If God Truly Cared About People Wouldn't He DO SOMETHING By Now? (page 20)

This is a good lecture that deals with the topic. Christians, when confronted with this topic, often like to retreat to their fortress of "It's our own fault". We're the ones who inflict suffering. This essay cuts through that baloney in some places.

Link

If a good and infinitely powerful God governs this world, how can we account for cyclones, earthquakes, pestilence and famine?

How can we account for cancers, for microbes, for diphtheria and the thousand diseases that prey on infancy?

How can we account for the wild beasts that devour human beings, for the fanged serpents whose bite is death?

How can we account for a world where life feeds on life?

....

If this God exists, how do we know that he is good? How can we prove that he is merciful, that he cares for the children of men? If this God exists, he has on many occasions seen millions of his poor children plowing the fields, sowing and planting the grain, and when he saw them he knew that they depended on the expected crop for life, and yet this good God, this merciful being, withheld the rain. He caused the sun to rise, to steal all moisture from the land, but gave no rain. He saw the seeds that man had planted wither and perish, but he sent no rain. He saw the people look with sad eyes upon the barren earth, and he sent no rain. He saw them slowly devour the little that they had, and saw them when the days of hunger came -- saw them slowly waste away, saw their hungry, sunken eyes, heard their prayers, saw them devour the miserable animals that they had, saw fathers and mothers, insane with hunger, kill and eat their shriveled babes, and yet the heaven above them was as brass and the earth beneath as iron, and he sent no rain. Can we say that in the heart of this God there blossomed the flower of pity? Can we say that he cared for the children of men? Can we say that his mercy endureth forever?

Mark Twain expressed some similarly profound thoughts, that outline the kind of suspended reason shown by believers on this subject.

The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shielf it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. God's treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that, yet those best minds warmly justify these crimes, condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them. Your country and mine is an interesting one, but there is nothing there that is half so interesting as the human mind.
- Letters from the Earth

minimus

I look at it in this way: some people cannot bear to look at facts objectively. They would even rather blame themselves for things beyond their individual control than God. Certainly God COULD stop atrocities and evils, just like he's done before, as recorded in the Bible, but he clearly refuses to do so. Human creatures who are created in his image would not turn a blind eye to as the Almighty does. It's a shame.

PSacramento

Superpunk,

Outside of natural disaters and nature in general laying down the law, what exactly is NOT our fault and is "god's fault" ?

minimus

If we say "it's God's fault", I think we're saying if God COULD stop horrible things (even if you ferverntly prayed to him) and he just looked down and did nothing, it's his fault nothing happened. He had the power to stop something since he is Almighty, he just won't lift a heavenly finger.

superpunk

Certainly God COULD stop atrocities and evils, just like he's done before, as recorded in the Bible, but he clearly refuses to do so. Human creatures who are created in his image would not turn a blind eye to as the Almighty does.

Doug Mason had a brilliant (and what I consider 'correct') answer to this on the first page or so of this thread. The bible's miracles never really happened, but they served a valuable purpose to the nomadic Canaanite tribes who were reuniting themselves under the banner "Israel".

Outside of natural disaters and nature in general laying down the law, what exactly is NOT our fault and is "god's fault" ?

What is the value of a question like this? As an atheist, I believe the world simply is the way it is, a savage, brutal place, and we're doing our best individually to keep the world from killing us. And there are certain elements of our society who make things even worse than they would be naturally by doing harm to their fellowman. I don't need a "god" to explain why that happens, or to comfort myself with a hope that someday it won't be like this.

But that isn't what the thread is about, or presupposes. The thread begins with the premise of the biblical "loving God" who is concerned with the dealings of his creation and desires their worship. You can't just remove natural disasters from the equation - because if we suppose that Bible-God is real, those things are SOLELY within HIS control - we can do nothing to stop them or prevent them. This allegedly caring bible God has the power to make them stop, and they fall entirely within his realm of responsibility, yet he does nothing. And the believers need to stop conflating the issue by bringing up issues that can be blamed on man, acting like we are the problem while excusing the deplorable action/inaction of their heavenly sky-daddy.

lovelylil2

littlebird, nice comments.

Happy guy, you are very arrogant and just want to argue. How dare you tell me to educate myself just because I do not agree with your opinions about God.

Just for the record;

I have a degree in Business Management, as well as one in Nursing, which is the field I am currently working in. I have been a student of the Bible for many years and am currently attending college for another degree and that one is is in biblical studies. I've been studying Greek also for the past year and I have done extensive research on the topic of God, the Bible, the history of the church, etc. since leaving the WT 7 years ago.

I have written many articles on biblical topics, some of which have been used in part or fully in bible magazines around the country and one of which you can read here www.freeminds.org

I also run a ministry from my home that is focused on providing both spiritual and emotional support to elderly people in the Boston MA area. And I volunteer my time, money and resources to help many who are in need of food, shelter, clean water, etc around the globe.

I have an extensive library of books on the bible, some of which you will be surprised are books that actually argue against belief in the Bible, and yes I have read them. And my spiritual library includes the Tanakh and the Koran, both of which I have also read.

Don't you think for even one minute that I am either uneducated or uninformed of what is going on in the world because I am out in the world helping people every day both physically, and spiritually. So how dare you! What have you accomplished in your life since leaving the WT? What are you doing to help people in this world? Have you done any study yourself into mainstream Christianity so that you can even give an opinion on what we believe?

Are you really concerned about the parasites in the water? well then what are you doing to help the situation? Instead of blaming God because he made the parasite, why don't you try to figure out a way to get rid of it. And don't you tell me for one second that it is not man's fault the water is not cleaned in some countries because that is total hogwash. There are enough financial resources in this world so that ALL PEOPLE should have clean water filtration systems but the fact is that Man does not share his resources equally becuase he is too concerned with himself.

Why should some countries posess all the wealth while others are still not developed due to lack of money? If man applied God's standards then some monetary value of all people would go to the poor, remember the gleaning of the fields in the OT and how some of the wheat had to stay in the field so the poor can eat it? Also, how many poor lived under King Solomon's rule?

Any fool can sit back and blame God for all the ills of the world and cry that he is not doing anything. You are the same as the fools in the WT who blame Satan for all their personal ills yet refuse to take any power upon themselves to change their lives. Why don't you get out in the world and find solutions to the problems. Or maybe educate yourself in the bible and God properly and not rely on what you learned in the WT cult, because you really have NO CLUE what is truthful concerning God or what mainstream Christians really believe about God or the Bible.

You are just a bully on the playground that calls the other kids names to demean them when they don't want to play the same game he wants them to play.

lovelylil2

And by the way, I do not "spout", after all, I am not a tea kettle. Lilly

PSacramento

So basically the issues seems to be that people that DON'T believe in God don't like the fact that he hasn't done anything and are asking people who believe in God why he hasn't, correct?

And when those that believe in God show that don't think its God's "job" to do anythign that we can't do, those that don't believe in God to begine with have issues with a "common sense" answer.

Interesting.

minimus

I'm not an atheist.

If God Truly Cared About People Wouldn't He DO SOMETHING By Now?

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