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

[Rapture Era]

No.

Simply because Evolution is a theory and Creation is not even a hypothesis.

Ok, lets go with that. Lets leave God and creation out of it. What is it about this theory that has you so convinced it is true?

 

[Rapture Era]

Ah, so you flat out lied when you indicated you already presented some?

Say what? Be more specific.

 

[1robin]

No.

Simply because Evolution is a theory and Creation is not even a hypothesis.

Are the labels placed on concepts by faulty men capable of making them true? Creation is a hypothesis and a theory and has been far far longer than evolution. Those same faulty 'scientists" application of the term planet to Pluto sure did nothing to actually make it one. I do not share you faith in man's omniscience.

 

[johnhanks]

Ok, lets go with that. Lets leave God and creation out of it. What is it about this theory that has you so convinced it is true?

Once again you are conveniently ignoring answers to this question you have already received here and here. Like most creationists it would appear you prefer posturing to engaging with the real world.

 

[Asante]

The title of this thread smells of an atheist troll.

 

[adi2d]

The title of this thread smells of an atheist troll.

Maybe you should read more than the title

If you have the answer I'd sure like to see it

 

[1robin]

Maybe you should read more than the title

If you have the answer I'd sure like to see it

Exhaustive and in-depth answers have been provided many times. I think you should have said to try and provide an answer you will accept.

 

[adi2d]

Exhaustive and in-depth answers have been provided many times. I think you should have said to try and provide an answer you will accept.

Oh really. Could you give me the post # or repost

Not just an opinion by a "faulty human" but an answer to the op

I would accept an answer that had evidence and made sense to me.

 

[1robin]

Oh really. Could you give me the post # or repost

Not just an opinion by a "faulty human" but an answer to the op

I would accept an answer that had evidence and made sense to me.

If you are looking for certainty then I am afraid everything ever claimed to be known outside of "I think therefore I am" is out the window. I can give you doctrine consistent with My God that philosophically accounts for both evil and a benevolent God. What more can you reasonably expect to be available? To call God evil means you must have a God first, and even have a specific concept of God in mind, and that God comes in a context. I can give you an explanation for evil within the context of God as the Bible lays it out that has no meaningful objection known other than atheists do not like having answers for questions concerning God to exist. If that is satisfactory let me know and I will either find one of the many posts or lay it out again.

 

[adi2d]

I'm sure I'm not the only person looking for answers so post away

If you are going to use the bible you need to clarify what you believe is literal(something you haven't done yet).

I'm sure I will have some questions after you post your ideas just as you don't take someone elses word on how life began even though links were given.

Looking forward to your post. Thanks in advance

 

[cottage]

If you are looking for certainty then I am afraid everything ever claimed to be known outside of "I think therefore I am" is out the window. I can give you doctrine consistent with My God that philosophically accounts for both evil and a benevolent God. What more can you reasonably expect to be available? To call God evil means you must have a God first, and even have a specific concept of God in mind, and that God comes in a context. I can give you an explanation for evil within the context of God as the Bible lays it out that has no meaningful objection known other than atheists do not like having answers for questions concerning God to exist. If that is satisfactory let me know and I will either find one of the many posts or lay it out again.

But your explanations do nothing to address the suffering that exists in the world in the face of a benevolent God and that is the contradiction, notwithstanding your personal beliefs or what is said in the Bible. And yet the fact that God isn't benevolent implies no contradiction as far as the Bible is concerned, for there is any amount of bloodletting to be found there, even at God's own hand; but that needn't be a concern because actually there is no logical compunction for God to be benevolent. So why the a desperate need to depict God as benevolent? I think the answer is a simple one, for who would seriously want to worship a being that was content stand by and watch or even to be the cause of its creation''s immense suffering. So it's about defending one's beliefs, obviously, since God if he exists needs no defending.

 

[1robin]

I'm sure I'm not the only person looking for answers so post away

If you are going to use the bible you need to clarify what you believe is literal(something you haven't done yet).

I'm sure I will have some questions after you post your ideas just as you don't take someone elses word on how life began even though links were given.

Looking forward to your post. Thanks in advance

Thanks in advance is too much pressure. If you condemn me in advance I can't disappoint. Just kidding.

