I believe that the people who wrote the bible were limited by their experiences, and described what they could not logically explain, quite rightly, as supernatural.
To address the the topic question directly:
“If god is omnipotent, why does he let you suffer?”
I choose whether I will suffer under a given circumstance or not. Since realizing this, I have suffered far less than before, simply by realizing it that it is not necessarily what I choose to experience.
::cough:: Pharoah ::cough::
And I was arguing to PDMach, whose God could not interfere in atoms, by say, making the fire go out. Geez, it’s hard enough to keep all these Gods straight without having to defend my argument against one God from someone who follows a God with differnet traits.
About which God or god are we talking about?
Lots of other gods seem to be quite pleasant.
I’m talking about the one who made a big bang, plunked down some preamoebic plasma-type slime and said, “Wonder what happens now…?”
Oh, Gaudere, you know God very well. After all, you are full of Him. In fact, you are more full of Him than a whole lotta people.
Lib: Take a deep breath dude. You of all people should know precisely how I go about questioning someone’s character. 
Ducking a question is not a mortal sin.
Your second answer is more informative. However, I think you have a contradiction there.
Let me make it clear to everyone that personally, I’m an atheist (and thus theodicy is a non-issue in my personal philosophy), but I’m discussing this issue on the basis of rational theology. I’m sincerely accepting (for the purposes of argument) the existence of God, and that at least some of His attributes are rationally determinable.
I assume from my knowledge of Christian theology that we’re talking about a God with three critical attributes: Omnipotence, omniscience and ombnibenevolence. If you remove any one of those three, theodicy becomes trivial or unnecessary. Additionally we assume that God created everything, either directly or indirectly.
On to my argument:
First, to claim that disease results from the need to grant moral freedom obviously lacks any merit. I will show that the “amoral atoms” argument also lacks merit.
We can make a valid deduction from the given properties of omnipotence and omniscience: The universe exists precisely according to God’s will. Any “natural” consequences are, by definition, foreseeable (or God is not omniscient) and preventable (or God is not omnipotent).
One is always morally responsible for the forseeable and preventable consequences of ones actions. To claim, “I’m not responsible for his death, it was the amoral atoms of the bullet that did it.” is an obviouisly transparent evasion.
Therefore, the existence of disease is an intentional expression of God’s will. Q.E.D.
As far as continuing the Nazi discussion, I’ll have to bone up on my theodicy this weekend to address that.
I believe the argument against this is that God does not know what you are going to do, he knows what you did, since he exists in all times at once. Otherwise, you run into the free will problem, too. Personally, I am doubtful that our world properly displays the hand of a wholly good God…I mean, did we really need parasitic worms that grow inside us and poke their little heads out of our legs when they get big enough? (I’ve been watching too much Discovery channel.) Couldn’t we have done just fine without those nasty little buggers? Why, Lib, they’re worse than socialists! ::d&r::
Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that She is pink; logically , we know She is invisible because we can’t see Her.
PDmach wrote:
Heh. Liebnitz has an argument that this is in fact The Best of All Possible Worlds. It goes something like this:
So, if you think there’s evil in the world, suffering, it’s probably all your imagination.
“Ah,” says the skeptic. “But you don’t really believe you can double-think the suffering of the whole world away and dismiss it as a figment of our collective imagination? In fact, can we really accept that this is The Best of All Possible Worlds?”
Thus, one man’s modus ponens becomes another man’s modus tolens:
5’) This is not the best of all possible worlds.
6’) God is not omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent.
Pdmach:
No, I don’t. I don’t choose to suffer, but I suffer anyway.
Gilligan
Why?
Libertarian
You seem to be assuming that given any set of cardinality greater than one, at least one element must be “good” and another “bad”. What’s wrong with choosing between two choices, both of which are good? For instance, in your Chocolate vs. vanilla example, there is no ability to cause. No matter which you choose, it’s not going to hurt anyone. Is the choice therefore not a “real” choice? If I were to live my entire life without having the opportunity to kill someone else, would you consider my life to be unfulfilling?
Are you saying that you don’t believe that God is the Creator? That he only created part of the universe, and some of the universe was created by some other force?
But didn’t God create nature?
PDmach
Can you explain that?
