If God Doesn't Interfere with Free Will, Why Pray for Others?

by leavingwt 7 Replies latest jw friends

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  leavingwt

  John W. Loftus asks the question in this post at his blog.

  When terrible things happen, God is hidden in a way that make him seem non-existent.

  So, why pray for someone to be saved, or to travel safe, etc, etc?

  Furthermore, I think it's obvious that the more power someone has to avert a tragedy then the more of a moral responsibility he has to interfere with it. If I encountered a gang of thugs beating up some kid I cannot be expected to physically stop them. But a superman who came upon them doing so should. So also with God, the ultimate superman.
  
  The fact of the matter is that we do not have as much free will as commonly supposed, if we have any at all, as I wrote about here. Since we don't have that much free will anyway, there should be no objection to interfering when someone wants to commit a heinous crime like James Holmes did.
  
  If an omniscient God somehow needs to judge us then he can judge our thoughts and intentions alone. He should therefore stop people like James Holmes dead in his tracks before he acts on his thoughts.
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  00DAD

  Ah yes, the age old problem of evil ...
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  King Solomon

  A philosopher tends to focus on free will vs pre-destiny element, which arises via God's omniscience (including knowing future events; a prerequisite of prophecying); the other aspect of free will is who has the authority, ie God's Divine Will vs mans free will (using a Bible-trained conscience for all matters not dictated by Divine Will).

  This case is pertaining to the former usage, and raises the theodicy question ("why does God allow evil to continue?") that theologians have debated for centuries, yet the question remains (and some whacky explanations have been floated by Xian apologists).
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  leavingwt

  One of the comments at the post, put forth some common excuses to the question.

  1. God made man and then left him to his own devices to make mistakes, do bad things etc.
  2. The "potter and the pot" argument. God like the potter makes the pot and like the potter if he doesn't like his work he has a right to destroy it. (Catholics seem to like to use this one)
  3. God made the universe and then left it alone (the absentee landlord God)
  4. It wasn't God, it was Satan who did the bad stuff, and God seems to not have the power to do anything to prevent/counteract what Satan does.
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  King Solomon

  And all ring hallow, as excuses and not reasonable answers.... I'll add more thoughts later.
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  King Solomon

  And all ring hallow, as excuses and not reasonable answers.... I'll add more thoughts later.
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  WTWizard

  We are supposed to pray to that Almighty Lowlife Scumbag because he wants to ruin our lives and does not want anyone or anything else helping us. Jehovah's worst nightmare would be for Father Satan or one or more of His Demons to give us something Jehovah doesn't want us to have, and then for us to enjoy life. Prayer is designed to prevent that, usually by having the filthy angels interfering with any Demons that would have come in to assist us.
• 

  James Brown

  It's very difficult. It's impossible to know what is going on with us humans.

  I agree with your thoughts on prayer.

  I agree that God seems to dissapear when he is needed.

  But at the same time I find it hard to believe that we evolved to our present state, condition unassisted.

  So thinking outloud, man on earth has probably dealt with alien interventions thru out history.

  The bible and Sumerian text could be interpreted to report of alien encounters.

  There seems to be junk dna, missing pieces to our dna. Its like we are programed to be smart enough to be where we are

  on earth, but we are programmed to be stupid enough not to figure out what is going on.