idea
Question Everything
There is no limit to space.
God can make heaven, He can't make us appreciate it though.... Some things only come from within.
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Why doesn't God stop evil, pain and suffering?
- Thread starter Beaudreaux
- Start date
There is no limit to space.
God can make heaven, He can't make us appreciate it though.... Some things only come from within.
Jeremy Mason
Well-Known Member
Apparently we do have the answers.. and we are at no fault of our own here in this world. Everything that has gone wrong has nothing to do with us. Gah! How dare G.d cause all of the pain and heartache. My bad.. what was I thinking?
Your totally right, I mean, what can we learn from pain and suffering. I think it's all apart of God's gag-reel that people have cancer and if you die from a tsunami, HEY--you should have learned to swim...
. As a sadist, I dig that our God totally loves putting people through all kinds of despicable horrors because, without these atrocities, people in the red cross would have nothin' to do. :foot::foot::foot:In all seriousness, I find people who think God has this malicious agenda to be extremely shallow. With all due respect to humanity and it's trails and tribulations, I find it's when we are at the cross roads of tragedy and despair that it's God who allows us to be humanities best friend or worst enemy.
crystalonyx
Well-Known Member
In a chaotic universe, there can be no agenda.
Jeremy Mason
Well-Known Member
I solute you and your husband for the solutions you are contributing. But, if everyone who was ever born was allow to live hear on earth--guess what would happen to all that open land? Look at the depleted oceans with 6 billion people.
IF_u_knew
Curious
In all seriousness, I find people who think God has this malicious agenda to be extremely shallow. With all due respect to humanity and it's trails and tribulations, I find it's when we are at the cross roads of tragedy and despair that it's God who allows us to be humanities best friend or worst enemy.
hmmm.. haha.. I don't know what to think about you to be quite honest. No matter.. I just don't see the point in placing blame on G.d.
I am not sure what people expect when they want a happy go lucky world. I have learned more from the hard times in my life than I have the "good" times. Life is life. If someone does not like it, they always having the option to opt out, no?
Beaudreaux
Well-Known Member
Suppose that you have been diagnosed with Hantavirus. In a few very painful days, you will die with blood oozing out of every orifice. A doctor comes up to you and says, "I have a cure for Hantavirus." "Awesome!" you think. "I'm saved!!" But then the doctor tells you that, while he has the cure available, he is not going to give it to you. You plead and beg over the course of your death and suffering, but the doctor just watches you die.
Would you blame the doctor for not saving you?
Youch!
I hope I never find myself drowning with YOU on the shore. "Let him go. Nature's taking him." In all seriousness, do you really think it is better to let people die than to help them?
IF_u_knew
Curious
Youch!
In all seriousness, do you really think it is better to let people die than to help them?
Drama much? How have you gotten that out of anything I have said?
idea
Question Everything
Let’s say you are in school, the teacher is handing out a test. Now the teacher has all the answers for the test, they could give you the answers, but they don’t. Why don't thye just give all the answers to you???? Sure, they could give the answers out, but they would be depriving you of learning it for yourself. ... the point is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.
Sure, God could give us all life – but He would be depriving us of the appreciation for life that death gives – (He would also be forcing us to be trapped in a body we have royally screwed up for all time and eternity. Best to have a practice body to learn how to take care of ourselves before getting the real deal we will have for all eternity. Would you deprive yourself of a perfect body in exchange for keeping the one you currently have?)
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BucephalusBB
ABACABB
LOL, you are not reading my posts correct. I think this is a perfect world and I love it!
I was only debating the part where God can change it all if he wishes. He can make birth go away, make the beauty behind it go away, make the feeling that you miss that beauty go away and replace it all by making garbage beauty or whatever..
What you don't know, you don't miss.
And I can't even blame God..(or "G.d" with a very very tiny "o" like you do it..
)
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BucephalusBB
ABACABB
Beaudreaux
Well-Known Member
Your defense of God is lacking. Humans did not create SmallPox. If you believe in God they you must come to grips with the fact that God did. God also watched children die of this horrible disease and did nothing. What would it take for you TO blame God?
Let's put aside how cruel this is (people who live on the coast deserve to die in hurricanes) and focus on how ridiculous it is. Children were killed in Katrina. They did not choose to live there, they were born into a household/family that already lived there. How is it THEIR fault they died. And how can it NOT be God's fault that he did not prevent the disaster?
