Hey you, lay off those larvae. They too are God’s creatures just trying to survive long enough to metamorphose and reproduce. 
In another thread there was a term suggested for the great unknown mysterium tremendum Many questions remain unanswered. I have big problems comprehending things like child abuse, or those chronic diseases that have someone lingering and suffering for years. I have hope and perhaps faith that I will understand it in time.
Some ideas…
Someone suggested once that perhaps certain lives fulfill a spiritual purpose we don’t understand. It isn’t just the person suffering but the people around them that have this experience. Then think of the eternal and how brief a lifetime is in perspective. Would I go through a bad experience which offered no real permanant danger to help someone I loved? Most of us would.
How would you feel if the person suffering with river blindness had been Hitler in his previous life, or a cruel slave owner, or a Klan member who killed blacks for sport? Instead of “Fuck you God!” you might want to shout “Right On God, Way to Go” I don’t know, but it does seem to me that the people angry at God are the ones who look at this physical life as the ultimate reality. In order to really consider it you must suspend that belief at least temporarily.
I repeat, in no way do I intend to minimize or trivialize anyone’s experience.
Ha, thanks we needed some humor 
Well I’m a Christian but I think God gives everyone a chance for redemption whether they are rapists or serial killers or a mixture of the two. I think all evil people will eventually find their way back to God. I also think that good atheists and homosexuals automatically go to Heaven whether they believe or not as long as they accept Christ as their shepherd before entering the pearly gates (actually that would apply to atheists more since some homosexuals can be Christians). I’m probably wrong on my theory but from reading the New Testament it makes the most sense to me.
Interesting. Do you find anything in the bible to support your belief that we will be given a chance to accept Christ after death but before we enter the pearly gates, or is it just your own idea that pleases you.
It’s an idea that pleases me but it’s not that far-fetched considering Jesus is supposed to be all forgiving and I don’t think God would be angry at an intelligent person weighing the facts and deciding God doesn’t exist. Hell, sometimes I don’t think so either but Christ’s message is just too strong for me to doubt. I mean look at St. Thomas he doubted Christ’s resurrection but he wasn’t thrown into hell and he still kept his rank as an Apostle. I know Jesus said “blessed be the ones who believe without seeing” but that just means he blesses the ones that believe in him without evidence and he knows how hard it is to turn off your mind just so you can believe in something that is logically absurd.
Anyway those are just my two cents.
Makes sense to me also. Beliefs mean little, it is actions that count. Someone can tell you what they believe, but if you don’t see the results of that belief in their actions, what they say is meaningless.
I would reply that my analogy to the ocean would mean the ocean is all that exists and if God is everywhere one cannot seperate ones self from it. For God to be every where it would mean there is nothing that exists out of existance.
Monavis
If you consider the Atoms etc. that make you what you are then you were around, just not in human form.
Monavis
I do not think a God causes any suffering or good feelings, to me it means we are on a planet that life forms suffer, many deceases are genetic. our bodies are like any animal, we get ill from some other life form on earth, like the virus, or infection. They invade our bodies,we have a limited life span.We get ill because we are not immune to a lot of things and our bodies wear out,sometimes it is because we put our health behind a lot of pleasures,when we should take better care of our selves,sometimes we get a virus that is passed from some other life form.
But the point is that God made us vulnerable, and made diseases, etc., which can take advantage of that vulnerability. I try to make my child immune to as many diseases as possible. I also try to create for my child a safe environment. On both of these counts, I do a better than God (who is supposedly omnipotent) does for many of His children.
I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on my response to your post. If you don’t believe in a higher power thats fine, but in order to argue the point you must assume that if that higher power exists then {insert arguement here}
When you imagine for the sake of arguement that God exists then physical suffering changes. If we are really eternal souls then nothing in the physical world can harm us. It is only a brief experience.
My statement “Oh yes, come to think of it, who am I to question? Was I around when God laid down the foundations of the earth? And I certainly can’t call down the lightning or draw out leviathan with a hook so I certainly am not qualified to question God’s act of allowing Satan to make Jobs life a living hell just to prove a point.” is from God’s response in the Book of Job (Job 38-41) to Job’s “Why me?”.
Well, even if we are eternal souls, stuff that happens in this world can harm us in the sense of causing us tremendous pain. I know you are not a traditional Christian, but for example, Jesus’ suffering on the cross represented a sacrifice only if it was truly suffering–only if it truly *hurt * him. So an eternal soul can hurt and be harmed; its suffering is a loss to it, much as Jesus’ suffering represented a *real * sacrifice, and not just a big show. So I disagree that eternal souls can’t be harmed. And my point in one of my previous posts is that if there is no good reason to cause this suffering, then it is not cancelled out by an eternity in heaven.
