well said Hamsterbait.... well said.
The Oracle
22,000 Dead So Far in Myanmar
by Rapunzel 38 Replies latest jw friends
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yadda yadda 2
So sad. Those poor, humble people. Why do such disasters happen to those who least deserve it.
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BurnTheShips
And, finally, BTS - I also appreciate your posts a lot. I'm sorry if I offeded you.
No worries Rapunzel, I felt your existential anguish. ;-)
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BurnTheShips
The idea is that, for whatever reason, God has withdrawn from creation, with the resultant vacuum allowing the existence of evil
I posited a vacuum of sorts in my post above that allows the existence of evil, I described that vacuum as free will.
BTS
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hillary_step
Burn,
I posited a vacuum of sorts in my post above that allows the existence of evil, I described that vacuum as free will.
This does not attend to the moral implication of an 'ominpotent' being who has the power of intervention standing aside for tens of thousands of years while women are raped, babies are killed, innocents are murdered, tens of millions starve to death, etc.
Ae you suggesting that God, having free will, turns aside from doing anything about such sufffering due to some mysterious Master Plan? If so, this is not just immoral, it is criminally negligent.
HS
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Rapunzel
Hillary - Your mentioning some "Mysterious Plan," that God supposedly has in mind, reminds me of a novel by the Russian author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, entitled The Brothers Karamozov. One of the characters in the novel, named Ivan, does not deny the existence of God. He is no atheist in that he admits that God exists. It's just that Ivan wants nothing to do with God. In the novel, Ivan declares to his brother: "It's not God that I do not accept, you understand, it's this world of God's, created by God, that I do not accept and cannot agree to accept."
In Ivan's view, even if God were to reveal at the end of time the secret [or the Master Plan] that made sense of all that had happened here on earth - that explained the reason for the existence of evil and the pain, suffering, the utter terror that humans have to endure - it would not be enough; no explanation or justification would due or suffice.
In the novel, Ivan likens the final act of history - the apocalypse, in which God "unveils" or "reveals" [which is the literal meaning of the term] the reason why all innocent suffering was necessary on the cosmic scale for some greater good - to the denouement of a stage play, wherein all the conflicts of the play are revealed in the end. Ivan admits that God may well indeed provide an explanation, and that the existential conflicts that humans experience may well be resolved in the end, BUT Ivan is not interested in seeing the play. He says to his brother: "And therefore I hasten to return my ticket. And it is my duty, if only as an honest man, to return it as far ahead as possible. Which is what I am doing...I just most respectully return...the ticket." If one accepts the traditional notion of a personal God, the sheer horror of human existence is all too real and all too damning.
As I have said, I reject the commonly expressed dichotomy of natural evil as opposed to moral evil. For me, evil is evil is evil. Suffering is obscene, no matter what its provenance - its source, or cause, or etiology. Suffering is horrendous, no matter if it is due to "moral" failure or an "act of God" [natural evils, for example, floods, typhoons, and earthquakes, are often called "acts of God"].
This leads me to the point of suffering on the part of animals. Even if one accepts the distinction between natural and moral evil [which I don't], and even if one allows that "free will" is the cause of at least moral evil, how to explain the suffering of animals? After all, no could contend that animals have free will. Therefore, the "free will ' can be excluded as the reason for their suffering. Ultimately, one can ask why animals must suffer.
It's quite probable that animals do not share the self-relexive consciousness and awareness that humans possess. And yet, I think that no could deny that animals are sentient creatures which experience pain. Why must they suffer?
Again, my fundamental question is: How could a supposedly "loving" and benevolent God have created a world that is essentiallt based on,and permeated with, suffering and pain [which in my mind are synonymous with evil]? If I, as a finite and imperfect being, can easily imagine a world in which life were, hypothetically speaking, sufficient unto itself - a world in which life did not require death and suffering to sustain/perpetuate itself, why could God - who supposedly infinite in power and goodness - have not created such a world?
Perhaps we need to change our conception of God.
One final note. I see that this post has been "viewed" more than 500 times. And yet, the resonses are quite few. I wonder why this is so, especially when one considers the numerous responses to a recent thread on masturbation and the Bible. I very much appreciate the keen, insightful observation of a previous poster who commented on how quickly people label certain human conduct as "evil." And yet, their vocabulary "fails" them when a natural disaster such as the cyclone in Burma occurs. Suddenly, they switch terminology and claim that it's all a "mystery."
The latest estimates are that one million (1,000,000) people have been left homeless as a result of the cyclone in Myanmar [Burma]. Moreover, people are estimating that the current figure of 25,000 dead will eventually be doubled - in other words, more than 50,000. It strikes me as odd how certain believers call this a "mystery," but if two gays engage in consentual sex, that's "evil." For me, how people can think like this is the real mystery.
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BurnTheShips
Ae you suggesting that God, having free will, turns aside from doing anything about such sufffering due to some mysterious Master Plan? If so, this is not just immoral, it is criminally negligent.
Please do read my old post again. Your response here evidences a lack of understanding of what I said.
BTS
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yadda yadda 2
Hi Rapunzel. No one has responded to your post above, so I thought I'd let you know I at least appreciated the time you took to write all that and I found it very thought-provoking. Thanks.
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Rapunzel
Yadda Yadda - Thank you for your kind words. It's true that only a significantly few people ever respond to any of my posts. To use Witnesses terminology, I guess that I have been "marked" as "bad association"