rhutchin

I'd like to see your sources of data on this. My guess is that you have none. When you say, "...as far as we know...," I suspect you mean that you do not know how much God is involved in preventing crimes and hurricanes.

We have several hurricanes this year that were not a problem. Consequently, the existence of hurricanes is not a problem. The problem is when they come onshore. I think you should ask Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to call for a week of prayer and fasting before God in May 2007 to ask God to prevent hurricanes from doing damage to property that summer.

yes

To an extent yes. I know that the human body is more and more susceptible to cancer as a person get older and that it is something no one can control. Any person can get into an accident (even as an innocent bystander) and he generally has little control over such things. Given that I know that I have little control over such things, it behooves me to ask God for protection on a daily basis. I could blame myself for taking such things lightly and trying to take care of myself all alone without God's help.

God apparently thought it right to create a system in which people would be free to do as they wished even if the impacts of their actions were blindness, deafness, and dumbness for themselves or others.

If I have children and they want to hike in the woods, I should tell them to watch out for bears and call me if they got into trouble. As soon as I got a call for help, I would go immediately. If the kids decided to deal with the bear themselves without my help, I guess I would have to let them.

Johnny Skeptic

Prevention is not the only issue. The Bible says that God has deliberately and directly killed lots of people, including babies. Regardless of how much God is involved in preventing crimes and hurricanes, if he is loving and moral, he should be more involved in preventing crimes and hurricanes.

I suggest that you ask all of the Christians in the world that you are able to contact and ask them to give at least one amputee a new arm or leg.

So are you saying that God has provided humans with the ability to make the world a Garden of Eden?

But God has created some impacts that are not necessary in order for him to achieve any worthy goal.

But many people who died of starvation did ask God for food, many of whom were Christians, but God refused to provide them with food.

You asked "How should a person deal with his sin?", but how should a person deal with God's sin, and how should God deal with his own sin? God has sinned, so he does not have the right to judge anyone. Decent people do not have a choice whether or not to love a God who has committed the numerous atrocities that God has committed against mankind. Your definition of the word "atrocity" is much different than decent peoples' definition. If God told lies, you would consider that to be an atrocity, but when it comes to God’s atrocities, many of which are much worse than lying is, you have somehow been able to abandon your principles and morals. A web definition for the word "atrocity" is "the quality of being shockingly cruel and inhumane". God is definitely shockingly cruel and inhumane. Consider the following:

1 - God makes people blind, deaf, and dumb, reference Exodus 4:11.

2 - God punishes people for sins that their ancestors committed, reference Exodus 20:5.

3 - God killed babies at Sodom and Gomorrah

4 - God kills people with hurricanes, including some of his most devout followers. Even Attila the Hun did not kill his own followers.

5 - God empowered a savage Devil to help him attack mankind.

6 - God is willing that some people starve to death even though he has food in abundance. In the Irish Potato Famine alone, one million people died of starvation, most of whom were Christians. It is probable that many if not most of the Christians desperately asked God to provide them with food, but to no avail. James says that if a man refuses give food to a hungry person, he is vain, and his faith is dead. This makes God a hypocrite. Human effort alone could never feed all of the hungry people in the world, and human technology at this time is not able to prevent God’s killer hurricanes from seriously injuring and killing people, and destroying their property.

7 - Today, it appears that all tangible benefits are distributed entirely at random according to the laws of physics. This is to be expected if God does not exist. If he does exist, then he frequently distributes tangible benefits to those who are not in greatest need, but frequently withholds tangible benefits from those who are in greatest need, and with no provable regard for a person’s worldview.

Do you believe that hurricanes do or do not operate in a random manner?

8 - God deliberately withholds information from some people who would accept it if they were aware of it. If God clearly revealed himself to everyone, no man could complain that he did not have adequate information, in which case no man would have any excuses. As it is, on judgment day, any man who has never heard the Gospel message who Jesus chooses to send to hell can rightly say that the rules were not clearly disclosed. In addition, on judgment day, any man who has heard the Gospel message and rejected it, and would have accepted it if he had had more information, can rightly say that he was treated unfairly.

In the thread on 2 Peter 3:9, you said “If God revealed Himself in the manner you are describing, then everyone would obviously become a Christian.” I replied “But you have said that the Devil knows that God exists, but has rejected God, so you have refuted your own argument. In addition, millions of decent people would not be able to accept God even if they believed that he exists.”

