# Just curious how drowning a bunch of kids can be considered God's will **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 15, 2025, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860 "2025-07-15T01:00:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/61 "2025-07-15T07:55:41Z")
> [@CairoCarol](#): > > I’m happy to say “Czarcasm doesn’t think anyone who disagrees with them is an asshole.” And I didn’t say that either. Why don’t you just stick to stating your own opinions and leave well enough alone? ---
**Author:** ![Jegpeg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jegpeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jegpeg)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/62 "2025-07-15T08:33:03Z")
The bible teaches that God created man with free will and also made him responsible for caring for the earth (Gen 1:26). Having free will means having the ability to do bad things and Adam and Eve chose to eat from the tree of knowledge dispite God’s warning that there must not do so. The consequence of that is death came into the world and all humans are sinners. We like to label the majority of people as good and a people like murderers as evil but by God’s standards we are all evil sinners and deserving of eternal death, if we commit one sin we are as filthy rags, in comparison to perfect, sinless life exemplified by Christ there is virtuious no difference between Hitler and Mother Teresa. God loves us but not in a way that made us robots incapabable of doing evil. He is also Rightious and Holy so we as sinners can not be present in Heaven. Christ’s death is an example of how “All things work together for good”. The crowds called for the cruxifiction of Christ baited by the religious leaders, Pilate gave the order and the roman soldiers did the act. God however knew that Christ was the perfect sacrifice. The wages of sin is death, but Christ took that penalty for us. if Christ hadn’t been killed their would be no route to salvation, because he died if we are willing ot turn from our wicked ways and accept what he did for us our sins are transferred onto Christ and it is as if we have never sinned as such we can be accepted into Heaven as rightious. I do not pretend to know why the children in Texas died while I have been preserved on earth for (so far) 58 years but the Bible is full of examples of God using suffering and grief cause people to repent from their sins and bring them back to Him. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/63 "2025-07-15T08:33:22Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Because of people who _believe,_ in the face of all evidence that they are right; people who actively disdain evidence and logic and science in favor of faith and dogma. ‘Finding a way to prevent birth defects would go against God’s plan that you be blessed with a special needs child.’ ‘Allowing rape victims to get abortions means you’re murdering God’s precious rape baby.’ And the idea that it’s God’s plan that humans are find solutions to human problems is made a lie every time a successful human intervention is greeted with ‘_positive event that occurred because of human intervention_ was a miracle from God!’ ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/64 "2025-07-15T08:37:44Z")
> [@Jegpeg](#): > > Having free will means having the ability to do bad things and Adam and Eve chose to eat from the tree of knowledge dispite God’s warning that there must not do so. Not having the knowledge that was given them after eating that fruit means that Adam and Eve could not make moral judgments about disobeying God’s warning. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/65 "2025-07-15T08:38:02Z")
My stars, quite the sermon, my friend. I believe some things. I know a few things. But, fairy stories don’t appeal to me. Bad things happen. Nature can be a right bitch. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/66 "2025-07-15T08:43:15Z")
> [@Jegpeg](#): > > I do not pretend to know why the children in Texas died while I have been preserved on earth for (so far) 58 years but the Bible is full of examples of God using suffering and grief cause people to repent from their sins and bring them back to Him. Yes, the Bible is full of examples of paper cutouts of people serving as tragic examples to the people God is actually interested in (anyone remember Noah’s _original_ family?)-not exactly a point in the Bible’s favor, it seems to me. To even think for a second that the horrible deaths these poor children suffered were deliberate so that some unknown others would “learn lessons” is dispicable. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/67 "2025-07-15T08:45:16Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > Not having the knowledge that was given them after eating that fruit means that Adam and Eve could not make moral judgments about disobeying God’s warning. Yeah, the semi truck sized hole in that Biblical lesson occurred to me. Thanks for bringing it up. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/68 "2025-07-15T08:48:43Z")
Here’s the other one, > [@Jegpeg](#): > > The consequence of that is death came into the world Genesis 3:22 (KJV) And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/69 "2025-07-15T08:52:20Z")
