God helps those who help themselves. Of course man being imperfect, cannot help but screw up. So see, it's never God's fault, it'll always be man's.
If God Truly Cared About People Wouldn't He DO SOMETHING By Now?
by minimus 392 Replies latest jw friends
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lovelylil2
Minimus,
I am starting a new thread to address your Q about those who do not accept Christ. Lilly
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HappyGuy
lovelylil, Good to see the Christlike personality shining through on this latest rant of yours:
Happy guy is full of nonesense.
And you still haven't addressed the scenario I gave, which in which I posed a situation of immense suffering that does not involve "good" vs "evil" or the universal sovereignty question or the man's free will (supposed) issue and asked why god does not end the suffering when it is clearly within its power to do so (according to the religionists and their "all powerful" characteristic that they attribute to god).
Instead you insult me and deflect the question posed in the topic of this thread away from your god and blame the victims and attack me personally.
The question is, and I will repeat it, in a case like this where there is true suffering of innocent victims, in which God could easily act and relieve that suffering, if he truly cared about people why does he not act?
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Mad Dawg
Many of you are assuming the following propositions:
a. God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good, and therefore should have the will and the ability toprohibit or precludeevil and/or suffering from ever eventuating.
b. Such a god would be obligated by His/Her/Its/Their ethics to prohibit or preclude evil and suffering from ever eventuating (i.e. there is no adequate reason for it to be allowed to eventuate/continue);
c. Evil and suffering ostensibly occur.
Therefore, the god described in proposition A does not, in fact, exist.
For anyone to state that there is no adequate reason, they would have to know EVERY possible reason. To know that, they would have to be God. As we are not God, we cannot know every possible reason. Our ignorance, of God’s rationale, does not give us reason to act as if we are not ignorant.
Yes, the WTS picture of God is false, but that doesn’t lay false the existence of God.
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HappyGuy
mad dawg,
I'm sure that the blind children and their families will find comfort in knowing that god has reasons why they should be blind. Thank you for enlightening us.
I john 4:8 says "God is love". It doesn't say "God has love" or "God shows love" or "God feels love". It says "God IS Love". You can twist us into doctrinal pretzels all you like but there is no getting away from the fact that the "god" of the Bible does not act in accord with that statement. Love could not endure chidlren being blinded by something that could easily be stopped.
The Bible provides the propositions that you dismiss. Since the religionists get their ideas on what God is from the Bible, then I base my evaluation of his behavior on those propositions.
And the topic of this thread does not state that there is no adequate reason, it asks what the reason might be.
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lovelylil2
Happyguy,
Just because I am a Christian does not mean I have to be meek all the time. Especially when people insinuate that I am either uneducated or misinformed about what goes on in the world just because I do not agree with their opinion. You think I am a fool for believing in God? Well, I think you are a fool not to. So we will have to agree that we will NEVER agree on this subject.
MadDawg,
Thank you for that link. I am going to book mark it to read later.
Minimus,
I've already sent you my email address so if you wish to discuss anything about who will be saved, please contact me there. The short answer is NO I do not believe only Christians will be saved because I believe that Christ's sacrifice is sufficient to cover the sins of ALL mankind. And just to clarify Hell, most christian churches today do not teach a literal hellfire but rather that hell is a place where you are forever seperated from God. Only those who are truly wicked and ungoldy, stubbornly refusing to submit to God even once he reveals himself to them will be sent there. The majority of mankind will be saved.
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bohm
And still no one adresses HappyGuys excelent example..
I once asked my bible study conductor what action God could take that would make him think that God did evil. He thought of it for several minutes and then said he couldnt think of anything. Think about it: He happily accepted God could do whatever he felt like, and he would never think it was evil.
I think he is right from a biblical point of view: murder, rape - its all in the bible, all something God allows, tell others to do for him, or does himself.The truth is that as a christian you remove God from any kind of responsibility, he is this allmighty figure who can do whatever he likes, no matter how fucked up it is, and if anyone calls him out on it they are not faitfull enough. Imagine that kind of logic applied to another idea than god, for example a person or a type of government.
In reality, you could just as well claim all God did was evil, and whenever he did or allowed something that seemed not evil, it was really to make more evil in the end, we just couldnt know 'his reasons'.
Its a poor kind of logic if you ask me.
