Jewish and a soft Believer in God Who Doesn’t Give A Shit. That is I believe in the incomprehensible and unknowable. I believe that there is Right and Wrong whether we think it or not. But I believe that such an entity would consider me and you as I consider one of my blood cells. Much less really. And a million or so are still a mere wisp of hair. Ours is merely to study what God has left in his wake and try to do what is right. But I could be wrong.
Still the op is one of the Great Questions. As Harold Kushner put it Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People? No different of a thought considereing a single child than for a few hundred thousand or six million. His answer is different than mine.
Perhaps Earth is just a breeding ground for Souls that God needs to fight some cosmic war effort or begin some cosmic new project and He needed a large number of recruits all at once.
For those who truly seek a serious religious answer, you’d have to turn to religious scholars and leaders whom you respect, but I don’t believe there’s an answer that will satisfy atheists, especially ones who have no respect for deists or their opinions in the first place.
It is enough to know that the important task at hand is caring for the surviving victims, and whether you believe in God or not, it’s the proper thing to do. For believers, it’s what God calls us to do.
Get offended easily much?
No, I was saying that you’re all stupid or arrogant. I was just thinking along the lines of, say I read a thread about somebody asking about the best, I don’t know, MP3 program for a MAC, and I came in and said that I don’t have a MAC, I have a PC, and my favorite program is…
Yet you included my post as part of your “not palying by the rules”. I was commenting on other posts, not on whether I thought God played any role in the tsunami.
Not sure if this has been said…but if we are to believe in God then maybe this could be his way of getting us to unite…? Personally I have never thought that God was out to punish us.
Of course God caused the tsunami. Directly by Fiat or by old-fashioned plate tectonics, I don’t know. I’m not His press agent.
A wise man once said that pain is God’s megaphone to the world. It certainly seems so - we only talk about God (and blame Him) when bad things happen.
But I don’t happen to think that all those deaths were directly God’s fault. People living on the coastline are always at the mercy of the sea, and this sea happens to have a lot more hazards. But they didn’t really prepare for it in the form of early warning systems or an organized emergency response system. They didn’t recognize the disaster until it was nearly upon them - and some even went to the beach to watch the pretty giant waves roll in.
So now we have a tragedy on our hands. Instead of sitting around bemoaning the unfairness of God, maybe we should do something more constructive, but that’s just me.
The tsunami is an incredible catastrophe that has pulled together many creeds and nations in an outpouring of grief, empathy, and goodwill. In short, it shows us the best side of humanity at a time when it feels like the world is becoming an increasingly fractious place.
Perhaps it takes an event of this magnitude that kills so many and destroys the lives of many more to remind us that life is sacred.
Not everything happens for a reason, but everything that happens can be an opportunity for scientific and spiritual growth. They need not be divided.
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This forum is for issues which can never be satisfactorily resolved ranging from religion to how history will judge various U.S. presidents to human sexuality to the merits of certain political viewpoints.
I’ve been hanging around here for 4 years. I’ve been a devout Episcopalian for much longer. Obviously, I do not consider my Christian faith a mark of ignorance, however, I’ve encountered people here and elsewhere who do. If you cannot or will not go into threads which touch on religion without dismissing religious faith as ignorant, then perhaps you’re better off staying out of them. I know I’m not suited to threads on politics, therefore, I don’t open them. To me, ignorance has nothing to do with degree of religious faith; I’ve seen some very ignorant Christians on this board and some very ignorant Atheists. I’ve also known some very wise Christians and Atheists. What you see is up to you.
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Respectfully,
CJ, member in proud standing of the SDMB’s Episcopalian mafia!
Although I’m an atheist I’ve always admired Judaism and Christianity for the book of Job. The book of Job is a straight up confrontation of the fact that we live in a world where horrible things happen, and where the good suffer. It’s a difficult book, and I don’t claim to fully understand it’s message, but I think it contains the answer to the OP.
It seems to me that to an infinite being like God, 100,000 people with relatively infinitesimal lifespans dieing in a relatively minor seismic event (compared to say…two galaxies careening into each other) are about as relevant as the bacteria that are killed when we do a load of laundry are to us.
“This most beautiful system [The Universe] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”
-Sir Isaac Newton
“That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”
Albert Einstein
Lifted shamelessly from www.deism.org…
Believing or not is your choice. That is the beauty of America. I’m sorry if you feel oppressed, but if those who claim to be christian are oppressing you, they are not truly christians by action.
Are you hijacking the thread from the role of God in the tsunami to his role in careening two galaxies into each other?
Or are you implying that the role God plays in the tsunami is similar to the role human beings play with bacteria? Why compare the God’s tsunami to human being’s “laundry”. You could have compared it to human beings taking antibiotics when they have an infection-- killing both good and bad bacteria.
So, you are inclined to think of God’s role as a cleansing operation or a population growth management tactic on earth? And if so, what is his strategy in careening galaxies into each other?
