Please would everybody now stop talking the bait from the attention-seeker.
Back to the topic.
The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday
by cofty 2596 Replies latest jw experiences
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tec
BTW, way to undermine your own polemic against making assumptions
Lol... I did say it was an ongoing lesson. But while you may not be involved in that... "that" is something that is also ongoing. You, perhaps, are just buying into what spills over onto the board.
Peace,
tammy
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Diest
Am I the only one that sees a lilly picture and just keeps on scrolling? Amazed at all the responses.
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adamah
Cofty said- Please would everybody now stop talking the bait from the attention-seeker. Back to the topic.
It's getting boring playing the easy role of shooting down the failed theodicy attempts, so I'm going to switch teams and play "Devil's Advocate" to help the Xian believers out here.
So there's a commonly-accepted principle used by doctors called "benign neglect", wherein a doctor decides NOT to treat a condition where the clinical outcome is uncertain, anyway, OR merely watches the condition and doesn't treat to see if it worsens or resolves on it's own (spontaneous remission is rare, but is in fact quite possible for certain deadly cancers). The provider intervenes ONLY when the 'cost vs benefit' analysis forces his hand to treat.
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/benign+neglect
benign neglect A stance of non-intervention that a clinician may adopt in the face of lesions and clinical conditions (e.g., verruca vulgaris, commonly known as warts) which have an uncertain or unstable clinical course and not associated with future malignancy, or which regress (e.g., capillary haemangioma), as the lesions do not become malignant and are, at most, cosmetic problems. Segen's Medical Dictionary. © 2012 Farlex, Inc. All rights reserved.
benign neglect
Decision-making A stance of nonintervention that a clinician may adopt in the face of lesions and clinical conditions which have an uncertain or stable clinical course. Cf Watchful waiting.
So to use the medical analogy, God actually has a long-term treatment plan in place for humanity, and is watchfully waiting before intervening.
And despite the horror of the thought of a God witnessing 250k lives lost in a tsunami and doing nothing, God is waiting for the condition to worsen until the appointed time to treat, just as a doctor watches a lesion which could cause some temporary damage and harm in the short-term, and doesn't intervene.
So using the 'benign neglect' claim is basically a way of unifying various thoughts already expressed in the discussion, but bringing it under a unified doctrine which is accepted in medicine.
So add the concept of 'benign neglect' to the list, and then Cofty, you can see if you can dismantle it.
Adam
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cofty
First you need to show that there could be any negative consequences of god calming the tsunami before it even got started on 26th December 2004
Benign neglect is contraindicated when 250 000 lives are in imminent danger.
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adamah
Cofty said-
First you need to show that there could be any negative consequences of god calming the tsunami before it even got started on 26th December 2004
As I said, such intervention doesn't fit into God's long-term treatment plan, just as a doctor doesn't perform a temporary procedure that MAY help alleviate the condition temporarily, until he can take the patient into surgery under controlled conditions and remove the cancerous tumor properly via surgery. To do so would be a patch job, Gerry-rigging a temporary solution vs "doing the job right" (it might even constitute medical malpractice).
A good example may be a patient with deadly skin cancer (melanoma), where only a certain portion of the tumor may be visible on the surface, and it would be medical-malpractice to lop it off during an office visit, and actually attempting to do so would reduce the long-term success of the treatment (by destroying the evidence needed to be examined later, or using medicines which similarly interfere with performing the procedure properly). Instead, the doctor needs to perform the more-difficult work of extracting the tumor properly by using the more-effective Moh's procedure, which is generally scheduled as a surgery.
Cofty said- Benign neglect is contraindicated when 250 000 lives are in imminent danger.
What evidence do you offer to back such a claim? Prove it, or else you're "begging the question", presenting only an unsupported conclusion which is the very matter at stake.
Adam
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cofty
As I said, such intervention doesn't fit into God's long-term treatment plan,
Why not?
We have already thoroughly covered arguments that demean the utmost value of this life.
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adamah
As I said, such intervention doesn't fit into God's long-term treatment plan,
Why not? We have already thoroughly covered arguments that demean the utmost value of this life.
Excising a tumor properly involves not only the removal of the cancerous malignant cells, but also the removal of healthy non-diseased normal cells that are adjacent. Doctors will in fact remove the hidden buried 'roots' of a melanoma, and even continue on into the apparently-healthy tissue, just to leave margins that are 'clear' of disease.
Point being, removing healthy tissue is part-and-parcel of treating cancer skin, since surgery techniques necessarily involve some collateral damage for the greater good of the patient, overall.
An analogous concept is seen in the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah, where the idea of God's intervention inevitably involved inducing some collateral damage; it was not even an eyebrow-raiser for those who originally heard the account. It's why Abraham negotiating on the behalf of unknown righteous men, and stopped after reaching the number 10, and didn't continue down to ONE: the Bible's view of declaring entire towns as worthy of destruction was acceptable, since some collateral damage and death to some "righteous men" was expected.
It's only later under Xianity that the idea of "perfect justice" and standing before God based on one's own individual merits arose.
Besides, "the utmost value of human life" is actually NOT a principle found in the Bible: NOT ALL HUMAN LIFE is equally worthy. Otherwise, you wouldn't see the OT accounts of the killing of Gentiles on the battlefield, etc. Jesus even said that one had to hate his own life in the name of being his follower (or those who seek to save their lives lose their eternal life, etc), so again, it's not a principle actually reflected in the Bible.
Adam
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caliber
Caliber ironically resorted to using ammunition with BB-gun-sized caliber by citing the lyrics of Garth Brooks: can you come up with anything slightly better, or does BB-gun-sized ammunition possess sufficient 'stopping power' to completely stop all critical thoughts in their tracks inside your head, too? ~~ adamah
You actually gave me my first hardy laugh of the day but don't
get too near my" Red and Chrome Pump Action BB ShotGun" , it mighty be more nasty than you first may think hahahahahaha!
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cofty
Adam - Your metaphor is adding nothing but confusion.
The god of theism is knowing, powerful and loving.
He could have stopped the tsunami without changing his long-term plan.
You make it sound as if the continuation of a quarter of a million lives wasn't worth his time and effort.
