For this woman at least...there is a God.

[IWLN]

*Originally posted by JS Princeton *
Just curious, do you distinguish between natural evil (earthquakes, floods, other “Acts of God”), moral evil (murder, rape, holocausts), and mixtures of the two (skin falling off due to human-administered antibiotics)? If so, do these demarcations influence your gratitude? I assume, if you buy into the whole Augustinian free-will business, you are less grateful for the lightning that strikes a good person dead than you are for the pecadilloes that entice people to follow the straight-and-narrow.

I suppose I actually do separate at least my feelings about “natural evil” or disasters in that there’s nothing I can do to prevent them and I accept that they are a natural bi-product of a physical existence. Moral evil is at least something that we can try to prevent from happening and have some effect on the out-come. I don’t think it matters whether lightening strikes a good person or a bad person dead and don’t think lightening plays favorites or is sent down with a target destination by G-d. A person has the same value, whether they are good or bad. Not the same influence in this world, but the same value. I don’t distinguish in whether G-d was responsible for one or the other. He created it all, so he gets the credit for both kinds of evil.

What I never understood about the whole “evil is, in part, from God” camp was how their justifications rationally worked themselves out. I mean, it is RATIONAL to believe that an omnipotent, omnibenevloent God would be in part responsible for evil.

If you believe G-d created everything, then it’s pretty stupid to try and absolve him from the evil. As far as whether or not it’s rational for an omnipotent, omnibenevolent G-d to create evil and good, why not? Those labels we’ve assigned to G-d are probably very limited in their definition of him. Omnibenevolent takes on a whole new meaning if a person’s life span is unlimited. It changes tragic into inconsequental and death into a meaningless event. I don’t have the frame of reference to process that, but believe it’s true. Since I believe in an omnipotent G-d, I don’t believe we are limited to just this experience.

What doesn’t seem rational to me is the fishing for panglossian excuses when Job-like calamities befall the good (or the bad for that matter). If you can justify rationally your God’s complicity in evil, then how come it is that you cannot make a judgement against his or her complicity in things that are pointlessly causing suffering? I mean, at least if you believe in karma you think that the bad things are happening for a reason that is explainable. Can you give an explanation, or do you opt out of that part of the discussion?

Well karma is a tough one to prove when so many innocent people have tragedy, so that one’s out for me, although I do believe that in most cases you get back what you give. I really don’t feel the need for excuses or explanations of G-d’s complicity in evil, but when they’re asked for, do try and come up with answers. As you see, they are typically insufficient. What I don’t see is why it is necessary to blame G-d or make a judgment against him. I have total faith that he knows what he is doing, but that is not a particularly acceptable answer in this forum. Equally not acceptable is my feeling that the balance of good and evil is an awsome plan, the best for man to struggle, achieve and become with. How can I blame him when it makes perfect sense to me on so many levels. When I give him a “high five” for our existence, it’s for all aspects of it. I don’t expect only good things to happen and feel like I’ve made more progress dealing with the bad, than I would have otherwise. If you’re dealt a series of really complicated problems and you find ways to solve them, it gives you something back. If you intervene and help someone else conquer their evil or problems, it gives you even more back. Obviously this is only my explanation, my limited understanding and I don’t expect it to be any one else’s.

[Ilsa_Lund]

I guess the Og man was too busy watching over her and not those that died in the Iran earthquake.

Can I get a goddamn Amen?

[hyjyljyj]

So, you’re saying God DIDN’T save this woman then. …?

And if He’s so “loving”, isn’t standing idly by and letting all her damn skin peel off in the first place a strange way to show it? Why’d He do that? Just so He could swoop in at the last second and save her, like a parlor trick to make people go “Ooh, aahhh, look what God can do, praise the Lord”?

Ah, there I go again, asking why. I shouldn’t do that. I should just accept.

[hyjyljyj]

*Originally posted by FisherQueen *
**I am a Christian, and I do pray. But in order to believe God saved this woman, I would have to also believe that God chose not to save all the other sick people who have prayed with all their hearts to be saved.

To believe this goes beyond what I can believe of a loving God.