But there are 10s of thousands of people on this earth who suffer far worse than what Jesus did–who suffer not for days, but for months, or years, without the knowledge or comfort that their suffering serves a purpose. Maybe they are reincarnated–but how can reincarnation be true, since there are ever more people on earth? Where do the new people come from? If the new ones are created ex nihilo, without a past life, then it would be unjust for God to make them suffer natural evils like disease, so how is it just to make them suffer? They were never Hitler or Pol Pot in a past life; they didn’t have a past life. (Besides, I don’t see how reincarnation could work–I think advances in our understanding of the brain prove that all of our personality, intelligence, emotions, etc., are the product of the brain–there is no explanatory room left for a soul which transmigrates.) So I see your point, but I can’t assume that God exists, because God’s existence creates more problems and puzzles than it solves. My arguments are part of an overall argument to prove that the hypothesis that God exists just doesn’t make sense (to me).
Does this help explain my point of view?
I think we are in agreement more than you think. I do not think of the word “God” to mean a creator,who made all things and keeps them in existence. It is not a being, but what exists. I do not have the answers, but I cannot imagine a being in existence unless there was first a place for the being to be. I think things happened just because they did; we look for answers when there is none. I doubt that we will ever have the answer. Something had to exist first, but I do not think it was a being that is called God. If you walk out in the winter and a snow flake happens to fall on your nose and melts, I doubt if there was a plan for you to be in that certain place and that certain snow flake should melt on your nose. I would say it just happened by chance. It is not senimental to think that we are here by chance, but in my belief we are. In the same frame of mind I can imagine that before the beginning of time some thing in place came about by chance and things happened just because they did. How and why are not important to me. I except the fact that some thing was always existing. There is still much Chaos iin space, and we do not yet know what the end result will be, anymore than if we drop a blot of ink on a paper just what shape it will take. If the paper is smooth or wrinkled it will take a different shape.
I am sorry if I am not making myself clear.
Monavis
A post script to my last note in answer to Davis Simmons would be, yes you were around when the foundations of the earth were laid,just atoms etc. You are made of star stuff. That is a scientific fact.
monavis
Sure. However, although I’m old my conscious existence as a unified system doesn’t go back quite that far.
Nor does any of us, but I do believe there is a genitic link,where a memory is passed on from our acestors. I once worked as a core maker, I was paid by the piece, I had a remberance of making a core easier, it worked. I learned later that my father was a core maker at one time. The Bible is written by humans, for humans,every thing we read,or are taught, is the work of humans. What we know and are taught can sometimes be true, sometimes not. The idea of a God was not always around either,and we have to admit that we were not here when the first idea of one came about.
Monavis
I don’t think the physical suffering of Jesus on the cross represented a sacrifice. I don’t mean to minimize the suffering of anyone. When I say that eternal souls cannot be harmed I mean that if our physical bodies are just fleeting then whatever the body goes through, the real us remains intact and unchanged. Whatever suffering there is in the physical realm will not carry over into the spiritual with any more serious consequences than a bad dream carries when we wake up.
As I said, I don’t know. There are possibilities. Perhaps others live on other planets, other dimensions, other planes of reality, until it is their time to come to earth. In a simple analogy I see life as going to school. We pass form grade to grade by learning certain lessons. Each life’s circumstance, our advantages and disadvantages are selected to help us to learn what we need to learn. If we choose not to learn then the lesson is repeated.
I haven’t looked into any of that myself. From reading on the SDMB there are a few that don’t agree what science has proved about brain function.
I wouldn’t want anyone to assume God exists. That should only spring from our own experience and internal dialogue. I can see in the past where many of my beliefs came from wanting to fit in with a certain group. I’ve let most of those beliefs go but because of a couple of startling experiences there is an unexplained something that I still refer to as God. The termnology doesn’t matter much. The force, the great spirit, Universal consciousness, or mysterium tremendum, all serve equally as well because of the great unknown factor. The two analogies I like are
- We are drops of water and God is the ocean.
- We are cells in the body and God is the head
Both mean that we ar essentially the same stuff as God and as each other.
I understand the rejection of God as a seperate and benevolant being who watches over us. In another thread someone acknowledged a sense of some kind of connection between all people but rejected the concept of a spiritual explaination. To me that means we see things similarly but prefer different terms. Thats cool with me.
Cosmosdan–I would like to continue this discussion, but unfortunately, I am about to head out of town for a week, so I guess you get the last word! I will rejoin this thread if it is still active when I return.