the fonz

I don't see how your response answers my point. If one argues that suffering is necessary to make people good, then one must explain why people who experience suffering also turn out bad. And, they must explain why God lets them experience X amount of suffering to make them turn out bad since he wants them to be good people.

That's nice but I never tried to do this. Certainly there are differences between God and humans.

I'm fine with this being compatible with free will.

But that doesn't answer my point. Why didn't God make humans with free will who never did anything wrong? Since such a thing is possible, bringing up free will to explain the existence of evil (as you have done) is irrelevant.

EnterTheBowser

"If one argues that suffering is necessary to make people good, then one must explain why people who experience suffering also turn out bad."

Taken on its own, this statement is not really true. Let's make the sentence a little more abstract:

"If A is necessary for B, then you have to show how it is that we sometimes get A but not B"

Now let's go back into more specifics...

"If being a rectangle is necessary for being a square, then you have to show how it is that sometimes we have rectangles which aren't squares."

Basically, suffering might be a necessary condition for something, but not a sufficient one.

the fonz

Yeah you're right. Let's take out that sentence. The sentence after it still stands, that's the point I wanted to get across.

bling

God does the good stuff Satan is limited, but allowed to do as much evil as God will allow Satan to do. Thus you have needy people. If only bad stuff happened to bad people there would be a reason not to help them because they would be getting what they dissevered in one respect. Since both good and bad people get hurt, hungry, thirsty, and in all kinds of needs good people are compelled to help, by an inward desire. That God given desire to help if responded to will produce a God given Godly type love that can help the giver and the one being given to grow in Godly love. Satan is doing what needs to be done to help create the best situation for humans to develop Godly love. Unfortunately the best situation in the world presented to stubborn selfish hard hearted people will not produce the desired results, but that is not God’s fault He is doing all He can and all He will allow, it is man who is refusing.

bling

God is all loving which controls both His knowledge and His power. God total forgets forgiven sin for example. God actually gives power to humans to make choices and puts things in motion that can go different ways by human control.

As far as God coming up with a better way, if there was one He would have done it. This is the best way for humans on earth to develop a sacrificial, by personal choice, all consuming love. That love and nothing less is what God is looking for in beings to share eternal life with Him and the love He can not force on a being and still be genuine.

bling

I am glade you like it. I am just stating the way, I see it and I promise you, I do not find similar views other places. Do not try to pigeon hole me with others.

Dean Anderson

He's right, you know.

That's why I follow God's example, and both encourage and allow the school bully to beat up my daughter (but of course I limit the bully to not killing her).

After all, the hurt and suffering she receives at the bully's hands makes her run home to me for comfort and makes her love me all the more.

It also encourages other people to have compassion for her. Why, at least twice this week some stranger has approached her where she lays bleeding and sobbing on the floor in a pool of her own urine, and has helped her stand up and hobble home on her broken ankle. They were compelled to help by an inward desire.

See how well I emulate God's benevolence... I love my daughter so much that I make her suffer (but through a third party - I wouldn't want her blood on my own hands) so that she will love me and other people will have compassion for her.

bling

[ I did not mean to say, suffering for a person always results in good for that person. Suffering is happening all around us and we might be experiencing it ourselves, those are opportunities for good and potentially good people to serve others and be like God who is always serving others. See Godly type love, experiencing that love either through giving or receiving, responding positively to that internally Godly love each of us has will create a greater Godly love in you that you will praise the Lord for and with. Suffering brings out the best and worst in all of us, and being surround by suffering people can bring out the best and worse in us, it is a way to see Godly love to be drawn to it and it is also the was to see who is not really loving and be drawn away from them. Suffering in general helps the development of Godly love, but any one specific case may be seen as hurting the person which can tell us something about their heart or it could help them in the future with love.


[/QUOTE]Free will without the option of wrong is possible for a being that already has Godly type love. In heaven I see humans being redesigned to have free will with Godly love and not being able to do wrong similar to God, but only after they develop the Godly love on earth. Godly love development requires at least one real choices to be selfish and in fact requires that being to actually sin at some point and thus experience the forgiveness from sin and all that entails. Free will is not what is desired it is Godly love that requires free will and it is free will to the point of failure on man’s part, so one sin by each individual is require. If God gave a being love it would not be Godly love since that requires a decision on the part of the being and actually sin at sometime in the beings life on earth.

This is enough for now.

bling

God is not happy about it at all, but He is allowing your daughter to be beaten up for your sac, so you will step in and demonstrate Godly type love and save her the way He extended salvation to you at an extreme cost to Him. Now, if you want to allow your very willing and wanting daughter to go into Ethiopia to help care for needy refugees in a very hostile environment at much risk, you would be displaying truly Godly love.

God has to allow bad stuff to happen so human’s can participate in stopping or helping the people caught up in the bad stuff. You are not God, you are part of the group to allow God to work though to do good stuff and develop Godly love, if God did all the good stuff without your involvement then you would not develop Godly love. God is wanting to work through you to help your daughter and solve this problem.

John A. Broussard

Terrific!

Up to this point you had me fooled.

Congratulations on so effectively making like a crazed theist.