Wow!....you really have no issue with this, do you? I get the feeling that if YOU had the power to save these lives that you wouldn't do it. Not sure how to react to that.
Absolutely!
- AIDS babies - Don't even act like you didn't bring this on yourselves. If Me and IF_u_knew could cure you, we wouldn't! Die die die!
- Parents of Infants who die of SIDS - Oh give me a break! Your kid got what he/she deserved and it was probably partially your fault, too.
- All you bald brats in pediatric cancer wards - Stop whining! You brought this on yourselves. "Boo hoo! I'll never be old enough to kiss a girl and the pain of my chemo is unbearable." You know you deserve it!
Beaudreaux
Well-Known Member
Well, pretty much everything we will ever encounter is temporary. Are you saying that there is nothing wrong with pediatric cancer, famine and natural disaster because they are temporary?
Jeremy Mason
Well-Known Member
I agree. Frubals
Beaudreaux
Well-Known Member
Maybe it's because I haven't fully woken up yet, but I honestly don't get what you're trying to say here. Could you rephrase?
Well, I am an atheist so I think there is NO difference between God the Creator and God the Father. I think neither one exists.
idea
Question Everything
I just have to post this again...
Weaning – or encouraging Autonomous Learning
by Larry Spence
At 8:30 AM she stood up in class. I wanted to sit. She glared, shooting me with her eyes. “I’m paying good money for this class,” her thin hands shook. “My parents are sacrificing. It’s your job to just tell us what this book means.” She waved a worn copy of Immanuel Kant’s essay, On the old saw: That May be true in Theory but it does not Apply in Practice.
“I can do that, but it will burden the rest of your life.”
“what do you mean?”
“You will always have to take me with you. If you marry, I’ll be there. On your honeymoon, I’ll be there. You will need a special room to keep me in your house. I misplace coffee cups and scatter paper clips. I’ll need a desk next to yours at work. A special seat where I can work in your car…”
“Stop it!” she shouted. “I don’t want to drag a professor through life.”
“Good,” I said. “Then I can’t tell you what the book means. Think of all the books, articles, policy papers, and memos that you will have to read. If you don’t know how to understand them, you will be lost as a citizen, a worker, and an individual. So you can either figure out what Kant means or you can adopt me for life.”
The class’s growing laughter filled the room as they imagined living with a seriously uncool prof. “But weren’t you paid to teach us?” asked a burly tight end.
“No, it is my job to see that you learn how to discover the meaning yourself.”
“This class is weird,” came a comment from the baseball cap section.
Students expectation that I could explain the world marred every course I taught. Their intellectual dependence was frightening. On bad days, they were so docile and dependent I understood how good storm troopers were made… But Oh, in the classroom the dependency is sticky and thick. Students seem indifferent, confused, and desirous only of getting this grade, that course, and eventually the big ticket degree. The best strive for that special relationship, “teacher’s pet.” They work to say all those things that feed faculty egos. For many years, I saw little hope of developing autonomous learners. Then I made a discovery.
A group of my students toured with a national champion drum and bugle corps. I went to see them perform. Their precision, quality, and panache astounded me.I could not believe they were the same creatures that shuffled through my courses. They worked twelve hours a day on their musical skills, slept on gym floors, and were driven from city to city without relief. They wre disciplined adults.
I walked away with words like “co-dependency” and “enabling” ringing in my ears. My best efforts taught students that to learn was to follow instructions. They didn’t need that or my careful explanations, or my crafted syllabi. They needed access to the world’s scholarship and some tough coaching like they got in the bugle corps. And most of all they needed choice and opportunities to pursue their own passions for inquiry and expression.
Maybe we smother the best learning instincts of our students. Seymour Papert writes, “ the scandal of education is that every time you teach something, you deprive a child of the pleasure of discovery.” Maybe we should stop chewing and pre-digesting the intellectual food we give our students. We nee not joke and enact an excitement we wish they had. We need focus on learning, and not the comfort of the learners.
In earlier times, people took the passion and energy of adolescents as signs of maturity. They weaned them on responsibilities. The impetuous George Washington was surveying frontier lands by the age of sixteen. By 21, with only a few months of formal education, he could ford rivers, chart mountains, charm legislators, and lead troops. Lord Fairfax wrote his mother that he was, “a man who will go to school all his life.” Washington’s classrooms were the forest, the battlefield, and the halls of government. He never asked what was going to be in the final.
