It seems like you’re all trying to find some special reason that G-d “let” 5000 people die so terribly on 9/11.
The G-d I believe in lets hundreds of millions of people die terrible deaths every year. 100 million people died last year, 100 million will die this year, and 100 million will die next year, give or take a few million. Most of them will be pretty normal people that didn’t wake up every day and vow to do evil, and that you or I wouldn’t judge to be deserving of painful death.
Many bad people live wonderful long lives, and many good people live painful lives.
When any individual person dies, you can’t say its because they violated this or that biblical commandment, or did this or that evil, because G-d’s scale of judgement is too complicated for us to understand. Perhaps it is because of something
When 5000 people die, you shouldn’t ask why did G-d “let” it happen. Why did he let them live in the first place!
Instead, I just concentrate on improving my own behaviour and let G-d figure out who should live and who should die.
Well, it would be a strw man if you were saying “hey, isn’t it completely unreasonable that many people say that God allows these things to strengthen us”, if in fact not many people do actually say that. (I’ve yet to meet someone who says it in exactly the simplistic way stated in the OP)
Mangetout
I’ve heard the argument that God allows bad things to make humans stronger and if he protected us fully we would always be “children” in many Great Debates.
And even if I only heard one person say it, who cares? I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to debate whatever subjects I want. Even ones you haven’t heard of.
In addition, I think we have different ideas of what a “strawman argument” is. I’ve understood the term to mean when a person is arguing one point, then they bring up a different issue that is unrelated and think that support of that second issue proves their first issue. I am only discussing one issue here, described in the OP.
If you have nothing to add to the debate of the issue described in the OP, and are just going to accuse me of some imagined deceptive argument that you think I might make in the future, then I politely request that you not waste my time.
What you describe as changing subject suddenly sounds more like a hijack, but no matter.
Well, if you’ve only heard one person say it, then it’s misleading to say “Many have argued…” (you’d be presenting it as if it’s some sort of mainstream doctrine)
As you rightly point out; you’re allowed to debate whatever subjects you want; I’m also allowed to answer or argue the points you put forward, including (If I feel it’s appropriate) questioning the validity of your premises - that’s what a debate is.
Strong words. There’s really no need to take this sort of tone; I’m not about to make presumptions about anything you might post in the future (I’m a little puzzled as to why you think I would)
How about some cites?, then I’ll shut up about it.
Sure, but I don’t think that it makes much difference anyhow. It’s a big question I guess, whether good and evil are absolute or relative, but my own take on it is that regardless of what we believe or understand, “God moves in mysterious ways”. Our understanding (or not) of those ways doesn’t affect them - no double slit experiments here!
There’s an underlying premise in your argument - that the murder of a child’s friend is a Bad Thing. (Now of course I really think that it would be a bad thing, but that’s not my point. My point is that we can’t tell that it’s a bad thing from God’s point of view).
In this situation I would do what I could to physically restrain the abuser.
My belief is that one of our jobs while we are incarnated is to refine ourselves as much as possible. Wilde said “I can resist everything except temptation.” It’s a better state of affairs for people to not feel the temptation, rather than have to be policed into not giving in to it. Taken to an illogical extreme, to prevent all evil we should be strapped into chairs and fed through straws for our entire lives. Fortunately, most of us choose not to abuse the child.
Not really - God hasn’t seen fit to allow it! By most teachings, God has allowed mankind free will - it is mankind that allows child abuse! Free will means the choice to do good or evil: it’s not free will if you can only choose to do good.
And we’re not “restrained from doing so many others”. God isn’t stopping us from inflicting brain damage on others by thinking about it - physics is! There’s no known way to do that - it’s not the hand of God. Just as it would be next to impossible to live in a world where the laws of physics changed from day to day, so too it is impossible to live in a world where free will is granted and revoked from day to day, depending on what you intend to use it for.
Oh, yes, absolutely there is that underlying premise - but I was more concerned with the implications (possible hijack) of not being able to judge Good/Evil from a God’s-eye point of view.
Maybe because you stated you thought I was setting up a strawman to argue free will? In your first post in this thread?
Sorry for the tone, but I don’t like being accused of using a strawman or any other duplicious reasoning, and I found it particularly ridiculous to be accused of setting up a strawman about a subject I never even mentioned.**
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How about some cites?, then I’ll shut up about it. **
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I probably could find sites, but why should I have to take the time? So you’ve never heard anyone use the argument I’m addressing. So what? Does every thread have to be about a subject or concept you have heard before? If it makes you feel better, imagine I started this thread because my mother believes this (and she does).
Yet God–who you are supposed to be emulating yourself after–would not.
And who created the laws of physics? God did! He could have made them different from the begininng so as to allow forcefields. Remember, He is supposed to be omnipotent, and this is not one of those “make a rock so big he can’t lift it” things–there is no reason why forcefields would be impossible, and it seems a trivial task for one who created the entire universe and all its laws ex nihilio. There are many, many both evil and good things we might desire to do that we are prevented from doing due to God’s decision to set up the world in the way He did. Forcefields as a natural physical attribute would no more revoke free will than does our current inability to inflict brain damage by wishing it.
Gaudere said just about everything I would have said, but I just want to clarify this…
No one is speaking about a world where free will changes willy-nilly. I (and I think Miss G is thinking along the same lines here) am talking about a world where, before God started his Six Days of Creation, he said, “You know… I think I won’t allow instant brain damage, instant bestowing of cancer, flurblegurgling [a sin so terrible, we can’t even conceive of it – quixotic78], or child abuse. I shall accomplish the former two by making the physics such that it’s not possible, the third by removing all knowledge of flurblegurgling, and the fourth by making force fields appear around about-to-be-abused children.”
