UBBY said:
JXL said:
UBBY said:
Oldbear83 said:
UBBY said:
If God is love and all powerful why does he allow children to be raped and murdered?
God does not enslave His children. We are allowed free will, to do good if we will and evil if we so will.
I do wonder why you seek to blame God for human acts of evil?
He receives praise when good things happen. I would assume he would take blame when bad things happen also.
He allows these things to happen. He knows everything that will happen in the future does he not?
If you were God would you allow children to be murdered and raped?
How would you prevent that from happening while preserving free will?
That's a good question and a difficult one to answer. You wouldn't have complete free will. Or the creator could modify what constitutes as free will.
Walk that through.
Let's say you decide you want to ban murder and rape. We can all agree those are bad, right?
So boom, if we are playing god now no one can murder or rape anyone. Problem is, you have limited free will at the decision level, so while you have eliminated something very bad, you took something of the human spirit away to do it.
But worse, you still have problems, No more murder or rape, but there is still robbery and assault and political corruption. I expect you'd want to get rid of those, right?
So boom, now everyone not only
won't commit crimes or do something unethical, they
cannot commit crimes or do anything unethical. So humanity has less suffering but even less freedom.
Along the way, to get a world where no one does anything that hurts someone else, you will have eliminated not only violence, but any kind of discrimination. No one can even
think in a way that is out of line with what you decide is the right way to think. That's Stalin's wet dream, you know, but it's all for the Greater Good.
But turns out there is
still suffering going on. Even without murder, people still die, from disease and accidents and natural disaster. People still suffer from addictions and bad choices too.
So let's say you make those go away. No one suffers in any way, anymore.
Of course, you'd have to change some laws of nature to make this work. For one thing, no one dying means you need somewhere for all those extra people to live. No one going hungry and no one even
thinking badly of another human, those require, well, you would basically have to make all humans slaves to the greater good, no one able to really achieve more than anyone else or be greater than anyone else, in the name of a perfectly equal equity for all.
What's more, there would be no such thing as virtue or honor, anymore. If everyone has enough food, there is no one who will stand out for feeding the hungry, when no one is sick or alone, no one stands out for visiting the sick and the lonely. If no one suffers injustice, no one stands out as a hero for protecting the weak and the unprivileged. If everyone is the same, no one does anything heroic or noble.
Mankind would become vapid, useless except as a large group of pets for their god.
One thing I have seen in my life, that speaks to the presence of God, is how many people go out of their way to protect the innocent, to help the homeless, to feed the hungry, to right wrongs and defend those who need help. I believe one reason we live in a world of suffering, is so we learn to do something to help those who suffer. One reason we go through bad things, is so we can tell someone honestly that we have been through the same thing, and so we know what they are feeling, and we honestly know how to help.
Goodness is a choice made by people who decide they want to solve problems one person at a time.
That which does not kill me, will try again and get nastier