bling

Quote:
Originally Posted by bling
People are drawn away from God by being showered with physical blessing, more then suffering. Suffering in it self may have a positive effect on drawing people to God or maybe a neutral effect. The real positive that comes from suffering is when God loving people step up and use the opportunity to show others who God is. You are probable familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan, in it the only God like person was the Good Samaritan and if there was no needy person on the side of the road you might have thought the other religious people were being like God on earth.

Jesus gave a parable of the Good Samaritan. There are lots of different loves we can love God with and will please Him, as a friend, as a family member, and as a father, but that is not the love the good Samaritan had for the Jewish man on the side of the road. The Samaritan would have no Jewish friends (the Jews thought worse of the Samaritans then gentiles and the Samaritans seem to feel the same way about the Jews). The Jews thought they had a God given right to hate the Samaritans that gave further reason to their hatred. They would also be unclean if they associated with a Samaritan and probably ostracized by other Jews. It was not all that for the Samaritans, since they may not have thought it was God directed for them to avoid the Jews, but they returned the hatred easily. The Jews thought they were the chosen, which really made others hate them. The Pakistanis and the Indians may come the closes to the relationship.
For a Samaritan to feel love for a Jew:
1. He would have to have empathy for all human, have that heart string plucked that had not become hardened by sin.
2. He would have to at least intentionally look past race.
3. He would have to totally discount all other Jews he had met, decide to forget them for the moment and probably made this decision much earlier to avoid the hesitation at the seen.
4. He would have to be willing to sacrifice time, money, maybe even his job and reputation (his reputation among his Samaritan friend and business group will be shattered, if they find out.)
5. He can not expect even a thank you from this Jewish person, their religion would not allow it. ( The teacher of the Law could not even say “the Samaritan�?.)
6. He has to over come worldly logic that would say: don’t help this Jew, he would not care for you, one less Jew in the world will make it better, his own race has left him why should you care, and he would probably rather die then have you touch him (that is what you have heard Jews say).
7. The Samaritan has to use Godly logic and say: this is a child of God that God loves and God has asked me to love, I have already promised God I would help others, I never thought He would present me with a unconscious Jew to help, but here he is and I must obey my commitment. It might not have been all that much thought out, but this is a huge act of kindness with much risk and sacrifice and requires thought.
8. The Samaritan is prepared to help, at least in thinking through on what he might have to do or with experience.
9. The Good Samaritan did not have blinders on, he was not so focused on the next stop as the potential stop on the side of the road, that was his goal. He was set up to help mentally, materially, and physically.

The Good Samaritan defines Godly love, this is the kind of love God has for us and the kind of love God wants us to have for Him and others. This type of love can be commanded of us and does not require a mutual good feeling.

He is not evil. I don’t think your way will show real sacrificial love.

John A. Broussard

Fascinating!

And those good people who wallow in godly love grovel before a god who does everything possible to promote suffering so that the good people can grow in godly love.

John A. Broussard

I'm beginning to understand.

God is not evil. The incredible suffering imposed on human kind by earthquakes, diseases, floods, famines, etc., the agony of babies dying of dysentery every second of the day--all these are expressions of god's love.

What we think of as evil happenings are merely ways that god has provided for us to express godly love through god's own godly love.

What we should be praying for is for more misery in the world, more people dying in agony, more cripples, more blind, more deaf, more quadruplegics, more people covered with pustules and sores. The more there are, the more we can express our godly love.

Actually the evil some people see in the world is nothing more than god's expression of godly love and golden opportunities for us to also express that godly love.

Godly love reigns supreme! More suffering, more godly love. What could be more exquisite?

EnterTheBowser

It would be great if you could offer some reasons as to why I'm wrong. I think it's fairly obvious that you've given us the moral reasoning that suffering is acceptable - even necessary - because on the whole it produces more "good" - Godly love - than would otherwise be generated.

The question "What sort of world would a loving God create" is certainly interesting, but I don't need to answer it in order to show that a loving God would not create this world. In an analogy to math: I don't need to know the correct answer in order to identify a wrong answer. That is, if I'm examining an attempted proof of some statement, I don't need to know the correct way to prove it, or even whether the statement is true or false, in order to find places where the attempted proof fails.

But I'll throw out a possibility anyways: a world in which everyone was a little less hard-hearted; that is, less inclined to dismiss Godly love for bad reasons. It's true that there are people out there in this world with varying degrees of hard-heartedness. Now, it seems that the hard-hearted and the not-hard-hearted are each free to develop or reject authentic Godly love. So it would seem clear that if the hard-hearted were less so, then they'd still be able to freely develop authentic Godly love. And there would need to be less suffering, since it would take witnessing less such suffering for them to develop Godly love. I'm not concerned with how much less hard-hearted they'd be, or anything of that nature; the point is that it's at least possible for there to be at least as much authentic Godly love and less suffering.

