The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty 2596 Replies latest jw experiences

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  PelicanBeach

  I asked a simple question. You have a problem answering it. Here's the question again: "My question was why God SHOULD have prevented it"

  You go round in circles accusing me of something but have yet to answer the question. You obviously disagree with my assertion that you might say that since the Bible claims God is a loving God for him to not act on that tsunami in 2004 was unloving. But you disagree with my attempt to put words in your mouth (an attempt to seek an answer that you kept to yourself). So since that is not the correct answer, I ask again. Why do you believe God SHOULD have prevented the tsunami?
• 

  caliber

  God SHOULD have prevented the tsunami because the Bible claims that God is a loving God and a loving God would not allow people to die.

  Timing sometimes means everything

  example in ice hockey...

  An extra attacker in ice hockey is a forward or, less commonly, a defenceman who has been substituted in place of the goaltender. The purpose of this substitution is to gain an offensive advantage to score a goal. The removal of the goaltender for an extra attacker is colloquially called pulling the goalie, resulting in an empty net.

  The extra attacker

  • Near the end of the game — typically the last 60 to 90 seconds — when a team is losing by one or two goals. In this case, the team risks a goal being scored on its empty net. In "do-or-die" situations, such as playoff elimination games, teams may pull the goalie for an extra attacker earlier in the game and/or when they are down by more goals.

  Likewise God will act at a time most benefical from his vantage point. You don't pull your goaltender in the second period
• 

  cofty

  Pelican my argument is against the claims of christian theism.

  Theism asserts that the world was made by a loving creator who is immanently involved in human affairs.

  Permitting 250 000 lives to be wiped out by something for which no human was to blame, and which could have easily been prevented by a loving god, is a problem for theism.

  Every attempt to square this circle turns out, on examination, to be vacuous rhetoric.

  If you can see a flaw in that please share. I don't want to be wrong any longer than necessary.
• 

  jgnat

  Your justification, caliber, is that the 250,000 were sacrificed for an unknown higher purpose, perhaps to prevent an even greater loss of life in the future?
• 

  cofty

  Likewise God will act at a time most benefical from his vantage point. - Caliber

  Thank you for adding defense number 8, the hockey analogy.

  8. It wasn't god's time to act

  My response - Is there a better time for a loving god to act than before the tsunami kills a quarter of a million innocent people?
• 

  J. Hofer

  kate, if you think pelican won an argument here, you have a lot, a LOT of stuff to learn about discussions... it's kinda annoying also that you always refer to atheism as a belief system when in fact it's just exactly the opposite: NOT a belief system. you also always call atheists followers of dawkins, which is utter nonsense. while many do like dawkins, because he tries to spread reason, i don't know of anybody who'd follow him blindly just because he's dawkins. if he'd start about how chemtrails are real and dangerous, most people i know would drop him in a second.

  you know, atheists got feelings too ;)
• 

  PelicanBeach

  Cofty,

  "Permitting 250 000 lives to be wiped out by something for which no human was to blame, and which could have easily been prevented by a loving god, is a problem for theism."

  "If you can see a flaw in that please share"

  I don't see a flaw in that. I'm not your enemy though I am a believer.

  Thanks for the response.

  Pelican
• 

  yadda yadda 2

  Yes, there was a better time for God to act. He could have acted to prevent the Holocaust, which murdered 6,000,000 innocent Jews, and not only that, they were a 'chosen people' that God concluded an everlasting covenant with.

  It was the horrors of WW2 that gave birth to modern existentialism and atheism.

  Morality simply has no meaning if one has the power to prevent abject horror and suffering but chooses not to.
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  yadda yadda 2

  To play the devil's advocate (haha, or rather, God's advocate), perhaps the best Christian theodicy is based on Romans 13, ie, that God takes absolutely no interest in human affairs but relies on human authorities as his 'agents' and 'servants' to mitigate or eliminate evil and wickedness, and that mankind is slowly learning and improving in this regard after many horrific failures in history. Man is slowly (perhaps) learning history's lessons the hard way.

  God has completely stepped back, leaving us to our own devices, out of respect for our right of self-determination and self-rule, much like any parent recognises the right of their grown-up child to make their own decisions about how to conduct their lives, and how modern liberal democracies generally recognise the right of sovereign states to govern themselves without interference from other countries in the absence of aggressive war-like actions towards their neighbours.

  This is the complete opposite of the traditional JW theodicy that God is letting time pass to prove that we can't rule ourselves. My little spin on Romans 13 is that God's recognition of humankinds right to rule itself and deal with it's own wickedness is exactly the reason God doesn't intervene.

  This doesn't of course address the problem of natural evil, ie, why God would create a planet where cataclysmic natural events like earthquakes and tsunami's kill in vast numbers. And bacteria and viruses have killed more people than any war or earthquake. Obviously to suggest that all this resulted from Adam and Even eating some forbidden fruit 6,000 years ago is utterly absurd.

  The problem with my theodicy based on Romans 13 is that it renders God absolutely irrelevant. There is no point in belief in such a totally hidden and non-intervening God. Which is the Buddhist philosophy.

  The only motivation then is retaining a residual belief in God out of hope of an after-life and to see one's deceased loved one's again. Ultimately this is the Raison d'être for religion. It's pie in the sky, opium or morphine against the reality of the shortness of our lives and death.
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  cofty

  Every time a christian thanks god for their food they destroy the "hands off" theodicy and condemn god for selectively permitting suffering.