Why didn't God design humans so they pay a price with their health and bodies suffer for committing evil?

by yadda yadda 2 16 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  yadda yadda 2

  The laws of health dictates that if we abuse our body and neglect our diet and health, we pay a price in our bodies. Our health deterioriates and we get sick and diseased. Its like the law of gravity.

  So how come nothing similar happens for committing evil against another person, for committing gross moral wrongs?

  How come a God of love and justice would not build a law of Karma into human beings so that persons who commit gross wickedness and evil that harms others would get sick or catch a disease or in some other way pay a price with their health and physical wellbeing. For example, a serial killer would quickly catch leprosy or contract rapidly developing cancer. Or a child murderer or paedophile gets the same. Or men like Hitler or Pol Pot would quickly develop heart disease or some other terrible illness and quickly die.

  It happens when we abuse our own health, so why not the same if we abuse others health and right to life? What better way to ensure that evil is prevented or greatly reduced without having to intervene in human affairs ever again? A simple law of cause and effect, moral karma: you commit great evil and kill others, you will pay a commensurate price in your own health and soon die.

  The Bible is replete with all manner of moral laws and rules, but nobody pays a price whatsoever for breaking them, unless they are also criminal acts and they get caught. Evil people and good people die alike. There is no differentiation whatsoever in one's physical health and wellbeing whether you are a saint or evil. Many incredibly altruistic and kind persons, eg, someone who fostered dozens of orphans or abused young children, might suddenly get cancer for no reason, while a life-long paedophile or warmonger might live their whole life in physical ease and comfort.

  I think this is, objectively, a rather strong argument for atheism in some ways, when looked at from the philosophical 'Problem of Evil'.

  From a JW perspective, it seems Jehovah could quite easily have built into human beings such a karmic price to pay for evil, proportionate to the evil committed, while still allowing Satan's so-called challenge to his universal sovereignty to have gone ahead.

  Jehovah would never have to intervene in human affairs again from a punitive perspective if a fair and proportionate karmic system for moral evil was naturally built into the laws of health.
• 

  yadda yadda 2

  Oops, didn't quite get my thread title right. Ignore the word 'suffer'. Should be as shown immediately above.
• 

  scotoma

  That's one of the reasons humans made up a god. The purpose is to scare the hell out of a significant number of predators.
• 

  yadda yadda 2

  No matter takers on this? I thought all the atheists on this site would really lap this up.
• 

  smiddy

  yadda yadda 2 , I think this post should elevate you to the right , sorry, left hand of God ,as this is very profound ,even the most high didn`t think of it. Then again maybe the G.B.with their new found status ,can pass it on to jesus who is at the right hand of God to inform him/her where"it"went wrong !? And a future edition of the warchtower can pass it off as new light so the faithfull can then fully understand why bad things happen to jehovah`s witnesses in this system of things .

  smiddy
• 

  Amelia Ashton

  It wouldn't work. Politicians would all be dead within a year!
• 

  Qcmbr

  While I don't think god designed anything I think evolutionary processes do feedback a natural morality and justice when resources are easily found. So in a place with plenty of food then behaviour that is less moral is generally less effective. This effect scales into importance the more complex the social group. Humans are the most complex but you can still see animal societies where protection of kin ( the selfish gene) is moral and more effective than every man for themselves strategies which tend to predominate in resource scare environments.

  In human society, just as 1 in every 10 smokers may well be able to smoke without suffering severe health problems, it is possible for in individual to escape social or physical consequences of immoral choices but overall there is a feedback, drink drivers suffer more injuries and deaths, thieves tend to have lower quality economic lives, gregarious people live longer, family orientated people tend to be happier on most measures and so on. Remember though that morality is relative. It is entirely moral , from an evolutionary standpoint, that in times of resource scarcity or immediate danger to act differently. During war, famine , personal attack we quickly discover that pious meekness and turn the other cheek are fairly useless traits in self or group preservation.
• 

  yadda yadda 2

  I'm analysing the problem of evil and suffering from a Christian perspective only, not an evolutionary one.

  Here's how one prominent Christian apologist on the internet speculates how we all inherited imperfection and death from Adam, ie, through Adam's chromosones becoming defective. I'm curious if the Watchtower Society has published similar a similar theory?

