tobias
Junior Member
Posts: 77
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Post by tobias on May 29, 2013 20:48:22 GMT
This probably is not the correct place to go into this, but I decided to sit out in the garden today after lunch to have a cup or two of tea it being probably the first decent sunny day we have had. I got to thinking, (I am reading a book with a religious theme at the mo, more anon.) Here we have the natural world, (I live in the country where it is perhaps easier to observe) in perfect balance and harmony from the smallest microbe to the largest mammel, all created by God, plants and animals all perfectly regulated "see the birds of the air, they neither sow,nor do they reap, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them" Then God goes and creates mankind and we create mayhem!
Now the thing is, when He formed Adam and subsequently Eve, He must have known, being God, what was going to happen or did he just make a mistake? I know He was working for six solid days and maybe got a rush of blood to the head but if He had'nt created us everything would be working beautifully.
But then God cannot make a mistake.
Then later on He sends prophets of various types and we kill them all. He then sends His only Son and we kill Him. But being God he knew all this before any of it happened, so why?
I know He created the universe and I'm pretty sure there are other worlds out there that we are prevented from seeing because of the laws governing the speed of light which means we only see what is happening a million years ago. So maybe He did things differently there.
All this does not mean I dont believe, I do, but I have to say for a guy that knows everything, He's hard to figure!
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Post by hibernicus on May 30, 2013 22:18:20 GMT
Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:"Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone-- while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? "Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt'? "Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it? The earth takes shape like clay under a seal; its features stand out like those of a garment...
Read the rest for yourself (Job 38 and the following chapters). It's one possible answer.
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tobias
Junior Member
Posts: 77
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Post by tobias on May 31, 2013 20:20:29 GMT
Job has it about right. But the problem remains. How is that God created the checks and balances that regulate the natural world and got it so marvellously right and then created us and built in all the flaws that continue to disrupt and damage the world that He so flawlessly created. And there's no point in saying it's all down to Original Sin because God being God must have known what was going to happen with Adam so what was the point of it all? I imagine it would all have been a lot better if He had organised it so that we were more inclined to look after His world and all that is in it. So, did He make a mistake, did he not know how we were going to turn out?
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Post by maolsheachlann on May 31, 2013 21:37:07 GMT
I don't know why, or whether it's a deficiency in me (it might be, because the Catechism says "There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil"), but this ancient riddle never causes me a moment's trouble.
First off-- what do we mean by "good"? To really WANT good-- absolute good--, you have to BE good, and none of us are good. I shudder to think how often I've heard that someone say, "Did you hear what happened to such-and-such?", and found myself involuntarily hoping it will be something really awful and sensational. Murder, that's the thing!
The idea that anybody is so pure-hearted that the imperfections of this world torments him or her seems, to me, rather dubious-- a form of posturing. (This is not directed at you, Tobias.) We all spend very little time thinking of the homeless, the hungry, the handicapped, etc. etc. If this really bothered us all the time, we would be saints. Most of us are more worried about our dinners.
Most importantly, perhaps, if there is more to life than this world, as we Christians believe, we have NO IDEA what the big picture is. None. The good that god intends for us might be so staggeringly, overwhelmingly, incomparably disproportionate to the evils that seem so distressing to us now that they are as nothing. And for all we know, the possibility of evil might be logically required by that ultimate good-- when we eventually SEE this, I imagine our reaction, will be, "But of course!".
god doesn't want wind-up toys. He wants souls with free will-- that can only go right if there is a real possibility they will go wrong.
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Post by hibernicus on May 31, 2013 22:19:34 GMT
The reason I posted the quotation from Job was not just because of the content of Tobias's post, but because of his tone. He seemed to me to be actually condescending to God ("a rush of blood to the head" indeed). To such an attitude the passage in Job is the antidote. Straightforward questioning is one thing (indeed the book of Job commends it when it favours Job over his comforters who claim to discern the will of God). Dismissive references to God as if He were a dunce is quite another.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jun 1, 2013 6:07:08 GMT
I like what Bill Murray says in Groundhog Day: "Well, maybe the real God uses tricks. Maybe he's not omnipotent, he's just been around so long he knows everything." I guess that would be Mormon theology, although Danny Rubin (the guy who came up with the story and co-wrote it with Harold Ramis) is a Buddhist.
Of course, I know it's not true, I just think it's a cute quote.
