omniscient mind? That is like only having a thermometer to judge what band is best. As the atheist hero Dawkins has said. What in evolution can stop us from saying Hitler was not right? Or as the philosopher of science has said morality is an illusion.

How is it impossible that god is evil?

 

[ruffen]

My explanation for this has always been that God created the universe, but gave people free will. This free will can cause evil people to do evil things, and god does not come down and intervene when say 13 children die. There are murders deaths and atrocities committed everyday throughout the world. People have their own free will, which we take for granted. As the question for why would a good god let evil things happen? It is exactly that. In the religious sense, the death of an innocent is not necessarily an evil thing. They are taken from their families and cause grief for others in their life, but they are in a better place now.

This leads me to two conclusions (both might be wrong so please correct me).

1. God makes sure that evil people's free will is unrestrained, even though the free will of their victims have been taken away from them. So in a way, God protects the free will of murderers, rapists, thieves, war criminals etc., but does nothing to protect the free will of their victims.

2. A person who kills 10 children secures their fate for a better place than life on Earth, so in essence the killer does the children a favour. The more you kill the better as more young ones can escape this hard life and go to a better place.


Both sound very wrong in my mind.

 

[ruffen]

I should add my own view to the original question - why does God allow children do die? Is he evil?

Well, if he exists then yes, he is very very evil. But the simplest explanation is often the most correct, and the way I view it, we live in the universe of "**** ("stuff") happens". There is no God. Some children die, some don't.

 

[thau]

I should add my own view to the original question - why does God allow children do die? Is he evil?

Well, if he exists then yes, he is very very evil. But the simplest explanation is often the most correct, and the way I view it, we live in the universe of "**** ("stuff") happens". There is no God. Some children die, some don't.

I would say we live in a universe of astoundingly perplexing intellects who have no idea where they came from, yet think they are smart enough to brazenly state there is no god.

a.k.a. "the absence of reason." (IMO)

 

[ruffen]

I would say we live in a universe of astoundingly perplexing intellects who have no idea where they came from, yet think they are smart enough to brazenly state there is no god.

a.k.a. "the absence of reason." (IMO)

That's not quite correct. We do have an idea where we come from. It is not perfect, but it's getting better each year.

We know that humans evolved from earlier species and that we are genetically and morphologically related to other animals on this planet.

 

[thau]

That's not quite correct. We do have an idea where we come from. It is not perfect, but it's getting better each year.

We know that humans evolved from earlier species and that we are genetically and morphologically related to other animals on this planet.

Well, if you say you know this, then I believe that is exactly what you believe.

However, I know there is a God. Convinced?

Back to your claim: you "know" you evolved, and you "know" it was all done without a supreme intelligent designer? All these hyper-complex orderly magnificent changes, all came about by chance, or by "natural selection" which is really a term I believe used to throw people off. It was God... nothing else makes any sense at all.

IMO

 

[ruffen]

Well, if you say you know this, then I believe that is exactly what you believe.

However, I know there is a God. Convinced?

Back to your claim: you "know" you evolved, and you "know" it was all done without a supreme intelligent designer? All these hyper-complex orderly magnificent changes, all came about by chance, or by "natural selection" which is really a term I believe used to throw people off. It was God... nothing else makes any sense at all.

IMO

There is a difference between "by chance" or "by natural selection". It is not a completely random process. The variation in any population is random, and then there is a non-random natural selection that "decides" which individuals of the population get to pass on their genes or not.

That "decision" is not guided. Among those whose genetic variations lead them to have a slightly higher mortality rate before passing their genes on, there tends to be slightly fewer genes passed on. Among those whose genetic variations make them more likely to spread their genes, slightly more individuals actually get to spread their genes, so those genes will be in slightly higher abundance in the next generation than the others.

This is why it is not a completely random process and why the correct term is "evolution by random genetic variations and natural selection among those variations".


And there is evidence both in the fossil record and in our DNA that shows that among present-day animals, chimpanzees and bonobos are the ones we are most closely related to.

Why God would creat fake fossils and fake DNA similarities to throw us off the idea that he created us unrelated to other species on Earth is a big mystery.

 

[ruffen]

There is also a difference between "knowing" something based on enormous amounts of scientific evidence gathered over centuries of hard work, and "knowing" something based on claims of revelations in the Bronze Age.

 

[thau]

There is also a difference between "knowing" something based on enormous amounts of scientific evidence gathered over centuries of hard work, and "knowing" something based on claims of revelations in the Bronze Age.

Which is just another reason why I dismiss godless evolution. Science and mankind have made exponential leaps in nearly every field of learning over the past 75 years, able to trace origins of a thousand matters and develop a multitude of fantastic machines, etc. over this same period of time.

And yet...

Fantastic science still cannot demonstrate that evolution ever occurred with any certainty. Why? Because there is no sign of it ever occurring in a profound animal (not bacteria) since man has been around. How strange.

And here we are with all the amazing technology and advancements and still we cannot prove anything on what really happened. Because there are many, many learned scientists (with no religious axe to grind) who remain totally unconvinced of all their claims. The party line is just that, and nothing more.

 

[1robin]

How is it impossible that god is evil?

It isn't. It's impossible for you to have a sufficient standard by which to know that even if it was true. I like these smaller posts. What standard can even theoretically judge God? I can and have claimed that IMO Allah is evil but that is far different that proving it.