The Perry Model of Intellectual and Ethical Development
Stages of Cognitive Development: Transitions in Cognitive Development
#1: Dualistic Thinking
• methodology • empirical evidence
• explanatory power • predictive power
• logical consistency
• positive vs. normative conclusions
#3: Contextual-Relativism
Decisions
Transitions in Cognitive Development - it is a process of going from relying on others to taking personal responsibility and having personal values.
Weaning – or encouraging Autonomous Learning
by Larry Spence
At 8:30 AM she stood up in class. I wanted to sit. She glared, shooting me with her eyes. “I’m paying good money for this class,” her thin hands shook. “My parents are sacrificing. It’s your job to just tell us what this book means.” She waved a worn copy of Immanuel Kant’s essay, On the old saw: That May be true in Theory but it does not Apply in Practice.
“I can do that, but it will burden the rest of your life.”
“what do you mean?”
“You will always have to take me with you. If you marry, I’ll be there. On your honeymoon, I’ll be there. You will need a special room to keep me in your house. I misplace coffee cups and scatter paper clips. I’ll need a desk next to yours at work. A special seat where I can work in your car…”
“Stop it!” she shouted. “I don’t want to drag a professor through life.”
“Good,” I said. “Then I can’t tell you what the book means. Think of all the books, articles, policy papers, and memos that you will have to read. If you don’t know how to understand them, you will be lost as a citizen, a worker, and an individual. So you can either figure out what Kant means or you can adopt me for life.”
The class’s growing laughter filled the room as they imagined living with a seriously uncool prof. “But weren’t you paid to teach us?” asked a burly tight end.
“No, it is my job to see that you learn how to discover the meaning yourself.”
“This class is weird,” came a comment from the baseball cap section.
Students expectation that I could explain the world marred every course I taught. Their intellectual dependence was frightening. On bad days, they were so docile and dependent I understood how good storm troopers were made… But Oh, in the classroom the dependency is sticky and thick. Students seem indifferent, confused, and desirous only of getting this grade, that course, and eventually the big ticket degree. The best strive for that special relationship, “teacher’s pet.” They work to say all those things that feed faculty egos. For many years, I saw little hope of developing autonomous learners. Then I made a discovery.
A group of my students toured with a national champion drum and bugle corps. I went to see them perform. Their precision, quality, and panache astounded me.I could not believe they were the same creatures that shuffled through my courses. They worked twelve hours a day on their musical skills, slept on gym floors, and were driven from city to city without relief. They wre disciplined adults.
I walked away with words like “co-dependency” and “enabling” ringing in my ears. My best efforts taught students that to learn was to follow instructions. They didn’t need that or my careful explanations, or my crafted syllabi. They needed access to the world’s scholarship and some tough coaching like they got in the bugle corps. And most of all they needed choice and opportunities to pursue their own passions for inquiry and expression.
Maybe we smother the best learning instincts of our students. Seymour Papert writes, “ the scandal of education is that every time you teach something, you deprive a child of the pleasure of discovery.” Maybe we should stop chewing and pre-digesting the intellectual food we give our students. We nee not joke and enact an excitement we wish they had. We need focus on learning, and not the comfort of the learners.
In earlier times, people took the passion and energy of adolescents as signs of maturity. They weaned them on responsibilities. The impetuous George Washington was surveying frontier lands by the age of sixteen. By 21, with only a few months of formal education, he could ford rivers, chart mountains, charm legislators, and lead troops. Lord Fairfax wrote his mother that he was, “a man who will go to school all his life.” Washington’s classrooms were the forest, the battlefield, and the halls of government. He never asked what was going to be in the final.
The Perry Model of Intellectual and Ethical Development
The Perry Model of Intellectual and Ethical Development
Stages of Cognitive Development: Transitions in Cognitive Development
#1: Dualistic Thinking
- Students generally believe knowledge is certain and unambiguous: black/white, right/wrong
- Questions have immutable, objective answers
- Students generally believe authorities possess valuable wisdom that contains eternal truths
- Certainty yields to uncertainty and ambiguity
- Students come to believe that where uncertainty exists, knowledge and truth are essentially subjective and personal
• methodology • empirical evidence
• explanatory power • predictive power
• logical consistency
• positive vs. normative conclusions
#3: Contextual-Relativism
- Students come to believe that even where uncertainty exists, people must make choices about premises, frameworks, hypotheses, and theories to apply; policy conclusions are not self-evident
- Students may come to recognize that even in a world of uncertainty, they must make choices (whether about ideas, hypotheses, theories, or policies). These choices require methods of critical thinking.