I will be very brief in my first post in order to judge whether further explanation is justified.

I believe the argument usually goes that if God is all powerful and all good then evil should not exist. Evil and suffering do exist and so God does not exist. Let us see if that is true.

1. I think the one most crucial aspect is also the one that is forgotten the easiest. God's purpose with this whole universe and people thing. God intended to create beings that could choose freely to love him or reject him. he did not want robots and automatons that had no choice in the matter. Love is not love if it is forced.
2. That necessitates that he endow us as free moral agents and with freewill (at least to a great extent).
3. That necessitates the ability to choose wrong and it involves the capacity to reject and alienate God.
4. That necessitates that our wrong actions produce undesirable results. According to the Bible it also alienated creation from God's strict supervision.
5. That produced nature that is only governed by unfeeling natural law with only a few exceptions of intervention by God. This would result in the random catastrophes we see every year. It would also mean that those who choose to do wrong effect others because with very few exceptions we live in a world that has severed its self from God's supervision temporarily.
6. The destruction these factors produce are allowed to indicate, the terrible nature of sin, that those actions called sinful and prohibited are indeed prohibited for a good reason, to illustrate we are poor replacements for God, and in need of something to save us from ourselves. This one is very complex and deep. It would require quite a lot of work to exhaustively illustrate but for now I wanted to only communicate the concept in general.
7. These results are to drive us to repent and accept God freely and I do not see how less evil resulting from our actions would drive more people to seek God. God does not like evil and will eventually destroy it totally. However for this period of his plan he has morally sufficient reasons to allow it. As is often said the worst thing a parent can do is protect their children from the consequences of their actions.

I think this satisfies every philosophical objection that can be made about God and the presence of evil. The reason it rarely does is that there is another component. We have a emotional distaste for suffering even when we caused it. I can't take away an emotion and people mistake an emotional dislike for a argument many times. God does not intend to save this world but let us and our rebellion destroy it. However only with God is there hope that certain people that will admit the truth will be preserved to exist in a world devoid of suffering and sin. At least with God suffering has a cause, purpose, and solution that do not exist without him.

 

[McBell]

Are the labels placed on concepts by faulty men capable of making them true? Creation is a hypothesis and a theory and has been far far longer than evolution. Those same faulty 'scientists" application of the term planet to Pluto sure did nothing to actually make it one. I do not share you faith in man's omniscience.

Since you have repeatedly shown that you know less about evolution than my six year old niece, I have a really hard time taking anything you claim seriously.

Now since creation does not even qualify as a hypothesis, the best it can make it to is wishful thinking, your claims concerning creation have thus far shown that my six year old niece knows more about creation than you do.

Then you make an appeal to divinity claim.

Yeah, really hard to take you seriously.

 

[McBell]

The title of this thread smells of an atheist troll.

:sarcastic
Yes, because devout Christians are all really atheist trolls...
:sarcastic

 

[1robin]

Since you have repeatedly shown that you know less about evolution than my six year old niece, I have a really hard time taking anything you claim seriously.

Now since creation does not even qualify as a hypothesis, the best it can make it to is wishful thinking, your claims concerning creation have thus far shown that my six year old niece knows more about creation than you do.

Then you make an appeal to divinity claim.

Yeah, really hard to take you seriously.

When you can make a comment without your usual personal rhetoric and unfounded sarcasm I might respond to it.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Well what you think is not necessarily indicative of truth. Evolution being claimed to be an autonomous concept requires that a solution to life coming from non-life be found to be reasonable.

I think you're confused about the burden of proof. And what do you mean by "autonomous concept"?

It has not been

It has, actually.

and so any claim that this world is ticking along without any need of God is not demonstrated or even close to being so.

Do you think that the opposite claim, i.e. that the world needs God in order to "tick along", has been demonstrated?

We have life. At the present there is no natural explanation of how we got it. That leaves only non-natural explanations. That is perfectly consistent with God and so is inconsistent with what you claimed above. That same inadequacy of nature to explain reality exists in massive amounts of what we see in the universe. In fact the universe its self has no natural explanation for what brought it into existence. If you can't get past step 0 without appealing to the transcendent then arguments over step 4.5 billion are not that meaningful.

