Photocrat

Romans 2:24
For "the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,"[2:24 Isaiah 52:5; Ezekiel 36:22] as it is written.

For the benefit of others, given the context of that verse & its usage in Romans, it does link unbelief (blasphemy among Gentiles, e.g. unbelievers) to the actions of believers (which is what "you" refers to here).

So yeah, believers (or people who call themselves such) probably have a lot to do with it, though it is hard to make such pronouncements in general, as individual cases may vary. I believe that I can find anecdotal support for that from some of the statements which atheists have given on these boards concerning their deconversions, as well...

I'd like to think that we also play (or try to play) a role in reversing said damage, however :]

HelenM

[ May 08, 2002: Message edited by: HelenSL ]</p>

HelenM

That raises an interesting point - do you know of any 'reconverted' deconverts?

Or are you speaking of 'first-time' conversions that believers have had a role in bringing about?

The quote you mentioned has relevance to the reputation of believers with non-believers - like here, say - but it actually doesn't have anything to do with Christian behavior being a factor in the deconversions of some Christians.

love
Helen

Typhon

That is not what I said. We do "it" (produce offspring) because we are (in our case) sexual organisms, that replicate/reproduce. If we did not, we would not be here. As this is in our (as a species) interest, various incentives and imperatives have evolved. I really think you're over simplifying, and putting a non-scientific, moral spin to my comments, that I do not subscribe to, nor agree with in this case.

Induces suffering? I said nothing about suffering. Suffering, as defined by "To feel pain or distress; sustain loss, injury, or harm." is a natural and expected part of life. No big deal, or surprise here. I do not hold that pain, which is just our response to certain stimuli, is anything "moral" one way or the other. Normally it is a warning sign of adverse or detrimental conditions, and is used as a survival mechanism. So is eyesight. I certainly am not looking for a way to remove my offspring's sight, so they don't see something disturbing or painful. I have no interest in ending "human suffering." I have a vested interest in limiting mine, but that's strictly a naturalistic response to my environment.

No you have it wrong, again, here. Only by INSERTING god, do you insert any moral element to the question of suffering on the scale you're talking about. Suffering is a problem for your god because his world is very different from a naturalistic one, such as our own.

In the real world, the universe is unaware of our suffering (from any perspective, including even what suffering "is" or that is will occur to life forms), attaches no moral value, good or bad to it (as it doesn't not possess these traits either), and does not hence have any reason or ability to change, lessen, or shield us from such suffering.

In the mythic world of an all-powerful, perfectly good creator god, the god is aware of our suffering (including the ability to foresee it), attaches a moral value (this is one of its prime given attributes, not surprisingly, one of ours, as creatures who dislike suffering), and has the ability (completely so, as it is an all-powerful force in the universe) to control/dictate this suffering.

Hence it ONLY becomes a moral quandary why an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-beneficent god does not prevent suffering, in a universe that contains such a being. This is, one of the arguments that purely on the plane of reasoning, points towards the fact that there are no such gods in existence.

It does not disprove the existence of a god that is not either all-powerful, or all-knowing, or (my favorite) particularly beneficent. If you wish to talk about such a god, then the question of suffering is not particularly relevant.

Ah, then you are not the god of the ice cubes. That was what we were talking about here.

1. You are the creator of all ice cubes.
2. You are all-powerful and all-knowing
3. You are all-beneficent
4. You hold that it is less moral to melt than to remain frozen
5. You foresee that the cubes you have created, will rebel, and hence be cast out of the Heavenly Freezer (by your hand, as you are the Lord of the Freezer) as well as all their icy descendents (which are by proxy, victims of your original act just as if you had bodily lifted them and cast them down along with their parents)
6. You permit this cycle (which you not only dictated, but foresaw from before the ice cubes creation) to carry out to its known and unmoral end, and do nothing to prevent it.
7. You are the one ultimately responsible for the millions of ice cubes which end up melting, on the various sides of the planet.
8. You are not the omni-benevolent creator you are thought to be.

Now this isn't a problem for me, because I hold that the god of ice cubes, along with all the other gods, does not exist. However, if it did, the melting of its people, would be upon its own head.

.T.

[ May 08, 2002: Message edited by: Typhon ]</p>

Pomp

Photocrat,

P1: I have problems with the moral judgements that might arise thereof, as "suffering" is ill-defined here & not well understood in general, at least with respect to 'suffering in hell.'

I'm not quite sure what your objection is. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm simply assuming that hell, first, is an unequivocably undesirable experience and, second, that it is so undesirable that no person, upon experiencing it, would feel that, on the whole, their existence had been more desirable than undesirable or, in other words, no one with any experience of hell would willingly pay the price of experiencing hell for even the most desirable human lifetime.

Different Christians have different ideas of "hell" (literal furnace, spiritual separation from God, both, or what?) which very much relates to "suffering." While Christians essentially agree that you wouldn't like going there, *why* you wouldn't like going there is another matter...

It doesn't really matter, so long as you are willing to accept my two assumptions regarding hell, as described above.

...and I'm not even addressing the completely non-literal hell, annihilationism, conditional immortality, etc. etc. etc. ...

My argument may not apply to some of these variants.

P3: In what way would God prevent them? The way I see it, He's already trying to stop anyone headed thataway, whether directly or indirectly.

It is contradictory to speak of an omnipotent being trying to do something (well, something that is logically possible, anyway) and not succeeding.

If He's "indirectly" responsible, why wouldn't you expect Him to stop it "indirectly" through the actions of believers or whatever? :]

You're conflating two different senses of "indirectly."