A few questions on God's existance

[unclet95]

1. Let’s say God makes a rock. No matter how heavy he makes it, he can always lift it. So therefore there is something he cannot do, and make something that he cannot lift or something in that nature.
2. If God exists then why is there so much pain and suffering and poverty and bad people in the world? Why did he create people so greedy?
3. Say I don’t believe in God but I live my life exactly the way God says you should. I live it in the most perfect way I can, why would I still go to hell if God is so loving and forgiving, and I live my life the way he says I should but I simply do not believe in him? Sounds real loving to me.
4. If God said that with as much faith as a mustard seed you can move a mountain, why didn’t he act upon it? Why couldn’t he have a group of scholars and himself record him in writing with him moving a mountain.
5. If God and Jesus don’t want us to sin and if we sin we go to hell, then why did Jesus die for our sins? If we didn’t sin then he would of died for nothing.
6. Angels seemed to appear frequently 2000 years ago. Why don’t they today?
7. No geological proof of the great flood.
8. Dinosaurs were around way before people so how would Adam and Eve exist?
9. If Adam and Eve DID exist, then how would they have all these kids? The kids would have to reproduce and therefore we would all be the results of incest.
10. There are bad things in the world, why doesn’t God stop them, if he loves us with all his heart? Letting someone suffer relentlessly, when you have the power to stop the pain easily, is not love.
    Sounds to me he was a hypocrite and couldn’t even act upon his own teachings.

 

[Sair]

A fine set of questions, but be prepared for a raft of different answers, depending on who decides to respond. I’ll wager you’ll get different answers from different Catholics, even.

The types of answers you’re most likely to see are along the lines of redefining omnipotence - God is either unable to produce logical contradictions or he’s just really, really powerful but still constrained in some way; it’s only fundamentalist evangelicals who accept the Genesis creation account as literal - as far as others are concerned, everything in it might well be incorrect, except the fact that God created the world; God permits suffering either a) to test our faith or b) because, despite his omnipotence, it was somehow impossible for him to give humans free will without allowing for vast amounts of suffering, much of it not even related to humans or their actions. Particularly brave believers might even tell you it’s not necessary to believe in God in order to attain salvation.

My answer to all of these questions is that religions are human-generated, continually evolving clusters of ideas. Christianity developed from a blend of sometimes highly disparate religious notions, so there are bound to be inconsistencies. The entire discipline of apologetics exists for the purpose of explaining away the contradictions of religious faith.

 

[marlap2]

Unclet,

Sorry, am I wrong in stating that you say you are a Roman Catholic? And you can’t answer these questions?

 

[zinger90]

I am in no way qualified to answer all of these, but I will give some (name removed by moderator)ut on a few

2: Pain exists because of sin, if there was no sin there would be no pain or suffering. but since we have free will we are able to choose sin. A good book to read on this topic is C.S. Lewis’s “The Problem of Pain”

4: He may have been speaking metaphorically rather than physically. for example if you have faith and you go out and do charity or evangelization, it will be more fruitful than if you dont have any faith at all.

6: They do appear to people (my friend has seen many in his life and I’ve heard a few speaking to me), most people just keep it to themselves because they do not want to be labeled by the secular world as lunatics.

 

[Dave_B]

1. Let’s say God makes a rock. No matter how heavy he makes it, he can always lift it. So therefore there is something he cannot do, and make something that he cannot lift or something in that nature.

Hi, this question does not disprove the existence of God. It is just saying that there are limits on what God can do.

There are strong arguments of logic over the existence of God. Nothing can bring itself into existence. Ultimately there has to be a cause for everything, and uncaused cause. The uncaused cause we call God.

Personal creation presupposes a superior Personal Creator

Universal order presupposes a Universal Orderer

Cosmic energy presupposes a Cosmic Energizer

Natural law presupposes a Universal Law Maker

There is also evidence God in created things, in the beauty and majesty of creation. There is evidence of God in the revelation of God’s inspired word, the Bible. And evidence lastly in human intuition, where we instinctly seek God’s help.

