Wads4

'I’m having trouble understanding why YHWH would need to fly on cherubim if he had wings of his own.'

Perhaps his wings were unreliable--because in the story of Elijah God comes down to pick him up in a fiery chariot with fiery horses. nice to have back-up.

sunspark

Sheshbazzar, you've misunderstood and jumped to the wrong conclusion. I've distorted nothing. Every summary, as I originally posted, was followed by the posts in question, because I was called on to defend my original post. Yours follows "you're just pissed off with God", and as you've stated repeatedly, you were indeed mocking what you call "whining".

Speaking of definitions: snide, disdain; name-calling won't get you far in life, you know, whether you call people "whining" or "snide" or any other beautiful adjective you'd care to sling from your vocabulary.

What? Gamera made the comment:

That's heavily suggesting that it was lack of suffering that did him in, and it was nothing of the sort, an invention of Gamera's mind or perhaps he had lousy sources for info on Kurt. He suffered, and I don't mean he got a paper cut or was brutally tortured, but he did indeed suffer. Let's not split hairs because you can't actually respond.

I don't know whether you're intentionally misunderstanding spin or not, but I do believe you are, in fact, misunderstanding:

That is what I took spin to mean. If it is not, then spin can elaborate on what, exactly, he does mean.

spin

I have no trouble with some of the religionists who post at II. The difference is that they don't seem to be wallowing in apologetics. There is no place here for apologetics and it deserves short shrift. I think our aim here is generally to get at the roots of the biblical text, find out what they actually say, not to deal with people who rehearse time encrusted defences of a religion that has dominated our culture for the last 1500 years and so has a priviledged position, having taken over many of the scholarly positions throughout the worls and interpreting everything with an eye for what the religion says. This is crippled scholarship. Scholarship must be able -- at the drop of a hat full of evidence -- to jump ship for explanations that better deal with the evidence.

While the whining atheist may make questionable noises, it is not through apologetic zeal, but through the feeling of having been conned or abused somehow by religion. They don't have very many places to go that are not dominated by religionists of one sort or another if they want to discuss their grievances. You however have for every infidel discussion forum have a hundred religionist forums.

Good. Next time though, represent the position correctly in your statement of it and you can't be accused of misrepresentation!


spin

Sheshbazzar

See the words and post numbers underlined and in RED above? That was, and IS to direct your attention to those particular words and posts in this thread.
Spin came up with the terms "suffer1ing" and "suffer2ing" as a way of distinguishing between the quality, or extremes of "suffering".
His position has certainly appeared in his previous posts in this thread to be, that the famous wealthy and successful only experience "suffer2ing", which is not even worthy of being described as "suffering" and that my using the word "suffering" to describe the -trials- and -experiences- that are common to all men, was a discredit to, a redefinition of, and a misapplication of the word. "suffering".
(to which I replied with the "Dictionary" definitions of the word "suffering")

Thus at this juncture, it was appropriate that I asked of you whether Kurt Cobain was a victim of "suffer1ing" or of "suffer2ing"
Your above reply would seem to indicate the latter category, "suffer1ing", whereas spin's expressed views seems to indicate Kurt would only be a victim of class 2 "suffer2ing", which does not constitute any "real" or genuine "suffering" at all. (by spin's definition of the word "suffering")

In all of this, my position has been that all mankind "suffers" many things in common, in the defined sense of those experiences that are common to most all of us all by the time adulthood is achieved, regardless of circumstances of birth, nationality, or economic position;
A wealthy Australian's grief over the loss of a loved one is as emotionally painful as the grief of poor Third World person undergoing a similar loss.
I and spin have also shared some similar "suffering", except it took a helper and pair of pliers to undo mine. OUCH !

EthnAlln

I don't want to jump into this dogfight, but I can't resist pointing out the elegant term invented by Russell in "The Conquest of Happiness." He called the kind of "suffering" that consists of world-weary boredom due to an excess of wealth and a dearth of challenges "Byronic unhappiness." You'd have to have read "Childe Harolde" to understand it, and I confess that I hated it so much I never finished it, suppressed all memory of it, and couldn't quote a single line from it. A better example, I think, is Goethe's "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers," about the adolescent angst of a boy who falls in love with a friend's fiancee and eventually commits suicide. Reading Werther's self-pitying whines I just wanted to slap the young wuss and tell him to go get a job. Only the ending was really satisfying. Russell also took a "snap out of it!" attitude toward Byronic unhappiness.

Sheshbazzar

Admittedly there is that form of "suffering" described as "world-weary boredom", claimed to be the bain of wealthy. But that type of suffering is relatively rare, as few ever have such an excess of wealth or leisure time to be its victims.(None of the wealthy that I know, have any such problem, they are all working too hard for what they have.)

One of my nephews, an only son, was recently killed in a car wreck at the age of 34, his mother and father are yet mourning their loss, as they will for the rest of their lives, suffering, and undergoing an emotional trauma that is shared by millions.
Another nephew was born prematurely, has never been able even to stand or to walk, confined to a wheelchair for over 30 years of his life, having to clear the mucus from his lungs through a "trach" several times a day just to survive, his larynx has atrophied so he can no longer even speak.
He has suffered much, and his mother, father and siblings along with him.
There is no lack of genuine "suffer1ing" to be found in every community and family in the world, and who is a judge, that when what might be scored as "suffer2ing" gets to be so painful that the person experiencing it is actually "suffer1ing" to the point that death is preferable to any further suffering of any description.

sunspark

I repeat: I wasn't positing Kurt as some kind of example of "see there, suffering bad", but to rebut Gamera's assertion that Kurt killed himself because of lack of suffering, apparently of any kind. Incorrect, ridiculous, and irrelevant to the discussion of why God fails to end the major, pointless suffering (suffer1ing?) of much of mankind, and why, as the Bible records, did he, in fact, command some of it.

(If you really care about "which kind" Kurt suffered, Google is your friend. It's still very little to nothing to do with the topic at hand.)

TomboyMom

For me the discussion is not about why God fails to end suffering of whatever kind, but why he specifically orders his followers to inflict suffering on the innocent.

Gamera

Surely it's not. The issue is self-awareness not responsiveness. Plenaria worms respond to light -- are they conscious of the fact that they are responding to light. I rather doubt it since they don't have a brain to speak of.

Gamera

I'm sure that reciprocal altruism is as old as mankind too. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about loving your ENEMIES, the very people who are not reciprocally altruistic.