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There is definitely truth in that. And I'm sure I'd have a helluva time convincing people of the faith that Superman is real and that I saw him flying through a city once, despite the fact that my version of an ideal man has the same relevancy or, at the very least, the same believability as theirs.
Just like how I can get sent to a psyche ward for hearing voices, but if I say one of those voices was God telling me to help a charity I'm a swell fellow and the pride of my species who is doing the Lord's work. Maybe they'd still sent to me a ward anyway... Could be a bad example, that.
Unless you're Peter Sutcliffe who heard God telling him to butcher prostitutes and then you're told you're mental again.
Seems hearing voices in your head is only regarded as sane if it's God and he's telling you to do nice things. Despite the fact that, given his oft mentioned baby cancer schtick, telling you to murder prostitutes or blow yourself up in his name sounds much more like the sort of thing that he would do rather than order you to run the tombola at the church fete.
In fact I wonder if going on the rampage with a machete in a maternity ward wouldn't be the surest way to get into heaven as the whole point is to follow His example and live a Godly life isn't it?*
*(Note to the religious - please don't act on this even though it makes perfect theological sense to want to impress him in such a way. It's when you do stuff like this that the lily livered powers that be finally have the balls to call a religious person out as actually mental.)
@TheWizardOfIce, a fair point. Prostitutes are sinners who tempt good men into sinning, so God may like it when someone takes the initiative to kill them for him and make the world a more peaceful place. Without such people God would have to give the prostitutes cancer and that could go into remission and take a long time. You'd think he could take over the mind of a driver on the road and make them rev the car and hit a prostitute as she stood on the corner soliciting the public, but I don't know if mind control is in his bag of tricks or if he can pull off full body possession on the fly like that.
It's funny that we have a better idea of what Superman's powers and weaknesses are, but not God's. He seems a bit too laissez-faire for my taste, comfortable with sitting back and doing nothing as hell unleashes itself on his creations that he already wanted to kill anyway simply because we didn't believe in him and not for worshipping his destruction or anything. Satan got lucky by having an adversary who seems to be such a lazy and at times demented being to dance around. If poor Job is any example we're all just pawns that God is willing to toss to the horny bastard in a selfish and egotistical game to prove how great he was at designing us. "Give them cancer, kill their families, rob them of their homes and their living. They'll stand by me no matter what." Despite the fact that those who fail his self-absorbed test, like the majority at Noah's time, get drowned and those who pass, like Job, are simply thrown some nice property and a few new kids as a consolation for all the pain and loss that Satan caused him by God's own negligence to stop any of it from happening in the first place.
What a swell god he is.
1) on their own scientific terms,
which is
a. in many cases a waste of effort because far from all (religious) people are sufficiently scientifically literate to make even five minutes of "ad rem" conversation possible;
b. furthermore useless because scientific truths are often complex and sometimes the antithesis of what we want to hear in order to sleep well at night. The simple "truths" many religions offer, pander to our intellectual numbness or laziness; and also, they often tell us that there is a life after death and that sufficient prayer will eventually beat all demons, pains, diseases and sufferings, which, apparently, is precisely what people want to hear;;
2) on the terms of the religious debaters,
which, however,
a. often leads to the accusation that we are behaving as hateful bigots and agitators, simply making fun of the others, an accusation which often comes very early in the debate as the final line of defence when defeat is already a harsh reality;
b. is very difficult because scientists are trained to apply reason and to work from empirical facts, and also to be at all times intellectually honest which, granted, not all scientists are.
Ah, the Teletubbie Taliban. wondered where they'd got to!
I can't remember which French philosopher said this but anyway he said "if Jesus had to walk on water then his arguments must have been really poor".
After a hundred years, we'd have a set of new religious books but oddly enough we'd
Have exactly the same science books.
Interesting thought. Humans will always invent a new god to distract from the doldrums and mortality of life, but the truth will always be discovered through science no matter the period.