I hope this helps. God bless

 

[Insight]

1. Let’s say God makes a rock. No matter how heavy he makes it, he can always lift it. So therefore there is something he cannot do, and make something that he cannot lift or something in that nature.
2. If God exists then why is there so much pain and suffering and poverty and bad people in the world? Why did he create people so greedy?
3. Say I don’t believe in God but I live my life exactly the way God says you should. I live it in the most perfect way I can, why would I still go to hell if God is so loving and forgiving, and I live my life the way he says I should but I simply do not believe in him? Sounds real loving to me.
4. If God said that with as much faith as a mustard seed you can move a mountain, why didn’t he act upon it? Why couldn’t he have a group of scholars and himself record him in writing with him moving a mountain.
5. If God and Jesus don’t want us to sin and if we sin we go to hell, then why did Jesus die for our sins? If we didn’t sin then he would of died for nothing.
6. Angels seemed to appear frequently 2000 years ago. Why don’t they today?
7. No geological proof of the great flood.
8. Dinosaurs were around way before people so how would Adam and Eve exist?
9. If Adam and Eve DID exist, then how would they have all these kids? The kids would have to reproduce and therefore we would all be the results of incest.
10. There are bad things in the world, why doesn’t God stop them, if he loves us with all his heart? Letting someone suffer relentlessly, when you have the power to stop the pain easily, is not love.
    Sounds to me he was a hypocrite and couldn’t even act upon his own teachings.

Responses to some of these questions can be found on the following site:

ArguingWithAtheists.com/Pages/Arguments.htm

God Bless

 

[Prodigal_Son]

1. Let’s say God makes a rock. No matter how heavy he makes it, he can always lift it. So therefore there is something he cannot do, and make something that he cannot lift or something in that nature.

There are descriptions which cannot be satisfied by God, but none of these descriptions is logically possible anyway. For example, God cannot make a cup green and not-green, but this is not an actual limitation.

1. If God exists then why is there so much pain and suffering and poverty and bad people in the world? Why did he create people so greedy?

The second question here is answered in Romans 11, I believe, where it says that God consigned all to sin so that He could have mercy on all. The first question is the most difficult question ever asked, so far as I can tell. I can’t answer it in a couple sentences.

1. Say I don’t believe in God but I live my life exactly the way God says you should. I live it in the most perfect way I can, why would I still go to hell if God is so loving and forgiving, and I live my life the way he says I should but I simply do not believe in him? Sounds real loving to me.

God says you should have faith in Him. How can you do “everything God says” if you don’t have faith in Him?

Nevertheless, it’s worth realizing that God isn’t out to condemn people, nor does He require us to do everything He says. He wants us to come to know Him, and to come to know one another more deeply.

1. If God said that with as much faith as a mustard seed you can move a mountain, why didn’t he act upon it? Why couldn’t he have a group of scholars and himself record him in writing with him moving a mountain.

Why would he do that? If testimony of a resurrected body isn’t enough to convince someone, why would testimony of a moved mountain? Wouldn’t modern scientists just propose a “naturalistic” explanation for the moving mountain?

1. If God and Jesus don’t want us to sin and if we sin we go to hell, then why did Jesus die for our sins? If we didn’t sin then he would of died for nothing.

Not clear what the question is here. Can you clarify?

1. Angels seemed to appear frequently 2000 years ago. Why don’t they today?

Did they? Cite come examples. I know of only 3-4 angelic appearances in the New Testament.

1. No geological proof of the great flood.

OK. The great flood isn’t even central to the faith.

1. Dinosaurs were around way before people so how would Adam and Eve exist?

OK. Adam and Eve aren’t central to the faith.

1. If Adam and Eve DID exist, then how would they have all these kids? The kids would have to reproduce and therefore we would all be the results of incest.

OK.

1. There are bad things in the world, why doesn’t God stop them, if he loves us with all his heart? Letting someone suffer relentlessly, when you have the power to stop the pain easily, is not love.
   Sounds to me he was a hypocrite and couldn’t even act upon his own teachings.

Is suffering always bad? Sometimes pain serves a purpose. Nevertheless, I agree that this is (as I said before) one of the deepest and hardest questions any believer ever deals with.

 

[unclet95]

Hi, this question does not disprove the existence of God. It is just saying that there are limits on what God can do.

There are strong arguments of logic over the existence of God. Nothing can bring itself into existence. Ultimately there has to be a cause for everything, and uncaused cause. The uncaused cause we call God.

But if God is all powerful there shouldn’t be limitations. Every religious person knows that

 

[unclet95]

In reply to Prodigal_Son, the question I made was that if Jesus died for our sins, and we didn’t sin, he would have died for nothing. Now if we do sin, we go to hell, so Jesus kind of died for nothing. And about moving the mountain, if Jesus said "See this mountain, Mount Everest, I’m going to move it exactly 346 miles to the West and where it stands now there will be a plain. I will outline with trees and if you measure the shape of the plane with the base of the mountain, you will see it’s exactly the same. Now wouldn’t that be cool? Or if he wrote “In the year 2011, you guys will have televisions which are like moving pictures people use for entertainment.” That would instantly prove the existence of him, no doubt. If God gave us free will and everything then why does he condemn people to hell if they don’t do something. What if you had no knowledge of God but you still had morals and you went against them all the time. You would still go to hell, even though you had no knowledge of God because even though God says if you don’t know about him you can’t go to hell, he had his own morals and he went against them so he knew what he was doing was wrong. It’s kind of hard to explain but you get the gist of it

 

[unclet95]

Also another reply to Prodigal_Son is that you say Adam and Eve and the great flood aren’t central to the bible, even though Adam and Eve is the first story. If it’s in the Bible it had to be true right? Now if those two can easily be disproved then what stops the rest of the Bible?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

In reply to Prodigal_Son, the question I made was that if Jesus died for our sins, and we didn’t sin, he would have died for nothing. Now if we do sin, we go to hell, so Jesus kind of died for nothing.