  Now, if Christians believe this, that Adam's wilful 'sin' (eating an apple) caused significant deterioration in his chromosones that lead to his physical decay and death, then why couldn't an all-powerful God not imbue all human DNA with a similar, more rapid effect for committing wilful evil and sin perpetrated on another human being, such as murder or rape or assault or child molestation? If the 'issue of universal sovereignty' and free will were not affected by this punishment by God on Adam, why can't the same same principle apply - of chromosone deterioration for moral crimes - to all humanity as a universal deterrent for evil and suffering? An all-powerful and benevolent God could have done this, surely? It would simply be a universal, karmic system of 'punishment' for evil built into human genes.

  "This means that whatever information was encoded in Adam's Y chromosome was passed on unchanged (virtually) to all of his descendants including all of us men alive today! However, if the information in the Y chromosome were faulty, then it would mean that all of his descendants (including us) would also have a faulty code. Discovering the exact make-up of the Y chromosome when Adam was first created is impossible for us to do, however, its current state may tell us something about the fall. The Y chromosome may in fact be a record of an event in the life of our original father. Bradman and Thomas suggest that the Y chromosome contains "a record of an event" [xvi] in the life the man who passed on the current Y chromosome. However, because Bradman and Thomas are committed to the evolutionary paradigm they believe the event "had no effect on the life of the man in whom the change occurred nor, indeed, on the life of his descendants," (emphasis mine). [xvii] Is it possible that the recorded event is not something that had "little or no effect," but is in some way the record of the genetic fall of our first father? Thus Adam not only died spiritually by virtue of losing the Holy Spirit, but his genetic information (as recorded specifically in the Y chromosome) was corrupted. God stated that in the day that Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he would die (Genesis 2:17).

  Death, it appears, entered into Adam's Y chromosome (in some way unique and different than the X) that very moment causing him to go from being genetically perfect to having serious errors in his code that would eventually cause a "crash". Occasionally people who use computers will experience a scenario where the operating system experiences a "fatal crash". The crash occurs because there is some conflict in the code of the program. Though the program may be able to sustain data loss for a short period, if uncorrected, the program will eventually crash. In Adam's case, that crash took 930 years, but he did eventually experience a complete shutdown.

  If that is correct, then the Y chromosome (and all of his chromosomes) must have been complete and whole before Adam fell into sin. We know that he was free from all imperfections because God created him and declared him to be good and because death entered into the world via Adam's sin. Yet, the Y chromosome seems to contain something so deleterious that our savior could not have shared it. After all, every copy of the Y chromosome (that is, every male descendant of Adam) would necessarily have the same genetic flaw that would also lead to the ultimate crash. In order to save mankind on a genetic level, a new Y chromosome would need to be provided. Furthermore, through the disobedience of Adam all of creation was made subject to corruption as Paul states in Romans 8.

  For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will bedelivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body, (Romans 8:19-23).
• 

  Tater-T

  why don't angels suffer from death after they transgressed.

  heres a clue or two... it's all hubris

  

  
• 

  tec

  Because none of us would live very long... is the short answer.

  We rate sin (wrongdoing) according to our culture and society and norms, and even those are according to the times we live in, etc. That doesn't mean that God rates sin. Cain's jealousy and anger LED to murder. Lies... lead to pain and anger... and those lead to more harm caused on another. Any act that toward another that is stemming from something other than love... tends to be a sin. Passing someone who is homeless, and doing nothing to aid them... is a sin. Wishing harm on someone... is a sin. But we are the ones who rate sin, so that we can feel better about our own sins (at least I'm not as bad as Bob over there)

  Generally speaking, this world that we have created is also responsible for causing others to sin.

  Our flesh already pays for the sin that is in it... in that it can become ill, and that it dies. Sins of the spirit can take a toll on the spirit though, as well. (like convincing oneself that shunning someone is actually an act of love; like convincing oneself that a bad thing is a good thing) Those just are not visible to everyone. Though they are visible in what comes 'out' of a person, in how they treat others and perhaps also how they treat themselves (word and deed)

  Peace,

  tammy