So I’ll say hooray for the doctors and their treatment, which saved a woman from a death so awful I hadn’t even thought of it before I read this thread. **

My above post was in response to the one quoted here. My mistake.

[JS_Princeton]

Well karma is a tough one to prove when so many innocent people have tragedy, so that one’s out for me,

You also indicated you believed in life after death, so the obvious question is, given that such is the case couldn’t the innocent people really be guilty? In other words, couldn’t they be “paying for the sins” of their previous lifetimes? I mean, how is that inconsistent? Perhaps it’s just a matter of faith for you that karma must be wrong?

Job was pretty sure he was innocent and his friends who seemed to tell him otherwise were castigated in part by the Heavenly Father, but what the hell, maybe he was a horrific person in a previous life and that’s why God thought it okay to let so many bad things happen to him.

[OneYogini]

JS Princeton quote “Then the victim should have also thanked God for cursing her with a condition that caused her skin to fall off…That is, if you take the rationale Yogini provided to its rational conclusion, perhaps we should thank God for the evil that exists in the world as well as the good.”

JS - As I said, I admit my limitations. I’m not a debater. I can’t explain things to you in a simple fashion on a post in the SDMB. I think these matters are rather complex; yet boiled down, I personally take it on faith. MY faith. So from my point of view, in my opinion and based on my faith, I believe there is good and evil in the world. I don’t know anything about the woman in the OP’s article. I can’t presume to know why this horrible reaction to the drug she took happened, nor who caused. Sorry I can’t give an answer beyond this.

Yogini

[David_Simmons]

*Originally posted by hyjyljyj *
**
And if He’s so “loving”, isn’t standing idly by and letting all her damn skin peel off in the first place a strange way to show it? Why’d He do that? Just so He could swoop in at the last second and save her, like a parlor trick to make people go “Ooh, aahhh, look what God can do, praise the Lord”?
**

That is one modus operandi adopted by the God of the Old Testament. For example, the plagues of Egypt were all brought on by God hardening the Pharaoh’s heart in order that He could display His wonders.

Exodus 6:

"3 And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.

4 But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgements.

5 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord …"

[SkeptiJess]

Personally, my problem with the story was, well… the story. I thought the article seemed purposefully slanted to make the most of the ‘miracle.’ There were so many questions left unanswered: How rare is this allergic reaction, anyway? Out of the “thousands” of people who take Bactrim every year how many of them have this horrific reaction? Are there other medications that also cause it? How have previous cases been treated? If there have been other cases where artificial skin was used (and failed to save the patient), was it a different brand of artificial skin? If this combo of anti-internal-bleeding meds and a particular type of artificial skin is a new treatment that saved an otherwise doomed person, then that surely should have been mentioned. In fact, if this is a standard treatment and this woman was the first it actually worked on, that should have been mentioned as well. I guess I could give them some points for specifying that this was a “medical miracle.” Personally, I consider the ‘medical’ part to be modifying the ‘miracle’ part in the same way that ‘sports’ can modify ‘hero.’ ‘Miracle’ on its own indicates a supernatural or unexplainable phenomenon. ‘Medical miracle’ seems, to me at least, to reduce the unexplainable part and indicate merely an extremely (perhaps even unusually) successful medical outcome. Still, I can’t help but think that the story was treated as a fluff piece rather than with the respect that it deserved.

[Aldebaran]

*Originally posted by JS Princeton *
You also indicated you believed in life after death, so the obvious question is, given that such is the case couldn’t the innocent people really be guilty? In other words, couldn’t they be “paying for the sins” of their previous lifetimes? I mean, how is that inconsistent? Perhaps it’s just a matter of faith for you that karma must be wrong?

Job was pretty sure he was innocent and his friends who seemed to tell him otherwise were castigated in part by the Heavenly Father, but what the hell, maybe he was a horrific person in a previous life and that’s why God thought it okay to let so many bad things happen to him.

Interesting to read this, but there is something missing in your defense:

1. If you are guilty of something, you know that if you are able to reason normally. In your example people have no clue.

2. Because of the fact the “new life” has no clue about the previous one it is utterly dishonest to let “bad things” happen in that life. Thus I don’t see any reason to suspect God of playing with such false and utterly repulsive dishonest tricks.
   If God would do that he would in my view end to be God since God also represents the summum of Justice.

