Just heard the special talk about why God allows suffering. Ugh... can't believe I used to believe this crap. What do you all think of the universal sovereignty issue? Do you think it's a valid reason for a "loving" God to allow suffering?
Suffering and Universal Sovereignty
by Trapped in JW land 21 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
-
designs
It is the Achilles heel of christianity.
-
cofty
Do you think it's a valid reason for a "loving" God to allow suffering?
Let's ask this lady...
-
2+2=5
When you boil it all down, the bucks stops with God.
The original creator, the one who always was and who caused all things to be, the source of everything.
This universal sovereign has to take responsibility for all the suffering that has ever taken place.
The WT theoology just paints him as a self-centered, worship craving ego-maniac that is out to prove he is right.........by killing billions of humans.
-
Tiktaalik
There is no "issue of universal sovereignty". That's just something that the JWs made up.
Humans created god/gods at the dawn of civilisation in an attempt to explain all the mystery of existence.
Then along came science. Science has done what god could never do: answer all the questions of how and why life is as it is.
God is a vestige of the past, an anachronism, albeit a venal and corrupt one. Belief in god allows ordinary people to do evil and hurtful things to those who don't share their infantile beliefs, and behave in ways that society would not tolerate anywhere else. Like parents refusing blood transfusions for their children. Or families torn apart by disfellowshipping.
So, god doesn't permit or prevent evil and suffering. He/she/they are nothing but constructs of the human mind and occupy no other place in the universe, except in the minds of their believers.
-
cofty
Tiktaalik scores a Bullseye!
-
stuckinarut2
Great comments Tiktaalik!
spot on!
-
stuckinarut2
hey 'trapped in jw land', you must be in New Zealand or an island nation somewhere if you have heard it already today?
its still only 8;30 am in the east coast of Australia.....
-
Seraphim23
As a believer in a God I don’t buy into the idea that the problem of evil dictates that God cannot exist, however I do think the universal sovereignty issue doesn’t compute. The WT seems to reject the possibility of life on other planets because of the universal sovereignty teaching of theirs. However the more planets are found, and ones like earth, the more this conflicts with other doctrines they seem to have!
The doctrine is a subtle one, in which God doesn’t make anything unless it has a purpose. It’s one of the reasons why they don’t agree with homosexuality, abortion, evolution, the appendix having no function and so on. More precisely it is a doctrine about the perceived creation order of something/anything found in nature and whether it goes against or for its perceived purpose as judged by the idea of direct intelligence via design and/or the object in nature’s structure, as perceived by our intelligence.
So the question to ask a JW in regard to this is why is there the scale and creation order of the universe with its myriads of earth like planets? These can’t all be for the purpose of only one planet to support life, and so for this doctrine to hold up it means there will have to be other intelligent life out there. If true this creates a conflict with the universal sovereignty doctrine, because such an issue would have to be settled on other planets as well.
I point this out because it is but one argument that can be used on a JW to show its inadequacy by using their other doctrines.
-
cofty
What if a JW responded that the other planets are for future habitation by perfect humans?
That's what I actually used to believe.