Yeah. If somebody grew a toxic plant in a house with an infant and the baby ate it and died, “but I told them not to eat it” wouldn’t get them off the hook morally because _babies can’t understand that._ In the same way Adam and Eve can’t be blamed for doing wrong by eating a fruit when they explicitly _didn’t_ understand right and wrong before eating it. If it was so important they not eat the thing, then God could have just planted it somewhere else. But it’s hard to look at the myth as written without seeing it as anything other than God setting them up to “fail” and be punished. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/70 "2025-07-15T08:56:46Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I’ll also point out that this faith based worldview is _anything_ but harmless No worldview is intrinsically harmless or incapable of inspiring evil. All human worldviews, including non-theistic rational-materialist ones, have been used as the basis and justification for some truly evil shit on a societal level. There doesn’t exist any non-glass house of the human intellect from which it’s safe to throw those stones. This is so not because of whether it is or isn’t reasonable to believe in a deity, but merely because human beings in the aggregate are often kind of shit. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/71 "2025-07-15T09:00:26Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > No worldview is intrinsically harmless or incapable of inspiring evil. And? That doesn’t change the fact that it’s the faith based worldview that is the one causing massive harm, right now. Exactly as the people who opposed it have warned for decades that it would do. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/72 "2025-07-15T09:15:55Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > it’s the faith based worldview that is the one causing massive harm, right now. More likely, it’s the general shitness of human beings that’s actually causing the harm. The worldview, like other worldviews, is just one of the tools they’re using to facilitate their shitness. I am over the naivete of imagining that human beings would be better people if they happened to share my beliefs about rejecting unprovable and illogical assumptions about the existence or desires of a supernatural deity. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/73 "2025-07-15T09:37:13Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > More likely, it’s the general shitness of human beings that’s actually causing the harm. That common belief just helps demonstrate how twisted our support for faith has made our society. If following faith has bad results that _can’t_ be because faith is a bad idea; it’s _obviously_ just because humans are all monsters instead. IMHO, one of the many reasons support for faith is a bad idea _is_ because it produces exactly that sort of misanthropy. Movements that base themselves on faith always seem to become hostile to humanity in general, whether it’s Christianity or Communism. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/74 "2025-07-15T09:41:21Z")
I believe God has a plan. I also believe that there are a hundred billion galaxies in this specific observable universe, each with a hundred billion stars, so any plans God may have regarding humanity are, shall we say, broadly defined. God may protect us from a comet hitting Earth, and might take some interest in the rise and fall of civilizations, but the lives and deaths of individuals are a bit beneath His purview. God created a universe where bad things happen to good people. We have to accept this and move on - and maybe make it a slightly better place. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/75 "2025-07-15T10:56:35Z")
But if his plan allows terrible stuff to happen to children, maybe it’s a shitty plan? ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/76 "2025-07-15T11:01:19Z")
For a plan that required his own ‘suicide by the Romans’ to create a loophole to get around a rule he created, shitty is putting it mildly. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 11:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/77 "2025-07-15T11:03:26Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > But if his plan allows terrible stuff to happen to children, maybe it’s a shitty plan? I don’t know. Maybe God wants humanity to evolve to the point that we don’t allow terrible stuff to happen to children? Or maybe not. If God has a shitty plan, then God has a shitty plan. There’s nothing we can do about it. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/78 "2025-07-15T11:28:20Z")
It may be overly simplistic (and many others have said the same), but I just can’t see how something like this evidences a god that is both all powerful and all good. I’m also not sure what sin I or anyone else ought to repent for that would warrant the deaths of so many. Why ought we need to come to love god out of fear? ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/79 "2025-07-15T12:41:39Z")
I’d like to circle back to this: > [@CairoCarol](#): > > What religious/philosophical tomes have you read on the subject? What religious leaders have you talked to personally about this? Have you attended religious services where “God’s Plan” is addressed? Have you engaged in thoughtful conversation with people who don’t share your own beliefs Religious scholars are not necessary to understand the central tenets of Christianity. An eight year old can read the Gospels and clearly understand what Jesus is talking about. When self-appointed apostles, philosophers or theologians attempt to interpret the teachings of Jesus, it is only to lawyer his commandments to fit their own desires. Can a rich man go to Heaven? The words of Jesus are clear and unambiguous. Yet that gets endlessly analyzed by rich Christians who would rather not sell all they own and give to the poor. Spare me the interpretations of religious scholars. They know exactly what being a Christian requires. They just don’t like the sacrifice that entails. They want to skip ahead to the part about forgiveness of sin and eternal life. They would rather not dwell on how they treat the least of God’s creation. It’s the same with God’s plan; it’s necessary to paper over the inconsistencies of a Bible written by committee over several millennia. But it falls apart when it is examined too closely. It’s better to just shout, “Bigotry!” whenever anyone points out logical fallacies. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860/80 "2025-07-15T13:52:48Z")
“Bad things and suffering happen so how can there be a god!” is not the “gotcha!” that some here think it is. I’m not devout. I have no belief in a god that gives a shit. And even I recognize that such is a very infantile understanding of what belief is to those who hold it. Which is in reality a host of different things serving different functions to different belief holders. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-curious-how-drowning-a-bunch-of-kids-can-be-considered-gods-will/1020860.md?page=5)