Pennywise the clown

[I'd be interested in hearing an answer from a theist to the original question. Pennywise: if you are a theist, could you provide an answer to the original question? I hardly think that Jupiter taking most of the shots answers the question. If you say that, why wouldn't God just direct all the shots at Jupiter, instead of allowing only some to impact Earth? It gets back to the original question. Why at all?]

I would consider myself a "spiritual" clown BTW...

Now to your excellent question: "why at all?"

Let's look at the implications of God intervening to prevent all forms of suffering, disease, and death:

1. If I felt like saying all atheists are narrow minded, God could:
a. take away that feeling I have
b. turn me into a pile of dung
c. rid the world of atheists?

2. If I felt like binge drinking each day, God could:
a. make it so alcohol is one of the food groups (please god!)
b. make my body immune to the harmful effects of such behavior (please god!)
c. rid the world of alcohol (no god!)

3. If I complained about the natural world and all of it's "natural disasters" that kill millions of people God could:

a. Make everything statically perfect, thus, we'd be in a robot universe

b. Make us all Gods

c. Flush the cosmic toilet and start over

The bottom line is I have enough trouble with my own mind. Beep! Beep! Much less trying to figure out God's! Sidewinder, perhaps you should give prayer a try?

sidewinder

I have prayed to God many times throughout my life and I've never received an answer that I thought was definitely from a source outside myself. The best you can say about prayer is that it might help you to solve a problem or inspire you to complete some task or make some change in your life. Prayer is like contemplation. It is focusing on your inner self and trying to find answers for whatever. The "power of prayer" seems to come from within you and not from any source outside yourself. I can't prove this. It's just an observation. I suppose it's possible that God (however you define God) could be guiding people. The problem with this is that there's no way to conclusively prove it. There's no evidence that a divine being is answering your prayer. If I prayed and asked God this particular question, I probably would not get an answer. The reason is because I don't know enough about this subject. I bet if I knew this subject in detail, and I prayed for an answer to why it happens this way, I would very likely get an answer. The answer wouldn't even have to be some explanation of why a God would allow this happen. The answer could be that it's just simply the natural course of the universe. It's just the way the universe operates.

Pennywise the clown

[It's just the way the universe operates.]

One possibility Sidewinder, one possibility out of many competing theories--to include theistic.

Personally, I agree with your assessment of prayer. I often practice various meditation techniques (Zen, Yoga, etc.) and I find this spiritual contemplation very valuable. Tonight as I sit before my candle I promise you I shall contemplate your question.

I also feel that science and philosophy is not equiped to answer the God question--but that's another topic in another forumn.

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Atheists aren't really any more narrow minded than you. God really doesn't care what you think or what you say. He's a tad bit, well, better than all of that.
Why should he do any of the things? He cannot remove self-inflicted suffering without removal of free will.

Flush the toilet and start over. Why? Well, because, qite frankly:

God loves his children
All of them
Regardless of what they do
Period
Earthquakes kill many
As do Volcanoes
And Tornadoes
And Hurricanes
And Famines caused by Drought
And AIDS
And Cancer
God can do what he wants to do.
He can simply fix what he wants to entirely
In fact, he can still allow for bad things to happen
Just not naturally occuring.
Let bad people do bad things
I.E. Stalin and Hitler.
No boring robot lives--especially with people like them.
Not everyone god
Everyone free from arbitrary wrath!
So what does god do, given this?
Exactly.


Also:

Boring robot lives? HA HA HA! Guess what 90% of the world does? LIVE A BORING ROBOT LIFE! Same thing day after day after day...EVERYWHERE. I challenge you to find ONE place in the planet where this isn't true. While the odd exceptional event does occur (i.e, 9/11), business as usual is, well, business as usual.


God only need remove natural disasters to show us his love. Really simple. Doesn't happen though.

Draygomb

If there was a god don't you think his aim would be better?

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: Draygomb ]</p>

luvluv

He's playing pool.

Seriously though, call me when one hits. I might be busy though.

Tercel

You know, I could be really annoying and claim that the reason no major astroids have destroyed earth is because God is protecting us.

Seriously: This just looks to me like a specific case of the Argument from Evil/Suffering. What's special about astroids that they don't fall under any of the general theodicies? (A theodicy is a solution to the argument from evil) Surely any theodicy dealing with natural evil such as hurricanes, earthquakes, diseases etc would cover astroids too? So what's the problem here?


But why would anyone need even to resort to the some theologian's theodicy when our very own bgponder has come up with such a brilliant range of solutions!

Blu

You guys are funny.

I was thinking about responding but realized no one here wants a real answer and no one here is seriously thinking about it.

Silly people!

Jayhawker Soule

See above.

Jayhawker Soule

<img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> And you are not. Silly relativist! <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" />