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HappyGuy
lovelylil
ust because I am a Christian does not mean I have to be meek all the time. Especially when people insinuate that I am either uneducated or misinformed about what goes on in the world just because I do not agree with their opinion.
I didn't insinuate anything. I said flat out that you were making an argument based on your total lack of knowledge of the river blindness disease and that maybe in the future you should do research on something before you try to base your argument on a wrong understanding because you know nothing about it. You stated that the river blindness disease is caused by "dirty water" and humans could correct the problem by cleaning the water. This is completely wrong. THe rivers are fast flowing and they are not polluted. you then stated that the Onchocerca volvulus worm can be filtered out of the drinking water, you said this because you mistakenly thought that the disease is spread by drinking unclean water. That is not how the disease is spread, the disease is spread through the bite of the black fly, which injests the worm from the river water. There is no filtration scheme that would affect that in any way.
In terms of what goes on in the world regarding river blindness you are totally uneducated and misinformed as borne out by your own inaccurate statements and conclusions.
What I stated regarding this disease is not opinion, it is fact. You can easily verify those facts youself but have chosen not to do so because they don't fit with your "blame man" viewpoint.
Your inability to discuss the scenario I posed has nothing to do with being meek or being obnoxious, it has to do with your lack of understanding of the issues involved and your putting your bias ahead of the facts.
And you STILL have not addressed the moral question that this thread raised and I gave a very straightforward example which should provide an easy way to demonstrate where God stands on this moral question. I will state it again:
Since the river blindness disease is not caused by man's inability to govern himself or by wickedness (evil) and is not a universal sovereignty issue, and since "God" could easily rid the earth of this disease, the fact that he has not done so proves that either 1) he does not care, 2) he does not notice, or 3) he is powerless to act.
Again, I ask you to discuss this moral question without calling me names and without blaming the victims. But, before you do actually research the river blindness disease so that you don't make arguments that are nonsensical because you don't understand the disease. Arguments such as "the governments could spend money on filtration..." or "the rich governments won't clean the water and that is the problem".
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HappyGuy
Just because I am a Christian does not mean I have to be meek
There is a difference between not being meek and insulting people, calling them names, using arguments that blame the victims, and making assertions on subjects you clearly have no knowledge of such as the river blindness disease.
To be frank I find your behavior in this thread to put "Christianity" in a bad light. Are Christians not supposed to always be a "shining example"? Do they not put on a "new personality"?
In this thread you have: called me names, insulted me, blamed innocent victims of a horrible, easily preventable (by God) disease, been extremely overly sensitive to what you perceive to be "attacks" on god when they are not, refused to discuss the moral question posed in a straightfoward, intellectully honest manner, and attributed statements to me that I did not make, called my motivations and beliefs (which you do not know what they are because you did not ask) into question, assumed that I don't do anyhing to address the issues that I raised and stated that as a fact when you have no way to know if that was a fact or not (we call that lying), made assertions about the river blindness disease which were completely inaccurate as if they were facts (again, that is called lying), and did justified saying pretty much anything no matter if it was factual ornot in order to defend your god.
And you STILL have not addressed the moral question that my scenario of the river blindness disease raised.
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HappyGuy
lovelylil,
you think I am a fool for believing in God?
I never said. I posed a scenario in line with the moral question raised by the topic of this thread and gave Christians an opportunity to give an answer to the moral question. So far no one has addressed the moral question or tried to discuss the issue in an honest way. Instead you and others have resorted to name calling, insults, blaming the victims, and other tacts of shifting the focus away from god's behavior on the moral question.
Well, I think you are a fool not to. So we will have to agree that we will NEVER agree on this subject.
Another intellectually dishonest technique that people use, the "agree to .... agree" discussion ender. I don't remember saying that I don't believe in god. I just posed a moral question and what I believe to be the conclusions that must be drawn from the results that we see. Whether I believe or don't beleive in god has nothing to do with the moral question raised.
And you have given no evidence of any kind that would persuade a non believer to believe. In fact your behavior has had the opposite effect.
Belief in god is not the subject we were discussing anyway, I will repeat the topic of the thread, a topic you still haven't addressed "If God truly cared about people wouldn't he DO SOMETHING by now". That is the topic we are discussing, not the existence of god.