There’s no helter skelter free will here. I’m just questioning God’s original, yet unchanging, creational parameters.
Fair enough Revtim, and I think I might not have been clear enough in my first post; my ‘suspected’ strawman was your assertion that many people say God allows bad things to happen in order to make us ‘grow up’, The question I asked about freewill wasn’t in anticipation of anything, just a request for clarification (Some theists assert that God’s non-intervention is a freewill issue), I just wanted to find out where you were coming from. As we’ve seen from some of the other posts, freewill is entangled with this issue.
No, of course every thread doesn’t have to be about something I’m familiar with, however if, as you said, “Many have argued…”, then you can imagine my surprise at not having encountered it, perhaps I’ve just been lucky, it’s a big universe.
So anyway, to the question, yes I think you’re right; it is an invalid argument, or at the very least woefully incomplete - but I can’t add anything of worth over and above what’s already been said by other posters (perhaps I’ve missed my chance through being pedantic and overly concerned with and semantics).
Mangetout, have you ever heard more complete and/or less simplistic arguments that are based on the “God allows bad things to make people grow up” supposition? I’d be interested in hearing them, especially if they are not as easily dismissed as my admittedly quick-and-dirty description of the argument.
if all else fails, just click your heels together 3 times and say “god works in mysterious ways” - if you are really obtuse, you’ll start to feel better about the terrorist attacks.
Kalt, you are getting very close to Pit territory with your snide comments. Have you nothing better to do with your life than bait the faithful?
I for one don’t believe in an Omnipotent, Perfect God. The Divine is ‘perfect’ relative to us humans. But even us humans complain about natural events and processes that is just sub-optimal, like despite each human having the brain capacity of about 17 of the most powerful computers currently in the world (deriving from the rate of miniturizations from previous approximate measurements), our output capabilities don’t nearly match.
The Divine currently, from what I can tell, decided a while ago to let us run Earth for the most part. We are responsible for at least 99.999% of our actions and cinsequences, both positive and negative. We cannot prevent the past like Lazarus, but we can control how we react to circumstances, and proact for the future.
So then what’s the point of even recognizing a Divine? If we’re running this crazy shindig, then why does God still get credit for all the good stuff that happens? Hell, why does he even get mentioned at ALL?
Quix, who feels like he just invited a hijack–sorry Rev
Yes and no; I think most theists would be reluctant to discuss the issue of suffering in isolation from freevill, the divine perspective, eternity and the transience of physical existence and so on, faith isn’t so easily compartmentalised as, for example, the physical sciences.
The closest I’ve come to seeing a theist say the thing about growing up was (in another thread, I forget which), Polycarp(I think) said something to the effect that God answers our requests in one of three ways:
[li]Yes[/li][li]No[/li][li]You’re old enough to fix this for yourself.[/li]
(Sorry Polycarp, if I’ve butchered your eloquent words by misquoting them from memory)
My own feelings on the subject are that we would resent living in a world of constant interference, especially when (as a direct result of the interference) we would not know and appreciate the gravity of the mishaps that had been prevented. Generally, humans want freedom; we tend to resent anything that restricts our freedom, even if those restrictions are applied with the best of intentions.
Sorry to jump back to an earlier point, but I seem to remember an Orson Scott Card novel (The Worthing Saga) that was set in a world that had this kind of protection for its inhabitants. It has been a while since I read it, but I do remember sketchy details. The people had no concept of pain or fear, because they didn’t exist - there was an initiation rite for young men that involved throwing them into the blacksmith’s forge; the child’s clothes were all burned away, but the child emerged unharmed, was washed in the snow and given a “man’s” garment to wear. People still died, but peacefully, in their sleep. Anyway, for some reason, the “guardians” who intervene all the time, stop doing so, and people get injured and die from accidents that just never happened before. At first there is great panic and fear, but (if I remember correctly) the eventual conclusion is that, things are better with the pain than without…
Not that this proves anything, and Card is a theist (being a LDS), but I thought it might give you something to read and consider.
As quixotic78 pointed out in his post (the first after the OP), it’s perfectly valid to discuss the issue of suffering without bringing in free will, in the case of natural disasters.
Examples: I saw a documentary about hurricanes about a week ago, and during one an orphanage was destroyed and all the children and nuns who worked there were swept away by the storm surge and died.
Or, how about when a child dies painfully because of a horrible disease?
I see your point and no, freewill has little impact on these, but how these events fit into the big picture will depend on what type of theist you’re talking to; a literalist might tell you that these things are a result of the fall of man, whereas a liberal might say that things like disease an disaster are a natural part of the world around us.
I don’t think that the answer in the case of either of the tragedies you mentioned is that God is allowing death and destruction so that we can ‘grow up’ (except perhaps in the strictly evolutionary sense; the survivors of disease are more likely to have offspring who will also survive it etc)
It would undoubtedly be way too glib to argue that people choose by freewill to live in places where there is a high risk of hurricane.
This is what I was trying to point out in the OP: Why does God want us to be strong? To be able to overcome obstacles and tragedies in life? Then why would he create a world with those obstacles and tradegies to begin with?
Suppose you live on an island covered with warm sand and soft grass. I come along, and put the occasional thorn and shard of glass, and here and there I put some flaming coals. I hide some of these traps, and put others in the path to the water, so there is no way you can avoid them all.
You ask, “Revtim, why the hell did out these foot-damaging things on the island?”
I answer, “To toughen up your feet, so you can deal with foot-damaging situations.”
“Oh, OK. I guess it’s for my own good…”
It it circular reasoning. God lets bad things happen to make us strong enough to deal with the bad things that God lets happen?