KingsSuited

Hi,

On another website I read an article by a Christian that said something like this...

"There are some movies were the main character takes the place of God (Bruce Almighty) they are mainly comedies but they bring up a good point, they can't find a way to solve peoples problems, suffering or misery. How do you do stop killings, if you are God you can just Kill the killers before they act, but then how about thiefs that take money so you can't feed your family, do you kill them too? Were do you draw the line? What sin do you have to commit before you kill the human, so that his sins wont make others suffer? See it's complicated, therefore stop criticizing God, he has his ways"

Anyway, that is what was written on that article. I thought that was a pretty lame excuse for why God allows suffering all over the world, specially considering that the biblical God has these powers at his disposal...

1) All Knowing 2) Always present at all places at once 3) Almighty.

How would you prevent the suffering, specially of innocent children who die of starvation, desease or murder?

Malachi151

This "Christian" obviously hasn't read the Bible and doesn't know anything about Christian theology. The Bible explicitly states, especially the "Old Testament", that GOD CAUSES suffering. All of the suffering in the Old Testament, and there is tons of it, is all caused directly by God on purpose in order to punish people, mostly the Jews, for being bad.

The floods, the wars, plagues, the personal losses, the backstabbing, the starvation, the murder, etc., is caused directly by God in almost every case in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament describes God as angry, vengeful, jealous, displeased with humanity, unhappy, upset, tired, and outraged. The Old Testament is essentially a repeating cycle of God forming agreements with people, people failing to honor their word to God, and then God punishing them and often their ancestors and everyone else in proximity, because they failed to meet God's demands.

According to the Old Testament, life is a series of disastrous inflictions at the hands of a deeply upset and let down God who hates his own creation because his creation doesn't obey him or follow his commands. All suffering is caused by God, so the question of why God doesn't do something to prevent suffering is moot. According the Bible its not a matter of not being able, the fact is that he is able and he causes suffering on purpose.

The idea of a benevolent, all knowing, all powerful God doesn't come from the Bible at all. This is a concept from Greek philosophy and pagan religion which was introduced into Christian theology in later centuries.

Malachi151

To add to this.

There are basically two very different theologies within Christianity.

One is basically a popular theology, which is based mostly on Greek philosophy and paganism. The other is a Biblically based theology which is certainly less popular but is more widely held by fundamentalists, and really is more true to Biblical teaching.

1) Popular theology basically says that God is good and God loves everyone and that God doesn't do bad things to people and that when you die if you are good then you go to heaven. If we all follow Gods ways then the world can become a perfect and loving place. This is what most Christians believe and what many preachers preach. There is basically no support for this view in the Bible.

2) The more Biblically based theology holds that God created a perfect world, which humans cursed though original sin. The world is now hopelessly corrupted and can never be saved or improved or made good. People are inherently sinful and rebellious against God, for which God mercilessly and frequently punishes people due to his displeasure with our sinful ways. This world is beyond hope, which is why the world must be destroyed in order to make way for a new creation of a perfect and sinless world to come. When you die you do not go to heaven. No one goes to heaven, but after the world is destroyed and the new world is created the dead will be resurrected and those who believe in Jesus will live in the new world with Christ. Until then, God will continue to punish humanity with death and destruction.

#2 is basically the only thing that you can find support for in the Bible.

Toto

This will be a better fit in GRD

Draconis

Here's some solutions:

In order to stop killing, just make people invulnerable to physical trauma like superman, or provide them with forcefields, or something.

In order to stop theft, make it so that there's plenty of everything needed for life, or make humans not so greedy and selfish. And perhaps not tell them to go forth and multiply too much in one spot, otherwise you'll mess it up.

(or else, make food, money, whatever, person-specific, so that if stolen, it is useless to anyone else)

Starvation - teleport food directly into their bellies. Or design humans that don't need food.

Disease - don't create any diseases.

That wasn't hard work and I'm not omniscient nor omnipotent, nor have I had an eternity think of ways around all these little gliches in creation. I think we can safely assume God ought to do much better. If he didn't, then why not?
Christians tell us the reason is that God has a plan... Sounds like a pretty poor plan to me.

Imnotspecial

When God created the world he said to himself: Job well done. So I don't think he wants to intervene, but if you are a nice Christian you can ask him for special favours and he sometimes will make an exception to his own rules and grant you the favour. The favour might not always be to your liking, but in time you might recognize how loving his intervention really was.

A friend of our family had recently a baby which they knew will be born with downs syndrom. I am sure they were praying for a miracle. Instead the baby has also leukemia and this is God's way of showing them how much he loves them because he finds them worthy of the suffering that will be theirs. They will be happy to be thusly favoured as one of his chosen victims for the redemption of the world. There is no guaranty that the baby will live. If it dies then this is God's way of taking their suffering away and they will say that this is the best outcome for the baby. In every scenario God is the winner.

So quit blaming God for being so capricious. Its all a matter of how you want to look at it.

On a more serious note, there can be no joy without suffering. Humans are problem solvers and this is our task and joy. The question is: Why have we not solved them by now?

Angra Mainyu

I've only thought of this for like 2 minutes, so the following is probably not the solution I'd propose if I thought about it for longer; plus, this is a sketch and needs refinement, but for now:

1) I would make people who don't want to steal, murder, etc.

The "free will" excuse does not work for Christians (current beliefs, not actual beliefs of Bible writers). Whatever "free will" means, by their religion there are entities with free will (their concept, whatever it is) that never do evil* by hypothesis (e.g., most angels, people in heaven, etc.). It does not work for Muslims, either, since they believe in predestination and thus must be compatibilists.

* There's an assumption that morality is absolute, but we can go with that, since they believe that, so they're not going to question it. By the way, I'd give everyone infallible moral intuitions.

2) I would make everyone immortal.

3) I would make a world of unlimited resources. Foor, water, etc., would be available on demand. They'd just have to ask and they would receive.

4) People's requests would all be granted: for instance, if someone is hungry, she can eat something (unlimited supplies), but she can also say "God, I want to not be hungry now", and she would no longer be hungry; no questions asked, and no lack of nourishment; she could ask not to be hungry anymore too, and so she'd have to eat no more.

In fact, people could choose to no longer need food, water, air, etc., and accordingly, not to feel the need for them.

Also, people could choose to have any possible fancy powers of their liking.

They could also get knowledge, even omniscience (assuming that's compatible with God's omniscience) by request.

In short, anything they ask and is possible, they would get, as long as that wouldn't hurt anyone (they wouldn't want to hurt anyone, anyway, but just in case they make a mistake).

If children don't want to starve, they'd just have to choose to eat, or not to need food anymore, etc.

All the above is logically possible (at least, it seems obviously possible assuming "God" is meaningful and God is logically possible), so by means of omnipotence, I would be able to do it. Omniscience would allow me to know how to make perfectly morally good people.

Plantinga's "transworld depravity" and other stuff would require that God lacks knowledge of the future, which limits the options; in any case, my scenario is based on your definition of God; another definition would allow me to construct alternatives.

Exciter

I wouldn't have created a talking snake, but hindsight is 20/20. Even so If I was God then I wouldn't exist, at least not inside the universe so why would I care or even know what suffering is?

Sapho

Id just start where the xtian god plans to finish, put every one in heaven to begin with, and keep that snake away.

Straight Hate

I would stop the redundancy and get rid of the physical universe, for starters.

If heaven is so great, there's no reason to be here.