Salaam. A

[JS_Princeton]

Interesting to read this, but there is something missing in your defense:

1. If you are guilty of something, you know that if you are able to reason normally. In your example people have no clue.

2. Because of the fact the “new life” has no clue about the previous one it is utterly dishonest to let “bad things” happen in that life. Thus I don’t see any reason to suspect God of playing with such false and utterly repulsive dishonest tricks.
   If God would do that he would in my view end to be God since God also represents the summum of Justice.

Your justification works, Aldebaran, only if you believe the “God” in question is benevolent. A God who wasn’t bound by that descriptor wouldn’t care if the minions thought she was dishonest or whether they knew why they were guilty. She’d mete out her justice all the same in her own timing. Why does she allow the karmic judgement to occur in the next life rather than the present one? I can only say that it’s arbitrary. I can, however, say that at least it is rationally consistent. Compare that to believing that God is all-good and all-powerful and lets horrendous stuff happen. That doesn’t appear to me to be rationally consistent.

The question is, as a theist, do you prefer a God that is arbitrary or a God that is rationally consistent?

By the way, karma is only one solution to the problem of evil. An equally decent way of making God rationally consistent is to hedge one of the other adjectives. It seems to me that IWLN, for better or worse, describes a God that isn’t “all good” in the human sense of the word. That is, God is complicit in some evil. That’s a rationally consistent solution.

The Reform Calvinists (and to some extent, Luther) had another rational solution that was something of a combination of karma and IWLN’s solution. They decided that God was just so beyond human comprehension that applying human terms of “omnibenevolent” to Him was tantamount to the sin of the Tower of Babel. It’s not that God isn’t benevolent, it’s that you can’t understand the real reasons behind the Bam earthquake, for example. That’s also a logically consistent redaction.

Rabbbi Kushner in Why Bad Things Happen To Good People proposes that God isn’t necessarily all-powerful. That’s also a rationally consistent solution. Maybe God isn’t able to combat the evil. Some people will obviously be uncomfortable with a less-than-omnipotent God, but at least it’s a rational solution.

The Manicheans had a solution which was similar to Kushner’s in that they declared that good and evil were basically opposing camps and that the world was a battlefield that suffering would occur on because the two sides were basically strong enough to be beyond the control of the other. This basically makes the “good God” less than omnipotent. Again, this solves the logical inconsistency.

What I think fails to be consistent are those people who claim that certain things are good, certain things are bad, that God is all-powerful and all-loving, and that God is not responsible for the bad things.

At that point I’ve gotta look them in the eye and say, “Wha…? Don’t make no sense to this compadre!”

[IWLN]

*Originally posted by JS Princeton *
The question is, as a theist, do you prefer a God that is arbitrary or a God that is rationally consistent?

By the way, karma is only one solution to the problem of evil. An equally decent way of making God rationally consistent is to hedge one of the other adjectives. It seems to me that IWLN, for better or worse, describes a God that isn’t “all good” in the human sense of the word. That is, God is complicit in some evil. That’s a rationally consistent solution.

Hey wait. I do on one level believe that G-d is “all good”. By the human concept of the word though, no. I don’t believe that creating and allowing both good and evil makes G-d not “all good”. But, I don’t feel overwhelmingly upset by the concept that he might not be all good, anyway. His judgment is probably superior to mine. This world is about balance. The central purpose of good and evil are to achieve an end that is only good. So I guess it boils down to this. The plan is a good one. It involves good and evil, but the end result is good and does acomplishe the complete absence of evil. The story is a little muddy, but there’s a happy ending for everyone.

What I think fails to be consistent are those people who claim that certain things are good, certain things are bad, that God is all-powerful and all-loving, and that God is not responsible for the bad things.

G-d not being responsible for everything definitely takes away the all-powerful status.

At that point I’ve gotta look them in the eye and say, “Wha…? Don’t make no sense to this compadre!”

I always ask them, if G-d is not responsible for everything, exactly who is it that is more powerful than G-d? Who controls the other part. I might want to change camps, since I prefer backing a winner.

