The “mysterious ways” dodge, aside from being an utterly evasive non-answer, is also logically incompatible with an Omnimax God. The argument that it all serves some greater purpose is completely undermined by the fact that God is supposed to be omnipotent. There is nothing God can achieve by allowing the Holocaust to happen that he can’t achieve without allowing the Holocaust to happen. Omnimax Gods don’t need plans. They don’t need means to ends. They just have to will the end. No evil is ever required.
There’s also no possible greater good that can justify some of the evil that God allows to happen. There’s no excuse good enough for God to allow the stuff that happens to children.
And I don’t want to hear “free will” either. God knows what people are going to do before he creates them. All he has to do is not create people who will do monstrous evil. That’s not incompatible with free will. Not that free will is important enough to justify evil anyway.
Who are you to say which goods do or do not outweigh certain evils? Who are you to say that logic is inherently correct and that Omnimax God is necessarily bound by it?
Morality is an aesthetic. Good and evil are whatever I perceive them to be. Asking me who I am to decide what can be morally justified is like asking me who I am to decide what kind of beer tastes good. Morality is subjective, not objective.
That’s like asking who I am to say that 2+2=4. The rules of Logic are what they are. An omnimax God doesn’t logically conform to the existence of evil. Sorry, but’s the way it is. Trying to say that maybe logic isn’t “correct” is about at the level of saying “oh yeah? Sez you.”
If you don’t want to adhere to the rules of logic in a debate, then there’s no point in trying to debate.
Well, yeah, that’s what I was saying. What if God just happened to disagree with your morality?
(Non-sarcastically) Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought logic, and the underlying math, is based on a set of “self-evident” axioms that have never been observed to be false, and indeed, cannot seem to be false, and are thus presumed to be universally true – but what if that’s actually a limitation of our minds and not of the greater universe? Is that not some combination of faith and hubris at work?
Edit: To be clear, what if it were possible that 2+2 doesn’t always equal 4, but our minds can’t understand that?
Then again, after the pastor was shot, the parishioners opened up an Unholy Can of Whoop-Ass on the assailant, so that’s nice. Coffee and donut holes will be served on the patio following the ass-kicking.
I find it amazing that during the shooting “People were “on their knees … screaming and praying,” witness says” according to CNN (see STORY HIGHLIGHTS in upper right corner).
If one was shot and killed I think they would be eligible for a Darwin Award.
If I were there you wouldn’t be finding me keeling and praying, I’d be the first one to the exit, ducking and weaving as I sprinted.
It reminds me of something that happened a year or so ago one weekend at a local bar I sometimes go to. I wasn’t there for it, but a few people I know were. A guy showed up and in the crowded bar some guy pulled a pistol on a girl that had cheated on him or left him or something, I never got the full story on that. It was just a BB pistol, but looked just the same as a real gun. A couple people screamed and the cops were quickly called (they showed up in force quickly), but other people in other parts of the bar (upstairs and downstairs) heard about it quickly through rumors and such… But nobody left. If I heard that rumor I’d be out the nearest fire exit and sprinting the two blocks home. Only thing they did was stop the music for about half an hour until the commotion was all done.
Oh, come on…the woman who said that about them being on their knees came into the room after the shooting…I’m sure it all happened very quickly and most people barely had time to react…heck, most people probably didn’t even realize what had happened, if my own congregation is any indicator. And probably a lot of them were little old ladies (again, if my congregation is any guide) who couldn’t dash for their lives if they tried to. Falling to their knees in an attempt to crawl under the pews, and crying “oh, Jesus, save me!”’’'well, that counts as prayer. I’m sure no one knelt down formally and said, “now, lets us all prayer together for the saving of this stranger’s soul”.
Then God is wrong, not me. God’s opinion means nothing. I am the sole arbiter.
This is incorrect. Logic is about the form of the argument and what must be necessarily inferred from starting premises. The truth or falsity of the premises themselves are irrelevant. For instance – if all blue people are smurfs, and all smurfs wear hats, then all blue people wear hats. The “if” is only stipulated for the purposes of the argument. It doesn’t matter if all smurf really wear hats. There is no observation involved.
It’s NOT possible. That’s like saying what if a square was really a circle. It’s only our minds that decided what 2 is and what a 4 is in the first place. We made the rules ourselves.
And “our minds can’t understand it” is another thing that’s incompatible with an omnimax God. If God is omnipotent, he can make us understand anything he wants.
You have to keep in mind that these people actually believe that there is a heaven and that they will be rewarded in it, so in their viewpoint what happens in this world is not the end-all and be-all. I would imagine that person was referring to trusting that God would reward people who choose to do good in heaven and punish people who choose to do bad stuff in hell, or something of that nature.
Easy to say when you have time to think it over logically from a distance. In a panic situation, sometimes people freeze up or don’t know what to do. Even smart people are not always calm and logical in a crisis.
One article I read mentioned that the church had just finished a dramatic skit before the shooting and that a lot of people initially thought the shooting was part of the skit somehow. That might also have something to do with why people were acting confused.
It is easy to figure out; there’s no reason to think there is a God at all. People just don’t want to believe it, so they manufacture competing fantasies instead.
As for the “god is beyond logic” or “God is beyond human understanding” arguments, if that’s true ( and I don’t think the former is even possible ) then you shouldn’t bother to talk about God at all. If he’s so incomprehensible then you can’t say if he’s good or bad, strong or weak, or what he wants; those arguments make him irrelevant because you can’t say anything meaningful about him. Of course people don’t actually do that; instead they go on and on about all the things they know about God, what he’s like and what he wants - it’s only when someone skeptical comes along that the “God is beyond understanding !” tactic gets rolled out.
What, did a nun beat your knuckles with a ruler when you were a kid?
I do think a lot of sociopaths out there do use the trappings of religion to get other people to let their guard down, but it’s not fair to smear all religious people. Especially when some religious people out there do lots of good in the world.
Confused or freezing up… Fine. I’ve been in PANIC situations before and looking back I could say duh… Why didn’t I do that?
But in any case the eventual outcome, which could’ve been bad, wasn’t. And it wasn’t luck. I may have fucked up in one way or another here or there in a situation where something suddenly went to shit but in every case I got my ass out of the dangerous situation.
And I understand that the lady might’ve been misinterpreting the freaking out as prayer, but she seems to be adamant that kneeling and prayer ensued. Again, these are the same people that sometimes think statues are crying blood or Mary is burning her image into toast or whatever… So a heafty pound of salt may be necessary…
In either case someone’s dumb. Either the lady that thinks everyone’s belief is so great that even attempting to leave the room where you might get shot isn’t even brought into consideration and instead you pray or the people who, if they did, actually did so.
I think it’d be a little unreasonable to expect that the executive director of the Illinois State Baptist Association would have any other take on the situation. What’s he going to do, tell people that this incident proves their religion is a fraud? This is exactly the sort of thing people go to church for.
For reassurance in the face of tragedy, I mean; not to see pastors shot.
Apropos of nothing, it does strike me as a bit odd-sounding that the Illinois Baptists fall back on their “executive director” to deliver official statements of faith. It seems like a peculiarly managerial position for such a role. Just my take as one who knows jack shit about church organizational hierarchy.
“As Executive Director of the Baptists, I wish to assure our stockholders that this incident will not adversely affect our third quarter market share.”
No, it is not fair or logical to smear all religious people for the awful violence of a few nutcases. But it happens. But only a few people do it, and unlike the few nutjobs killing, nobody dies.