Aside from being an argument from ignorance, this is also based on a false premise. There are plenty of natural explanations that greatly exceed the level of detail of - and are better supported by the evidence than - "God did it".

I have never understood the reliance on Occam's Razor by either side. Occam's razor has nothing to with what is true. It has to do with the probability of truth of unknowns given certain parameters.

It's about intellectual honesty. It's about developing a conclusion based on the facts instead of trying to fit facts to a predetermined conclusion.

I could say that given Occam's razor we should believe that it only requires on e person to create another person but we know that is wrong and it takes to. I could say that God is the simplest solution to what created the universe because any other explanation is composed of more than one entity or force and requires an explanation for its self.

Thanks to experiments like the Miller-Urey experiment, we know that self-replicating organic molecules can develop from the basic chemicals that we know were present on the "primordial" earth. No matter how "simple" God is, "natural processes we know exist" is always going to be simpler than "natural processes we know exist + God".

However I know Occam's Razor's intended use and that as well as what you said is not it and it would be wrong quite often even used as intended. I do not agree with your convenience equivocation but even if it was true it is incidental. Just because something is convenient does not indicate it is incorrect.

I don't know what you mean by "convenience". I'm talking about justification for belief. Yes, it sometimes happens that a person coincidentally stumbles on the right answer for bad reasons (as the old saying goes, even a stopped clock is right twice a day), but tools like Occam's Razor help us figure out whether we have good reasons to claim what we're claiming.

The THEORY of evolution seems to shrink or expand to fit any thing its adherents desire it should include or exclude. It is a theory so ambiguous and so expansive it means virtually nothing. A word that means everything actually means nothing. However I have never even hinted that evolution did not occur because the theory based on it is too conveniently defined. Why did you? I see many assertions and opinions here but not one meaningful fact that is relevant to my position. Though compared to the posts I have seen the last few days this one is a masterpiece. How sad is that?

I can't figure out what you're trying to say here. A few pages back, you agreed with evolution... didn't you?

 

[adi2d]

Thanks in advance is too much pressure. If you condemn me in advance I can't disappoint. Just kidding.

I will be very brief in my first post in order to judge whether further explanation is justified.

I believe the argument usually goes that if God is all powerful and all good then evil should not exist. Evil and suffering do exist and so God does not exist. Let us see if that is true.

1. I think the one most crucial aspect is also the one that is forgotten the easiest. God's purpose with this whole universe and people thing. God intended to create beings that could choose freely to love him or reject him. he did not want robots and automatons that had no choice in the matter. Love is not love if it is forced.
2. That necessitates that he endow us as free moral agents and with freewill (at least to a great extent).
3. That necessitates the ability to choose wrong and it involves the capacity to reject and alienate God.
4. That necessitates that our wrong actions produce undesirable results. According to the Bible it also alienated creation from God's strict supervision.
5. That produced nature that is only governed by unfeeling natural law with only a few exceptions of intervention by God. This would result in the random catastrophes we see every year. It would also mean that those who choose to do wrong effect others because with very few exceptions we live in a world that has severed its self from God's supervision temporarily.
6. The destruction these factors produce are allowed to indicate, the terrible nature of sin, that those actions called sinful and prohibited are indeed prohibited for a good reason, to illustrate we are poor replacements for God, and in need of something to save us from ourselves. This one is very complex and deep. It would require quite a lot of work to exhaustively illustrate but for now I wanted to only communicate the concept in general.
7. These results are to drive us to repent and accept God freely and I do not see how less evil resulting from our actions would drive more people to seek God. God does not like evil and will eventually destroy it totally. However for this period of his plan he has morally sufficient reasons to allow it. As is often said the worst thing a parent can do is protect their children from the consequences of their actions.

I think this satisfies every philosophical objection that can be made about God and the presence of evil. The reason it rarely does is that there is another component. We have a emotional distaste for suffering even when we caused it. I can't take away an emotion and people mistake an emotional dislike for a argument many times. God does not intend to save this world but let us and our rebellion destroy it. However only with God is there hope that certain people that will admit the truth will be preserved to exist in a world devoid of suffering and sin. At least with God suffering has a cause, purpose, and solution that do not exist without him.