And another thing: what’s with all the laws that are supposedly ordained by God? If stopping people from hurting others compromises their free will, then shouldn’t we just let everyone do what they want?
The Ryan wrote:
More to the point, why doesn’t God? The problem with the `free will’ argument is that it assumes that God, who is supposed to be omnipotent, could not make a world in which free will was possible but evil not possible.
Bringing up this point, the strongest response I’ve ever gotten was that it simply isn’t possible to have free will without evil – that such an idea is incoherent. If that’s the case, then this stands as an argument against the omnipotence of God. Like the Rock Paradox, is God constrained by the Principle of Non-Contradiction. Thus, we have the following dilemma:
The Free Will argument only holds if God is constrained by the Principle of Non-Contradiction and therefore not omnipotent. This is fine if you find it acceptable to place limits on God, except that if you do you don’t need the Free Will Argument in the first place. Thus, the Free Will argument assumes what it is intended to disprove.
Wow Lib! You’re regular Thomas Aquinas!
God “allows” you to suffer. That is true. God loves you enough to give you the freedon to suffer. It’s all about freedom my friend. If God made the world a bliss filled utopia, then we’d be little more than slaves to his will. He has given us the gift of pain. It allows us to make a clear decision on whether we want to be a part of his heavenly host. This is a DECISION. Pain is the basis on which we judge happiness. Our lives are the time given us to make the decision on whether or not we want to join the heavenly host. Where do you want to go? If you think it sucks here, wait’ll you see Hell.
Why do children die? It’s a good question. God NEVER does something without a good reason. Perhaps they sacrifice themselves as a lesson to others, or maybe their life was going to be such a trial that God let them not live it. Whatever the reason, it’s important to know that God has one.
Why so many diseases? Look at the world now. It’s on the edge of famine and you wonder why there is a thinning in the flock. Sometime, sacrifices MUST be made for the greater GOOD. Aids is a no brainer, God said sex is for marriage, and marriage is sanctity. We said, SHUT UP, sex is fun, and marriage? That animal can be killed in court. Well, here’s the thing, irony sucks, get used to it.
Where’s my side of FUN!?
Kisses!
Ophy
I like the cut of your jib Johnny. It looks as if we were on the same page at the same time.
Where’s my side of FUN!?
Kisses!
Ophy
As said in the film ‘Fight Club’, you have to accept the possibility that God doesn’t like you, that he may even hate you.
God intervened directly because it was a necessity. There was no Jesus and no “easy” gate to Heaven back during Old Testament times, therefore it was imperative that God would intervene.
Where’s my side of FUN!?
Kisses!
Ophy
I not gonna say that the idea of God hating someone isn’t funny (namely because it really is!) but that’s all it is. God hates nobody. God even loves Satan, a Father (especially one so loving as God)doesn’t hate his children NO MATTER WHAT STUPID THING THEY DO!
Where’s my side of FUN!?
Kisses!
Ophy
[quote]
Originally posted by The Ryan:
**Pdmach:
Yes God created nature, He created it as a system, not a free thinking lifeform. Nature has no soul, it cannot make a decision, and God does not control it directly. When you drive a car, do you think that the person who created that car is somehow controlling it? Making it work perhaps? The reason it stops when it’s out of gas? No! A car is a system. Just like nature
Where’s my side of FUN!?
Kisses!
Ophy
It is the Christian view that God created man in “His image and likeness”-that is perfect-without disease, suffering, or death.
God then gave the garden of Eden over to man with only one rule- "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; **but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.
The serpent then told the original lie (which continues in many forms today)-“You surely shall not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
In other words, God did not create man with the knowledge of good and evil, and it is through man’s disobedience of God’s one and only rule that brought us disease & death.
That is the answer to the OP.
::
But if they didn’t know good and evil, how could they know it was wrong to disobey?
Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorn is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that She is pink; logically, we know She is invisible because we can’t see Her.
WOW
Everyone is so verbose and eloquent.
K.I.S.S. :rolleyes:
Every time I hit my thumb with a hammer it hurts. Bad. I don’t care about free will participation in divine macinations(thanks Glen Cook) It just hurts.
If some god made this happen: FK HIM.(or HER)
If not: FK ME
___________________________________Salaam