For those of you who are doing this on your own time rather than trying to pass a few hours at work (where using the internet for sinful pornography is not an option) here's a few of the highlights to save you ploughing through all this dross. And before you think I have cherry picked these I just typed 'Why does God' and then Google filled in 'allow suffering' and I went with the first three in the list (well I confess to ignoring the first one which was Jehovah's Witnesses but as even the average Christian would consider them to be mental I thought I'd be generous.):
First 'Christiananswers.net' who describe themselves thus:
'CHRISTIAN ANSWERS is a worldwide evangelism, education and discipleship ministry of Films for Christ. Our primary goal is to provide accurate, biblical answers on a wide variety of questions asked by Christians and non-Christians. Questions can be submitted on-line. We also provide a great deal of other valuable information and resources related to Christianity, Christian education, discipleship, media, and more (see our resource directory).'
'Accurate, biblical answers' seems just the ticket so let's have a look at their response to 'Why does God allow suffering?'
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t023.html
'This is a real difficulty, but atheism is certainly not the answer, and neither is agnosticism. While there is much evil in the world, there is even more that is good. This is proved by the mere fact that people normally try to hang on to life as long as they can. Furthermore, everyone instinctively recognizes that “good” is a higher order of truth than “bad”.'
Yeah stop whining about your kid dying and just smell all the flowers God created.
Also I'm not sure how people trying to hang on to life when they are faced with death empirically 'proves' there is more good than evil in the world but who am I to doubt Christiananswers.net and their conclusions?
We ourselves do not establish the standards of what is right. Only the Creator of all reality can do that. We need to settle it, in our minds and hearts, whether we understand it or not, that whatever God does is, by definition, right.
Just shut up bleating about your dying kid and have faith that God is right can't you?
Having settled this by faith, we are then free to seek for ways in which we can profit spiritually from the sufferings in life, as well as the blessings.
Forget a baby suffering pain and agony - lets concentrate on what we can get out of it.
As far as babies are concerned, and others who may be incompetent mentally to distinguish right and wrong, it is clear from both Scripture and universal experience that they are sinners by nature and thus will inevitably become sinners by choice as soon as they are able to do so.
Jesus!! Christiananswers.net taking the gloves off now!!. Honestly how can any right minded person object to killing babies? Sinning little f**kers had it coming anyway. God actually doing society a service by hitting them with a brain tumour the moment they are out of the womb otherwise prison populations would go through the roof. Do you want your taxes going up to pay to incarcerate all these babies once they are old enough to commit crimes? Thought not so get on board with God's inspired neonatological pre-crime capital punishment program.
With our full faith in God’s goodness and in Christ’s redemption, we can recognize that our present sufferings can be turned to His glory and our good.
So as long as you have 'full faith' you should embrace a bit of cancer in your helpless newborn. It's character building for you and most of all it can be turned to the 'glory' of this narcissistic nutter.
Time for our next God apologist PremierChristianity.com:
'Premier Christianity is about helping you go deeper with God. The Christian life is not easy, but it is good. We want to help you through the difficult times and cheer you on in the good. We cover prayer, hearing from God, pastoral issues, spiritual disciplines...anything which we think might encourage your personal faith, and inspire you to bring the Kingdom of God to earth.'
This seems a reasonable mission statement. They want to help through the difficult times after all and what could be more difficult than your baby being riddled with cancer?
https://www.premierchristianity.com/Past-Issues/2016/July-2016/3-reasons-why-God-allows-suffering
Starts off very well with author actually relating a story about his baby being intensive care so surely we'll get answers here?
How I wished I could explain to my bawling newborn, not yet 24 hours old, that the doctor wasn’t being horrid, he was being helpful. That the pain of the needle was necessary. That this wouldn’t last forever. That I loved him.
We are not able to see the big picture in the way that God sees it. We see only the present pain, the sting of the needle. God is the parent who is with us in our suffering, yet also sees the end from the beginning in ways that we cannot fathom.
Alas no. He just uses it as an metaphor for God's masterplan. And this is fine in this particular example as his baby made a full recovery. Doesnt work quite as well when the kid is just eaten away by cancer and then dies does it?
The great gift of freedom and love that God has given us comes at the cost of the evil that people freely choose to carry out in the world.
The critic of Christianity will be quick to reply, ‘That may be. But there is also much suffering that exists in the world which isn’t a result of our own actions.’ Think of natural disasters, disease and illness. Often these are termed ‘natural evil’ and presented as a serious challenge to the concept of a loving God.