[lynn73]

@Eve

. . . if she had started a MPSIMS posted called " a ghost pushed me out of the way of a speeding car," would we be permitted to doubt that? This is the Straight Dope Message Board, remember.

I clicked on Great Debates and here I am. Why do you keep saying this is MPSIMS?

[Ilsa_Lund]

The fact that people are praying together for a common goal can have a positive effect because of the simple fact that positive thoughts can create positive energy which can work on the subconcious of the receiving subject.

Cite?

His, this was originally posted in MPSIMS.

[lynn73]

Ohh, thanks.

While I don’t know that I go for the "positive thought/energy deal as creating answers to prayer, I do believe God answers prayer. Not always the way we like. He uses doctors and medicine too.

[IWLN]

@lynn73

Ohh, thanks.

While I don’t know that I go for the "positive thought/energy deal as creating answers to prayer, I do believe God answers prayer. Not always the way we like. He uses doctors and medicine too.

If he is actively involved in helping or allowing Drs. to heal, does he then also allow the serial killer to to his thing? You just can’t have an omnipotent G-d and then try to divide the responsibility for events between him and something else. G-d either isn’t really involved here or he’s choosing who gets to be blessed and who gets to be victimized. This has already been discussed. I was just interested in your opinion, lynn.

[lynn73]

Another one of those hard questions. I don’t know that I would say that God makes the serial killer do his thing. I’d probably say He allows it. The Bible says He can work all things together for good but it’s hard to wonder how a serial killer’s actions could be worked for good. I just don’t have all the answers. I guess a lot of it comes down to free will. Nor can we totally understand God (except what he’s chosen to reveal about HImself in the Bible, of course). He said His thoughts and ways are above ours. Man and his sin problem is what’s messed up the world and we expect God to just step in and snap His fingers and bring us back to Eden. Evidently He doesn’t choose to work that way.

[scule]

I said once in another thread that it is so hard to not be prejudiced against Christians when they make it so easy (though no one seemed to notice my comment - oh well). This thread makes it even harder.

It also remind me of this article from the Onion

The thing that is the most irritating is the convient way people resort to faith to ignore logic. It’s all well and good to say that you are not a good debater, or that what you say is opinion or faith, but believing one thing while a clear contradiction to that belief exists does little to improve humanity. Maybe that’s why I stopped going to church so long ago.

[lynn73]

I’m assuming the Onion is some kind of spoof paper? The article didn’t impress me.

[IWLN]

@lynn73

I guess a lot of it comes down to free will. Nor can we totally understand God (except what he’s chosen to reveal about HImself in the Bible, of course). He said His thoughts and ways are above ours. Man and his sin problem is what’s messed up the world and we expect God to just step in and snap His fingers and bring us back to Eden. Evidently He doesn’t choose to work that way.

I’m actually okay with not knowing most of the answers. My big problem is the insistence that it’s completely man’s fault, when it was obviously intended by G-d that the world be the way it is. That we made this choice, when G-d knew going in that he was creating exactly what we are. I can understand the prejudice and exasperation that non-Christians feel at all the apparent inconsistencies.

OTOH, I’m completely comfortable with the fact that there are things in this world that really suck. G-d meant it to be that way. Hey, we don’t know why. That at least is not contradictory. This is why I just couldn’t be a Christian anymore. I didn’t believe the words that were coming out of my own mouth. Anyway, lynn, I’m not challenging you on this. I know from first hand experience that you were taught not to question it. Thanks for answering my question.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@lynn73

Another one of those hard questions. I don’t know that I would say that God makes the serial killer do his thing. I’d probably say He allows it. The Bible says He can work all things together for good but it’s hard to wonder how a serial killer’s actions could be worked for good. I just don’t have all the answers. I guess a lot of it comes down to free will. Nor can we totally understand God (except what he’s chosen to reveal about HImself in the Bible, of course). He said His thoughts and ways are above ours. Man and his sin problem is what’s messed up the world and we expect God to just step in and snap His fingers and bring us back to Eden. Evidently He doesn’t choose to work that way.

The Bible says that God does make people do evil things. remember when God kept “hardening the Pharaoh’s heart?” why did he do that? Did the Pharaoe have free will if God was the one who was hardening his heart?