by cofty 2596 Replies latest jw experiences
many good things can cause suffering
Of course, that is a given.
Do you wish to argue that passively observing the drowning of 250 000 people in a tsunami was a perfect act of divine love?
If so, please join the dots.
If not then it was an act of "evil", or some other word more to your preference.
psac: Suppose a man walk across a parking lot on a very hot day. he hear cries from one of the cars and see a small child inside the car. he stand by and watch the child go red and then limb. then he goes to the supermarket. Later, in the news, he hear the woman owning the car had left the child in the car due to a small stroke and by the time the child was found it was dead from heat.
yes or no, did the man do anything wrong by being passive?
Would it be relevant to say: Well, no evil was involved since the sun or the womens stroke are not moral agents? can you even imagine the man raising the question of how we define evil as a defence for his inaction?
I simply fail to see how you address the issue in this thread.
The tsunami in and of itself is not evil, it's the fact that the tsunami killed a quarter million and god supposedly has it in his power to stop it. And since mountains are nothing but the film of dust on a scale to him, we are to believe that it would have taken negligible effort on his part to stop it.
This is akin to a father standing over his infant child as it lays in a shallow puddle, watching as a light rain slowly makes the puddle deeper until the child drowns. It would've been negligable effort for the father to pick up the child and keep it alive. If a father actually did this, I have no doubt that he'd be tried and convicted not only under our current system of laws, but under the mosaic law that god supposedly handed to isreal himself.
Why is it that god cannot be held accountable to the very laws that he has given mankind? It is said that his sense of justice is so extreem that he had to pay a debt to himself with the death of his son, but you're telling me that he can't be held accountable for preventing the loss of life that serves absolutely no purpose except to make people who believe in him question their faith?
So, what is evil and must be addressed is God's inactivity in the face of suffering caused by other than human agents, correct?
And the answer must be accetoable in regards to God being defined as a God of Love, correct?
Like the examples given, a human that could save a life and does not would be viewed as evil or at least criminally negligent, correct?
So God must be held to AT LEAST this measure since He is a self-described God of Love, correct?
Holding Him accountable to the very standard He hold us, yes?
psac: I am not sure i understand the first question, but my answer to the other questions are yes assuming I understand them correctly and we use the same definitions for the terms. What is your answer to my question?
what is evil and must be addressed is God's inactivity in the face of suffering caused by other than human agents, correct?
More than that. God designed a world that would inevitably kill millions of it's inhabitants. It would have been trivially easy for him to design it otherwise.
God's is guilty of heinous sins of commission and omission.
More than that. God designed a world that would inevitably kill millions of it's inhabitants. It would have been trivially easy for him to design it otherwise.
God's is guilty of heinous sins of commission and omission.
I don't believe the world was designed, so...
psac: I am not sure i understand the first question, but my answer to the other questions are yes assuming I understand them correctly and we use the same definitions for the terms. What is your answer to my question?
I have to ask you a question first, much like the one that started this: Can you think of any answer to this question that would satisfy you? or even agree is a viable answer ( even if you dont' agree with it)?
Our issue seems to be that God is behaving in a away that is not consistant with what He demands of us.
God asks us to be responsible for our fellow man, but He is not responsibel for His own creation.
God asks us to help and to feed those in need, but God doesn't do that with His own creation ( argument for sustaining creation put aside for the moment).
God asks us to do whatever is possible for us to do to make the world a better place, not only to each other but the world in of itself, But God doesn't seem to be doing that for His own creation.
psac: I can think of *a* answer, for instance that we are all living in the matrix or I am insane or stuff like that.
However i cannot think of a reasonabel answer that would satisfy me, just like i cannot think of a reasonable answer that would excuse the man with the child in the car. This does not mean such an answer does not exist, like there may be some answer as to why it appears the earth is round while it is really flat.
psac: God asks us to be responsible for our fellow man, but He is not responsibel for His own creation.
This is not the problem actually and this way of phrasing the problem hide the real issue. For instance, the man who walked by the car with the child might not ask any of us to do anything at all but that has very little to do with how we view his inaction.