Sounds like the guy is going to tackle this head on this time?! Oh no he then just totally ignores disease and bangs on about earthquakes:
The Haiti earthquake which caused so much death and suffering in 2010 was no more violent than the ones which often strike places such as Los Angeles with little or no loss of life. The difference is that compared to Haiti, the US is a rich and prosperous country with the necessary resources for earthquake-proofed buildings, emergency services and infrastructure.
The fact is that collective human choices have resulted in a world of haves and have-nots – where the impact of natural disasters and disease will very much depend on where you are born in the world. Our free will still makes a huge difference to the toll of natural evil. We can’t always lay the blame at God’s door.
No attempt made to answer why God allows earthquakes in the first place (its all down to 'natural evil' apparently) just a criticism of humanity for not coming together to pay for building earthquake proof buildings along every fault line. Also I like how the 'little' loss of life in California can be totally dismissed.
It can be argued that meaningful moral and spiritual growth as human beings requires a world where some suffering exists. I cannot be generous unless there is someone who has less than me. I cannot show compassion unless there is someone who needs caring for.
So all the dead babies and tsunamis are necessary for us to donate money, organise fundraisers etc so that we can thus show compassion and live a more Christlike life. There's always a bit of collateral damage people.
Finally 'Lifehopeandtruth.com':
'LifeHopeandTruth.com exists to fill a critical void in this world: the lack of understanding about the purpose of life, the lack of realistic hope for a better future and the lack of truth!'
Well these chaps seem to be what we're looking for. Their quest for 'truth' should finally see us getting some straight answers.
https://lifehopeandtruth.com/life/evil-and-suffering/why-does-god-allow-suffering/
Apparently its all down to Eve. No wonder women are treated so shabbily in most religions. If she hadn't listened to the serpent we'd have been alright. Bitches.
God addressed the serpent, the woman and the man. God cursed the serpent; described the pain and sorrow that Eve and all mothers would face in the course of bearing and raising children; and cursed the ground, warning Adam of the extreme hardships he and his family would experience as a result of their disobedience.
Furthermore, God told them a second time that they would indeed die and return to the dust from whence they came. He then thrust them both out of the Garden of Eden and placed angels at the gate to guard the tree of life and keep Adam and Eve from reentering the garden. Life was about to become very difficult for the first family.
The all loving and forgiving God being pretty reasonable there. Can't fault him really.
'Suffering can have the same impact upon us that it had upon Jesus Christ—it can aid us in becoming more Christlike in our character and in our lives. '
This seems a popular notion. Suffering is there to aid us in following a more Godly existence it seems. The baby that is infested with malignant tumours is not an individual merely a vessel for us to be able to try and improve our faith because after all God knows best and only a fool would doubt his wisdom. The more you suffer if you come back with even stronger faith the better its going to be when you get to heaven. So I'm hoping my entire family get wiped out by disease and natural disaster to allow me to bear it with fortitude and bring me closer to the great man.
Probably better do some work now, although I suppose if I get myself sacked that would be a bit more suffering I can stick on the tab.
Except scientists are re-writing their books all the time. They still don't understand 95% of the make up of the universe.
Now Prof Hawking is telling us we may be nothing more than a wild life safari park for some far off alien species. Good grief.
The "suffering is character building" is one I've heard dished out before by religious folk, but the "babies are sinners and would sin when given the chance" is a new one. So if all babies start off as sinners (thanks, Adam and Eve) then why don't we all get born with cancer the second we pop out of our mother's womb? Maybe God has a trick we can use where, if holy water is resting just below a birthing mother's vagina, the second the baby is flushed out he or she can be dipped and baptized to stave off the creation of tumors as they take their first breath. That'd be a middle finger to the big man, eh?
It makes me wonder how I'm still alive as, despite my dad's side being loony Catholics, I was never baptized after birth and technically still have Adam and Eve's original sin clogging up my evil pores twenty-three years on. How haven't I gotten cancer yet? I seem like the perfect target, sinful damaged goods and all that. I guess it's true what they say: God works in mysterious ways!
I wish the atheists had some guy to worship and whose actions, no matter how cruel and unusual, we could justify offhand like they were nothing worth getting cut up about. I guess the closest we have is Richard Dawkins, but you can bet your arse that if he went around giving babies cancer or making natural disasters with his weather machine we'd hear no end of it from the religious, despite the fact that their supreme leader made a hobby out of that sort of thing in the first place.