Decisions
- Students may come to acknowledge that choices require analysis and values. Knowledge, theories, and methods are imperfect and uncertain, thus personal choices require acknowledging personal responsibility that follows from personal values.
Transitions in Cognitive Development - it is a process of going from relying on others to taking personal responsibility and having personal values.
idea
Question Everything
Go back to page 8 - God did not create any of it.
The word "create" should not appear anywhere in the Bible:
Hebrew Word Studies
"The English word "create" is an abstract word and a foriegn concept to the Hebrews. "
It should be "form, organize, transform" - not create.
If it is beautiful and formed, it is because God has formed it. What is not beautiful has simply not been formed yet.
God is cleaning up a mess He did not create.
Not create it but why allow it?
So that we can gain an appreciation for what is good. again, relativity, good is relative to bad. Opposites define one another. Good does not exist without bad. Up does not exist without down, right does not exist without wrong, joy does not exist without pain. Is an apple good or bad? Is anything good or bad? Depends on what you compare it to - has to be something to compare it to before anything can exist. Mountain heights are proportional to the depths of the valleys.
11 And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient.
12 And Adam and Eve blessed the name of God, and they made all things known unto their sons and their daughters.
(Pearl of Great Price | Moses5:11 - 12)
9 And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
(New Testament | 2 Corinthians12:9)
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BucephalusBB
ABACABB
So the part he didn't form yet, how did it get there?
But that's only because God made it that way..
Because God made it that way..
Because God made it that way..
Because God made it that way..
So if he "formed us" to like everything..
...
btw, you are allowed to replace any "made" with "formed" in your thoughts. It remains the same..
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idea
Question Everything
God did not make good and evil, did not make the rules of the game. [/quote]
sorry - should have said God did not "create" the concepts of what is good/evil... He can help form/make/transform something into good... Sorry, does that make sense?
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Beaudreaux
Well-Known Member
OK, one more try. I think I am at least starting to understand the ways in which you deflect questions. While I still believe you have no interest in answering them, I think it might be fun to categorize the ways in which you hide from what frightens you.
Jeremy Avoidance Strategy 1: Lie about what you said
Maybe you should pay more attention to what you post, or at the very least stop lieing about it.
Jeremy Avoidance Strategy 2: Claim that the question is loaded or silly and then claim you are "above" addressing such questions
Jeremy Avoidance Strategy 3: I'm a great guy and you deserve sarcasm
Jeremy Avoidance Strategy 1: Lie about what you said
Maybe you should pay more attention to what you post, or at the very least stop lieing about it.
This question of mine is not who goes to heaven and hell. It's why doesn't God stop pain and suffering from natual disasters. The problem with this strategy is that people can look back at what you said and see that you are lieing.Originally Posted by Jeremy Mason
...and my point is this question of yours cannot and should not be answered by anyone but God.
Yeah, OK.
- "Loaded question"
- "Another loaded question"
- "That question is silly"
- "Frubals!"
- etc, etc.
Jeremy Avoidance Strategy 2: Claim that the question is loaded or silly and then claim you are "above" addressing such questions
The questions are not loaded or silly. Theodicy (the problem of evil) has been a question that theologians have wrestled with for centuries. St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and countless other theologians and great thinkers have devoted significant time and effort in answering this question. The did not do this because the question is silly and their collective dialogue on the subject is not considered "stupid". And, Jeremy, the questions I've asked you are not loaded simply because you don't know how to answer them. "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is loaded because it assumes something that may not be true and Yes or No answers admit to this assumption. "Why doesn't God prevent natural disasters?" is a question that makes no such assumption. The only "loaded" aspect of this question is that it assumes the existence of God.
Jeremy Avoidance Strategy 3: I'm a great guy and you deserve sarcasm
I'm sure everyone here loves you, but I would point out once again that the question of theodicy is well respected in the theological and philosophical communities. If Aquinas were posting on this forum about the problem of evil, I would look forward to a good "I know you are but what am I?" from Mr. Popular.I have a little over 3000 post here at this forum and if you ask the regulars around here they will tell you that I a very nice person to talk to, but when confronted with the types of questions like yours, I typically respond with sarcasm because it's fun and people who ask such questions deserve it.
BucephalusBB
ABACABB
So God made nothing, cannot make evil nor good and he didn't form us..idea said:
I allready don't believe in the guy, but you took away those few purposes I could maybe still make him do