Theists, why does God allow suffering.. (page 37)

Seraphim23

I get the impression that you quite like suffering cofty as you seem to have an interest in hyping it up in order to win an agument. Do you have kids?

cofty

That is a disgraceful accusation. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Your casual "Ivory Tower" reponses to suffering are typical of many theists.

Suffering is a daily reality for millions of real humans.

Seraphim, do not derail the thread with a baseless and childish provocative post like that. What does Cofty's personal life have to do with this topic?! Any more where that came from and I will decide you are a troll and ignore you.

Let's try again. If it is 'eminently logical' to link disasters with free will, you should be able to explain it clearly and simply. Please do so without trying to divert attention.

defender of truth

"God can either move you out of the way of the lightning, change where the lightning will strike, or warn you not to go out in the first place. Sometimes people get premonitions of danger and so don’t get on the plane that will later crash for example. With this method free will is not affected, as the person still has a choice to ignore the warning or not. "
This was what you stated on page 17. You admit that God could intervene in a disaster without affecting anyone's free will.

Caedes

Seraphim,

I haven’t really Caedes, as it is eminently logical to see that choices can only be good or bad and the universe has to have both to make such choice a reality. The mechanism, if you want to call it that, is thermodynamics.

It is probably only fair to warn you that as an engineer I have a pretty good understanding of thermodynamics. There is no link between thermodynamics, free will in human beings and natural disasters. If you have empirical evidence you should present it and take your place as one of the most important scientists of our age.

Surely however, you appreciate that choices can be neutral? Or do you gloss over that because it highlights just how false your dichotomy is.

So I will repeat my question since you haven't answered it yet, what is the link?

You didn't answer my other question either "what makes a natural disaster, 'so called'"

Seraphim23

It’s not an accusation cofty it is an impression, just like your one about my attitude to human suffering. Let’s separate my own personal attitude towards humans beings who suffer and the intellectual conversation about the general topic of suffering. After all, you do not know what I do or do not do to help others in need. The watchtower often liked to use pictures of dead children, or cute little children to sway the readers’ opinion, as opposed to a real gritty read based on facts and reason. Not a tactic I approve of!

Defender of truth I wasn’t derailing the conversation with that question but alas we shall never know what my point would have been if I had been given an answer and for you to be able to judge how relevant it would have been. Rest assured it would have been!

Not everything can be explained clearly or simply. The absence of simplicity does not equate to invalidity. Your premise is false in this regard. However I do admit that God can intervene in disasters without affecting free will and he does in my view, just not all disasters all of the time, as that would create issue for free will.

Caedes thank you for your warning. It seems to me like you are closed minded to anything I have to say. However I will say that I don’t think neutral choices exist. Processes and choices in the universe either increase entropy or decrease it in local areas, as opposed to the universe as a whole, which is increasing in entropy overall.

When someone eats a lot of calories, their life span decreases! A small choice has a knock on effect which some would call “bad”. Whatever chemical processes are involved to explain this relationship between energy consumption and life span, it is untimely the expression of energy using chemical pathways in physics to try to become more chaotic. That’s the direction the whole universe is going in after all, and it is what causes what we as humans call the `arrow of time`. Decay of the body at death is another pathway of this kind. It’s all about energy coming together in ordered states and the reverse of that. What humans call good and bad has a correlation with this universal tug of war. The sun keeps things running on the earth but it will cool eventually and with it all life, including good and bad for earth. One cannot have good and bad if there is no life. So here is an obvious link between free will, good and bad and entropy.

Caedes

Seraphim,

I don't think you can say I'm close-minded to what you have to say, because you haven't said anything yet.

Entropy is a natural process that will carry on long after the human race goes the way of the dodo.

There is no link because ultimately it makes no difference if you choose to eat bad food or good food, entropy in the universe as a whole increases regardless. In fact your choice of what to eat makes no difference to the amount of energy being pumped into the earth by our sun. In fact if you think of an example, there is a blackberry bush outside, the bush will continue to fruit regardless of whether they are eaten or not. That local decrease in entropy happens regardless of my choice to eat the blackberries.

Even if you take the case of putting fuel in your car and you use some of that millenia old energy to drive around all you have done is converted some energy into a different form and used it quicker than it might have been used otherwise. So i am afraid you have failed to show a mechanical link between free will and thermodynamics.

So you have still failed to show any sort of connection between free will and natural disasters.

defender of truth

Caedes, as to what seraphim meant by so called 'natural disasters', he said on page 16: "I guess I would define a natural disaster by the affect an exterior natural event has on people in terms of pain, suffering and death. So unless an earthquake actually affects [people for ill], it isn’t a natural disaster."

defender of truth

Seraphim said: "Defender of truth I wasn’t derailing the conversation with that question but alas we shall never know what my point would have been if I had been given an answer and for you to be able to judge how relevant it would have been. Rest assured it would have been!"
.. It was your accusation that was derailing, or heading that way. There should never be a need to make a provoking statement, or to ask a personal question in a discussion like this one. And to ask about whether someone has kids, directly after saying that they seem to like suffering, is either heading in a very provocative direction, or incredibly daft. You don't strike me as the latter.

You could still say 'if you had children, would you..', or whatever your point was in relation to God allowing suffering.

Seraphim23

Any use of energy is going to increase chaos.

Theists, why does God allow suffering..

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