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tobias
Junior Member
Posts: 77
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Post by tobias on Jun 4, 2013 21:14:58 GMT
I must say I like Maolsheachlann's take on the subject. Hib, sorry you dont like my "tone" but I'm used to that at this stage. God is no dunce,and I dont think I implied that. It is merely that in common with the entire human race I do not understand whats going on, just like Maol. We will never know why things are the way they are but I was trying to see what people who think more deeply than I on this board would have to say on the subject of the contrast between the wonderfully ordered and regulated natural world and the almost chaotic human condition. By my very limited human intellect God made a peculiar decision to create a race of creatures whom He knew would behave as we do and its hard to figure out why.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 6, 2013 17:06:42 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 7, 2013 9:46:20 GMT
Interesting piece by an American evangelical talking to atheist students about why they became atheists. Predominant suggestion seems to be they reacted against being condescended to by dumbed-down approaches, and that they did not adopt atheism from a neutral position but as a positive reaction against Christianity. Note, this is for discussion and I do not necessarily endorse it, and also note the American context is different from the Irish one (i.e. no single religious body has historically been so dominant in the US as Catholicism has been in the Republic of Ireland). www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/listening-to-young-atheists-lessons-for-a-stronger-christianity/276584/
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jun 7, 2013 11:05:50 GMT
One thing I didn't like about his survey was the way the question is phrased: "What led you to become an atheist?". It seems to assume one can't always have been an atheist.
Other than that, I thought it was interesting and worthy. I definitely think religious believers and Christians are tempted to unnecessarily alienate atheists by making sweeping statements, attributing emotional motives etc. Now don't get me wrong, I am perfectly happy to go in firing with both barrels if someone is attacking the Church or religious belief, but I think most atheists are not actually anti-religion or anti-God or anti-Christianity. Most atheists probably wouldn't even declare themselves to be such unless they were asked.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 15, 2013 16:19:59 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 23, 2013 19:36:12 GMT
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2013 13:28:43 GMT
I think the the term Omnipotent is widely misunderstood. Omnipotence is the power of God to effect whatever is not intrinsically impossible.
There are lots of intrinsically impossible things that God cannot do.
God cannot lie, he cannot sin, he cannot break his promises, he cannot contradict his own justice. Nothing can make a spherical triangle, for such a thing is intrinsically impossible by its very nature.
God cannot do what is impossible by definition. God can do many things that are humanly impossible.
This definition does not imply any imperfection, since a power that extends to every that is possible
Granting us free will also means granting us free will.
As for Adam and Eve and their original sin "But being God he knew all this before any of it happened, so why?" - The story of creation and humanity is far from over, that question assumes it is.
God has told us everything he wants us to know about his plan, via holy Scripture and his holy Church and told us everything we need to do. We should be more than happy with that, and we've plenty to be getting on with, or "Lord, Lord" we'll say, and "Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink?"
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 16, 2013 20:36:19 GMT
One claim that is often made about some forms of traditionalist Catholicism is that they appeal to a sort of male mind which is very much concerned with getting the rules and regulations just right, and is profoundly disturbed when challenged by people who don't share its presuppositions. Some such people, it has been noted, are very ill-at-ease with women and can respond to them with aggressive and disturbing outbreaks of misogyny. These things can indeed be found in the trad movement - but it should be noted that this sort of attitude is not uniquely trad and can be found in other male-heavy subcultures. Sci-fi nerds are one case (the adolescent outbursts when STAR TREK: VOYAGER had a female captain - BTE the actress who played her is pro-life - were not pleasant to behold). And here we have another such subculture. Yes, it's those Apostles of Light and Reason, the New Atheists! HEre we see a female atheist and member of that subculture lamenting about how she experienced sexual harrassment within it, said harrassment getting much worse when she blogged about how she felt threatened when being (implicitly) propositioned by a strange man in a hotel in the early hours of the morning when attending a skeptics' convention. Richard Dawkins, incidentally, gives a characteristic display of zero empathy. Apparently since Muslim women are being subjected to all sorts of ill-treatment, atheist women are not allowed to complain about experiencing boorish behaviour from their male counterparts. (BTW it was not Dawkins who engaged in the sexual harassment; he just comes across as epically incurious about how it feels for a woman in that context and dismissive of experiences he hasn't shared himself. Gee, I wonder can we think of any other areas of thought he handles exactly the same way?) www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/10/sexism_in_the_skeptic_community_i_spoke_out_then_came_the_rape_threats.single.html#pagebreak_anchor_2
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Post by maolsheachlann on Aug 17, 2013 16:16:00 GMT
He is at least consistent. In The God Delusion he complains about the sex abuse witch hunt towards the Catholic Church and recalls being groped by an Anglican cleric, which he says caused him no more than embarrassment.
Isn't Catholicism generally typified as a rather feminine religion? What with the vestments, ornament, the devotion to the Blessed Virgin, etc. Certainly Protestant polemicists have used this stereotype.
I dont know how Star Trek got its stereotype of being a male preserve, I think I've met more females who like it than males.
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