God is able to provide additional information that would convince some people to become Christians who were not previously convinced, which means that he is not nearly as loving and merciful as you claim he is. If a man tells his son on numerous occasions not to drive when intoxicated, you would probably claim that the son had been provided with sufficient information, but you most certainly would not claim that if the father saw his son try to drive when intoxicated that the father should not still tell his son not to drive when intoxicated. It is called love and compassion.

Human effort alone could never let everyone know about the Gospel message. In the first century, it is not likely that anyone who lived in China could have known about the Gospel message unless God told them about it, and history has shown that God has little or no interest in telling people about the Gospel message himself. If God provided me with additional evidence, I might become a Christian.

If the Bible is true, then I am refusing to tell people about the Gospel message out of ignorance, not out of intent. On the other hand, God refuses to tell some people about the Gospel message out of intent. This makes God much more culpable than I am.

9 - God endorses unmerciful eternal punishment without parole. If mercy is anything, it is forgoing eternal punishment without parole even when justice, in this case, God’s justice, requires it. Otherwise, mercy is meaningless.

10 - No loving, rational being, whether a human or a God, ever intentionally does anything without the hope of benefiting himself and/or someone else at present, or in the future. It has not been reasonably established that God derives any benefits whatsoever from making people blind, deaf, and dumb. It is most certainly not necessary to make a man blind, deaf, and dumb in order to convince him to become a Christian. In fact, one of the best ways to convince a man not to become a Christian would be to make him blind, deaf, and dumb. It most certainly is not necessary to allow a man to starve to death in order to convince him to become a Christian. If God had always provided all of the hungry people in the world with food, and had always told everyone, tangibly, in person, that he was the source of the food, the Christian church would surely be a lot larger than it is today.

11 - In the Old Testament, God ordered the death penalty for a Jew who killed a Jew, but not for a Jew who killed a slave. In addition, the New Testament does not clearly oppose slavery, even though it easily could have if God exists. If it did, the world would be a much better place in which to live in.

Now you can claim that I have not provided sufficient evidence of atrocities that God has committed against mankind if you wish, but rational minded and fair minded people know that if the God of the Bible exists, he is either evil or mentally incompetent. Under our legal system, many of God’s actions and allowances are punishable by life imprisonment or death. If telling lies is wrong, it is wrong no matter who tells lies, including God. If refusing to feed hungry people is wrong, it is wrong no matter who refuses to feed hungry people, including God. If killing people is wrong, it is wrong matter who kills people, including God. Hypocrisy is wrong no matter who is a hypocrite, including God. Are you actually going to tell us that telling lies is worse than killing people and allowing people to starve to death when you have plenty of food?

Toto

This is more suitable for GRD than ACH.

Godless Dave

What about all the people who became (or were born) blind, deaf, or dumb from causes that had nothing to do with their own actions?

TomboyMom

rhutchin: You believe that intercessory prayer is effective? That e.g. if a person has a terrible illness, and someone else prays for their recovery, without them knowing it, they are more likely to recover?
Do you believe that praying that a hurricane will not strike a city makes it less likely that it will do so?
That if a woman is being held captive by a violent sexual predator, and prays to Jesus to help her escept, she is more likely to do so?
And so forth?

KindBudz

/Theist mode on

All people are born in sin so all those people deserve to have these afflictions. They may even be paying for sins from previous lives.

/Theist mode off

steamer

People should ignore sin.

Crime is the in thing. No one cares if rhutchin wants to pretend that the god he imagines has imagined godly power. No one cares that rhutchin wants his children to be raised in the ignorant shadow of his imaginary god. (You can try to prove that you are not completely ignorant of any actual god, but no one has succeeded yet)

The only thing we have to fear about rhutchin's imaginary god and the effects of rhutchin's imaginary sins is that people like rhutchin are still allowed to speak, teach and vote. I still think it better that we allow this than to risk losing these priveleges ourselves.

rhutchin loves his imaginary god and he imagines that his imaginary god loves him as well. Life would just be too difficult for rhutchin to manage if he didn't have this imagined relationship. So let him be as he is, but lets see if we can get him to shut the hell up about his fantasy world and not teach others his nonsence and not vote his imagined god's imagined convictions.

aa5874

No, no please, let rhuchin say whatever he wants to. I have learned a lot about believers because of rhutchin. After reading hundreds of posts from rhutchin, I have been able to get an insight into the power of belief and its effects on the believer.

steamer

all right, but at least try and convince him that voting is a sin.

Queen of Swords

He should sacrifice an animal if he's living in Old Testament times. However, if he's living in New Testament times, the sacrifice requires a god instead. Inflation, you see.