Warcraft3

Hey WinAce whats up man?
Okay now on to the post..........

Well first of all I do not think God is "all-knowing" (I am basically an open view theist ) so my views on that point are a bit different, as to the rest of your post......

Oh man, cry me a river!!! The horror of suffering!!! Life should just be a fun filled adventure in la la land where everything is flowers and pink rainbows and pixie dust. Cmon man lets get real here.

The physical universe is a place where we can experience true suffering, true choice, and we can affect things for both the good and the bad. Some suffering is not bad in and of itself....just unpleasant. Other types of suffering (like the kind we inflict on our fellow man) are evil and are the result of human choices.

I have experienced alot of suffering in my life and I have learned things I could not have learned if I had been living in a world without pain. So I do not really find the emotional argument of "Why is there suffering and carnivorous activity" to be a very good one against a creator.

We could argue all day over how "things outta be" but things are the way they are and if God made them that way then that was His choice. Suffering and pain are not bad in and of themselves....just unpleasant.

So the "horrors of life" argument just makes me strum the ol violen like so......:boohoo:


Russ

GunnerJ

Ahem.

Warcraft3

GunnerJ:
Okay now you are getting really close to blatently misrepresenting my position. You quote the following statements by me.......

And then you provide a link to the Holocaust, as if to imply I am equating natural suffering and that imposed by the will of humans. Lets take a look at my entire post though.....
And lets take note of the section in red.....

Now cmon man, you know what I am saying here and you know I am not saying that the Holocaust is something God wanted the Nazis to do. Please do not misrepresent me like this again either directly or indirectly. I would not do such a thing to you. Thanks.


Russ

Tom Ames

Theistic evolutionists pretty much concede that the mechanisms God uses to direct the phenomena of the universe are unknowable (at least in a scientific sense) and are therefore not proper topics for scientific investigation. Basically, they take the not too-unreasonable position that there's more to the universe than what our limited minds can comprehend.

They don't make the mistake of "rationalizing" their faith: they understand that the evidence supports evolution, and they are happy to support that conclusion. They also generally don't believe that their religious beliefs should be taught in public schools.

Theistic evolutionists are a major target of Philip Johnson's "Wedge" strategy, incidentally. The Wedge is basically an attempt to tar anyone who accepts evolution (and modern science generally) as an atheist, no matter what their personal theological beliefs.

Doubting Didymus

As you are no doubt aware, the early books of the bible contain certain specific claims about the creation of life that are not held out by the evidenced claims of science when taken literally. If you take it interpretively, or metaphorically, all's well on the compatible beliefs front.

However, there was no global flood. There was no adam and eve. the human species is older than the X thousand years that you get from adding up the genealogies. These are all things that a literal interpretation of the bible imply, and that are false.

Regarding intelligent guided processes, you'd have to hypothesise some kind of involvement that leaves no recognisable trace of ever having existance. Because all living things fit to the predictions made by the hypothesis that organisms do not evolve under an intelligent hand, the assertion to the contrary is tantamount to omphalosism. Some people are quite happy with the omphalos ideas, but it would creep the shit out of me.

WinAce

*Waves* Hiya =)

That makes two of you I met online. The rest generally think you're a heretic

Well, there goes heaven out the window...

I'll ignore part of that so as not to the turn this into a discussion on the "free will defense"...

And still other things are gratuitous, nasty and truly bizarre, such as wuchereria bancrofti. Now, if anyone except a god was caught purposefully inventing something like that, we'd have an uproar and possibly a public lynching.

Not to belittle your life or anything, but conversely, you've failed to learn that which you would have had in a world without that extensive suffering. The sword cuts both ways on this one.

It's not. That's why it's only a good argument against a benevolent and all-powerful creator

But my point, which has been amptly demonstrated, is:

What AnswersInGenesis and other bozos try to use as an argument against theistic evolution (the brutality of it all) isn't particularly more damaging than the standard Problem of Evil. If they can keep their beliefs in light of it, they're hypocrites if they expect others to give up theirs because of the Problem of Evolution as a Creative Process.

GunnerJ

I have misrepresented nothing. In fact, I could make a good case that you're misrepresenting me: you'll note that nowhere did I imply that you think that "the Holocaust is something God wanted the Nazis to do." All I did was a little skeet-shooting on your "cry me a river and get over it" defense.

RufusAtticus

The topic is theistic evolution; so let's not get into any theological arguments that stray from that or this thread will probably be moved to EoG or GR.

RufusAtticus
E/C Moderator

Oolon Colluphid

And a loving god creates such a vast quantity of unpleasantness because...?
According to the World Health Organisation, "diarrhoeal diseases [alone] claim nearly two million lives a year among children under five".

That's 5,400-odd a day. Or 228 an hour. Or about three a minute.

Little kids, that is. All uncontrollably shitting themselves to a dehydrational death.

Would you mind telling me just what the fuck these kids learn from their suffering?

And caused by things that god allegedly created. Things like Vibrio cholerae



And at the very least, they are things that any form of loving god allows, on top of all the possible cruelties that man can inflict upon man. Please therefore define 'loving'.

And that's only diarrhoeal diseases. Do you really want me to describe the effects of Ebola Zaire? Or rabies? Or schistosomiasis, or leishmaniasis, or hookworms, or neonatal ophthalmic gonococcal infection, or Rickettsia prowazekii, or Plasmodium falciparum? Do you?

Russ, on the basis of that statement, and at the risk of forming a false dichotomy, you are either vastly ignorant, or one sick, twisted [obscenity].

And one who thinks a violin is strummed. So not very bright, either.

If there really were a creator god, I wouldn't cross the road to piss in his ear if his brain was on fire.

TTFN, Oolon

Warcraft3

Okay Ill make this brief so I do not get to far off the topic of the OP. My beliefs are not yet set in stone, but I am gravitating towards a strange mix between Hugh Ross's and Glenn Mortons views on Genesis. I am still researching stuff so I have not yet come to a conclusion on everything, but I do not think the flood was global. So that is where I stand on things.


Russ