See also global warming - climate change.
Have to say I feel sorry for Jimmy Savile. I'd rather be nonced up than be given cancer yet he is despised by pretty much everyone on the planet while God is loved by his believers and the rest of us are ordered to respect him by the government. How is that fair?
And let's not forget how much money Jimmy raised for charity and the pleasure he brought through his radio and TV shows. 'While there is much evil in the world, there is even more that is good' - not my words the words of Christiananswers.net and words which could be applied to Jimmy's career, paedo warts and all. If that's good enough to get God off the hook for mass infanticide surely it's good enough to absolve an ex DJ and TV presenter from feeling up kids and dead bodies?
#justiceforjim
What's his reputation now and where are all his famous friends to defend him? All went silent! The truth has a funny way of coming out in the end.
This defaced sign makes me proud to be British:
Amusing. However, if I went into the Vatican and scribbled "pedophile" on the many portraits of the men who the church protected for doing the same vile act, I'd be arrested. The truth does seem to come out in the end, unless you've got a gigantic tax free machine of repression to disguise and hide your criminal acts for you all under the guise of religious righteousness.
I think the moral of the story is this, @TheWizardOfIce : Savile should've been pope, then he could've felt up all the kids he'd wanted until his dying day, free of charge and with no worry of jail time. What a gig!
Now now, play fair. Hawking says whatever the hell he wants these days. He proposed the existence of black holes, other cosmologists were able to find them, and then, somewhat more recently, he denounced them, like a man over his prime now ready for some controversy again just to be heard from and nothing else. I'm afraid old Stephen is yammering about whatever the hell he wants these days, just to score another headline.
That we still don't understand 95 % or 96 % even of the universe--and I take it my friend @NicNac is referring to Dark Matter and Dark Energy--is technically true, although we may be only one or two Large Hadron Collider experiments away from that. ;-)
And what about climate change? Hard to deny the facts. Do we fully understand climate change? No, we don't. We understand parts of it and we keep understanding it better and better. Still, the bible doesn't talk about a post-Industrial Age form of climate change and worse still, praying won't make it go away. Ironically, those parts of the world where people pray the most, are also likely to be hit the hardest by climate change. In fact, we're seeing that already.
Just in case there's any confusion amongst some members thought I'd better set the record straight that I don't condone Jimmy Saville's disgusting crimes.
I was attempting to make a satirical comparison between Saville's mistreatment of children and God's.
Just thought that needed clearing up in case some people might have actually thought I was defending the indefensible (I forgot normal rules of reason and logic don't apply in this thread).
Imagine trying to write a new Bible from scratch today and explain Gods involvement in everything. Cancer, DNA, evolution, fossils, black holes, the cosmos etc etc You just cant do it. The Bible may have stacked up to desert dwellers a few weeks after it was written but now, its pretty much a joke and only beleived in becuase there is nothing better re religion and it still provides life after death which is a pretty neat trick
No, I knew what you were up to, old chap. Funny I'd been looking over some Savile YT interview videos this morning. I liked your Stewart Lee approach there in fact.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40704990
There was a post a couple of days ago re the value of love and my response was that surely it was better to love humans than love God and this would seem to be supportive evidence.
That's just cos we're too thick to understand his grand plan mate.
There's a very cogent reason out there for giving babies cancer although I've yet to hear anyone come up with a viable hypothesis.
Perhaps without a steady supply of dead babies the earth stops rotating or something? Obviously our feeble scientific studies haven't uncovered this yet but God knows about it so we're lucky he's devised a way to keep the baby corpse supply flowing so we don't all fly off into space.
So just get off his back will you people! He's got everything under control.
Well apparently it has something to do with sin. Sinless they all enter heaven. It reminds me of that minister in a BBC debate who said he firmly believed all aborted babies went to heaven. A standup comedian replied to him: "then let's abort them all!" Which is perfectly logical.
Is it the moment of birth? Or is it when the sperm fertilises the egg? Or is it just at some random point around the 3 month mark or something?
Must be quite nice to be told when you're about 30 seconds old 'You're a sinner. Oh and by the way you've got terminal cancer.'
It's when your ancestors whom you never met ate a fruit when God forbade it. Never mind that it never happened.