Sorry but I don't see any evidence for what you are saying
You state what you believe is Gods plan. Others have stated other ideas. You state things as a given then state what necessarily happens because of that plan.

The Garden(if literal) could have been the place for man to learn and grow with God.

Evil that man does to man is bad enough but when children through no fault of their own suffer then I fail to see this as a perfect plan. I know you don't believe I am capable of judging this but it seems to me that children suffering should nt be necessary for man to grow

 

[1robin]

I think you're confused about the burden of proof. And what do you mean by "autonomous concept"?

A single concept believed to produce all its prescribed effects without assistance from anything else.

It has, actually.

I think you stripped my claim of its surrounding context and I can no longer find what it concerned. However I am quite sure your wrong anyway.

Do you think that the opposite claim, i.e. that the world needs God in order to "tick along", has been demonstrated?

That is not what I said. I said the world appears to need God to explain everything in it. It certainly does not have natural explanations for vast areas where they are needed.

Aside from being an argument from ignorance, this is also based on a false premise. There are plenty of natural explanations that greatly exceed the level of detail of - and are better supported by the evidence than - "God did it".

If I had said God did it is a fact I would have been arguing from silence and have had a heck of a burden for proof. That is probably why I didn't. I said that currently only God fills the requirements that reality leaves unanswered. You are saying I lack detail in my claiming God might very well have done it. That is too drastically confuse agency with method. If we had a jet engine both Whittle did it and the laws of nature are necessary to explain it. Whittle did it is perfectly appropriate if I am discussing agency. Science is adequate for many method descriptions but almost never useful for agency. Measuring how gravity acts is almost insignificant with the bigger question concerning what it does so or why it exists. Science has vast shortcomings.

It's about intellectual honesty. It's about developing a conclusion based on the facts instead of trying to fit facts to a predetermined conclusion.

Occam's razor does not even pretend to supply a single thing you mentioned. Occam's razor is about probabilities involved in guesses and has many areas where it would have produced the wrong assumptions. It just does not belong anywhere but philosophy. It certainly does not belong in theology or science but would have justified "God did it" anyway.

Thanks to experiments like the Miller-Urey experiment, we know that self-replicating organic molecules can develop from the basic chemicals that we know were present on the "primordial" earth. No matter how "simple" God is, "natural processes we know exist" is always going to be simpler than "natural processes we know exist + God".

The only thing that experiment proved is that intelligence is required just to get an almost infinitely small portion of what is needed to produce life. I also think it is widely known they cheated even to do that vanishingly small amount of work. That experiment did nothing to demonstrate life came from non-life and is not even widely referred to. The one thing it absolutely did do was fail to produce any life. Talk about arguments from silence, appeals to the most complicated answers, and using faith in a conclusion. They got no where near life.

I don't know what you mean by "convenience". I'm talking about justification for belief. Yes, it sometimes happens that a person coincidentally stumbles on the right answer for bad reasons (as the old saying goes, even a stopped clock is right twice a day), but tools like Occam's Razor help us figure out whether we have good reasons to claim what we're claiming.

You said I was wrong because my answer was convenient and that has nothing to do with anything. Occam's razor is a guide for guessing not a path to truth.

I can't figure out what you're trying to say here. A few pages back, you agreed with evolution... didn't you?

I agree evolution occurred. I do not agree that the theory of evolution describes it accurately. I was saying that if you objected to the convenience in one of my answers then you should have objected to a theory so convenient it can be stretched or shrunk to fit only what is desired as the TOE has been every day in this forum alone.

 

[McBell]

When you can make a comment without your usual personal rhetoric and unfounded sarcasm I might respond to it.

Sarcasm?
I was not being sarcastic...

 

[Jeremy Mason]

Creation is a hypothesis and a theory and has been far far longer than evolution.

"and then there are fossils..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcJvkAdydnQ

Those same faulty 'scientists" application of the term planet to Pluto sure did nothing to actually make it one.

Pluto? PLUTO!!!