John A. Broussard

Nope. It's just not possible.

bling has made it crystal clear that godly infliction of suffering is absolutely essential for the existence of godly love. The more godly imposed suffering, the more godly love. God demonstrates godly love for mankind by expressing godly love through godly suffering, which in turn engenders more godly love which calls for more godly suffering.

See? It's all very simple. God could not possible limit the amount of godly suffering inflicted upon human beings because that godly suffering is a demonstration of godly love.

As I pointed out earlier, we should all pray for more godly suffering so that we can express more godly love.

EnterTheBowser

I couldn't resist...

bling

Something like that.

bling

Originally Posted by John A. Broussard
I'm beginning to understand.
God is not evil. The incredible suffering imposed on human kind by earthquakes, diseases, floods, famines, etc., the agony of babies dying of dysentery every second of the day--all these are expressions of god's love.

They are actions of Satan allowed to go on by God to provide opportunities.

Originally Posted by John A. Broussard
What we think of as evil happenings are merely ways that god has provided for us to express godly love through god's own godly love.

God quenching His desire to directly help people without us, so good people can participate with God in helping others. God is being unselfish and sacrificial in a way we can not be, but does provide a way for us to develop Godly love.




Originally Posted by John A. Broussard
What we should be praying for is for more misery in the world, more people dying in agony, more cripples, more blind, more deaf, more quadruplegics, more people covered with pustules and sores. The more there are, the more we can express our godly love.

There is plenty on misery in the world, due to the fact most people are not responding to the opportunities out there. More examples of people helping is what is needed, and what I pray for. You may be right, I don’t need any more, but you may be in a better position to see the great need for suffering. Do you think it would help you?




Originally Posted by John A. Broussard
Actually the evil some people see in the world is nothing more than god's expression of godly love and golden opportunities for us to also express that godly love.


O.K. indirectly.





Originally Posted by John A. Broussard
Godly love reigns supreme! More suffering, more godly love. What could be more exquisite?

Sad, but true most of the time.

bling

Originally Posted by EnterTheBowser
Quote:
Originally Posted by bling
I’ve read this and of course do not agree. I am not saying evil always produces good, it only an opportunity to generate Godly love, the opportunity is only a blessing when it is excepted and acted upon. Opportunities are not good for individuals that are not going to be positively affected by them.


It may be the only way any godly love could be generated by humans.


Quote:
Originally Posted by bling
You are right, there are an enormous number of possibilities, but as soon as you go from no problems to at least some problems you open up door to all the same issues. Where do you stop? It would definitely give support to there not being a God.


We know this world does produce some unselfish, sacrificial type love in some people, the question is could there be a better type world for doing that given the limitation of God not just being able to make beings with independently decided, selfless, sacrificial love directly. I think you do have to show a better world then this for accomplishing the objective, or how do you show this is not the best?








1. What do you mean by less hard-hearted, does that mean: less stubborn, more reasonable, more logical, more empathetic or less selfish? I will go with less selfish.
2. I do not know if God could control a portion of a man’s free will and still allow man to have the free will needed to make a totally independent decision to Godly love God and others. That would have to be an assumption on our part or it could be a deal killer.
3. Right now we know people can become totally selfish, if there is a control or limit on man’s selfishness it seems we could figure that out and attribute that to God. That would sound like God is allowing us to be that selfish, which must mean it is alright by Him, which it is not.
4. The contrast between good and evil is important to allow those that might be considering not being selfish to see where selfishness leads.
5. It is hard to say if any opportunities are for individuals that have hearts so harden they will not change, so eliminating this degree of selfishness may actually increase the need for suffering.
6. We really have know idea what happens if you adjust one sin factor on the total amount of Godly love. Some people have to reach rock bottom before they will change, so what happens to them if they never can reach rock bottom?
7. Dictators like Hitler and Saddam Hussein both had a tender heart for children (they were the only people that did not threaten them), so are they less hard hearted then the ones you wanted to eliminate?

EnterTheBowser

You still have given no reasons why a consequentialist theory of morality is not implicit in your reasoning.

Like I mentioned before, if we atheists can find a single instance of useless suffering that God could have prevented, then that constitutes evidence that there is no loving God. The better world would be the world where God prevented that instance of suffering.

Let's take hard-hearted to mean disposed to reject Godly love for stupid reasons. Surely making a person more rational doesn't interfere in their free will?

At this point, I want to tell a story. A mother is camping in the deep forest with her young child (perhaps 3 years old). Maybe it's a stupid thing to do, but that's besides the point. One morning, the mother has a heart attack, and dies. Over the next few days, the young child, being young and consequently rather incapable, begins starving to death. He dies, slowly and painfully. No-one ever finds the mother or the child; their bodies are devoured by wolves and their campsite is reclaimed by nature. Nobody - not the child and certainly no other person - develops any Godly love from this series of events. And God could certainly have changed things to decrease suffering. Heart attacks are certainly a "natural evil" and are within the power of God to prevent without interfering with anyone's freedom. And barring that, God could have granted the child a peaceful, painless death, rather than the exquisite torture of starvation.

Given that story... are you going to assert that nothing relevantly similar to that has ever occurred?