If we hadn’t sinned, Jesus wouldn’t have died. If EVERYONE went to hell, then Jesus would have died for nothing (in a sense), but if some – in fact, many – people are saved, then Jesus died for a while lot.

And about moving the mountain, if Jesus said "See this mountain, Mount Everest, I’m going to move it exactly 346 miles to the West and where it stands now there will be a plain. I will outline with trees and if you measure the shape of the plane with the base of the mountain, you will see it’s exactly the same. Now wouldn’t that be cool? Or if he wrote “In the year 2011, you guys will have televisions which are like moving pictures people use for entertainment.” That would instantly prove the existence of him, no doubt.

It appears that you would prefer God to be a conjurer. I don’t get that, myself. It’s not like God really cares that much whether we’re convinced that He exists. If He wanted us to know, beyond a doubt, that He exists, of course He could make that happen.

But what would that accomplish? It would make it next to impossible for us to love Him, since we would be coerced into obeying His every whim because of His tremendous power. Faith is the only way for a human being to relate to the divine, and faith is something different from certainty.

If God gave us free will and everything then why does he condemn people to hell if they don’t do something. What if you had no knowledge of God but you still had morals and you went against them all the time. You would still go to hell, even though you had no knowledge of God because even though God says if you don’t know about him you can’t go to hell, he had his own morals and he went against them so he knew what he was doing was wrong. It’s kind of hard to explain but you get the gist of it

I don’t follow you here.

Also another reply to Prodigal_Son is that you say Adam and Eve and the great flood aren’t central to the bible, even though Adam and Eve is the first story. If it’s in the Bible it had to be true right? Now if those two can easily be disproved then what stops the rest of the Bible?

The Church does not teach that everything in the Bible is factually accurate, only that the Bible is fully inspired. And, if you can “easily disprove” the rest of the Bible, be my guest. I suspect you will fail.

 

[danserr]

1. Let’s say God makes a rock. No matter how heavy he makes it, he can always lift it. So therefore there is something he cannot do, and make something that he cannot lift or something in that nature.
2. If God exists then why is there so much pain and suffering and poverty and bad people in the world? Why did he create people so greedy?
3. Say I don’t believe in God but I live my life exactly the way God says you should. I live it in the most perfect way I can, why would I still go to hell if God is so loving and forgiving, and I live my life the way he says I should but I simply do not believe in him? Sounds real loving to me.
4. If God said that with as much faith as a mustard seed you can move a mountain, why didn’t he act upon it? Why couldn’t he have a group of scholars and himself record him in writing with him moving a mountain.
5. If God and Jesus don’t want us to sin and if we sin we go to hell, then why did Jesus die for our sins? If we didn’t sin then he would of died for nothing.
6. Angels seemed to appear frequently 2000 years ago. Why don’t they today?
7. No geological proof of the great flood.
8. Dinosaurs were around way before people so how would Adam and Eve exist?
9. If Adam and Eve DID exist, then how would they have all these kids? The kids would have to reproduce and therefore we would all be the results of incest.
10. There are bad things in the world, why doesn’t God stop them, if he loves us with all his heart? Letting someone suffer relentlessly, when you have the power to stop the pain easily, is not love.
    Sounds to me he was a hypocrite and couldn’t even act upon his own teachings.

1. Omnipotence is not a matter of raw power, but a matter of ability to actualize potential states of affairs. The words “a stone so heavy a greatest conceivable being can lift it” do not describe any potential states of affairs. It is simply empty words and nonsense.
2. God did not create people greedy, he created them good, but free. That is to say, that God made people good. There is, however, a spiritual law running through the universe that “no one shall be crowned unless first he has struggled.” And so humans were put on earth to say “yes” or “no” to our eternal destiny. Being free, some of us have said “no” and so sin and evil result.
3. This answer is disputed. If you are such a good person, then why don’t you believe in God? At any rate, CS Lewis speculated that no one can do evil and serve God, no one can do good and not serve God.
4. Jesus showed substantial faith all through his life, even enough to raise the dead.
5. I have a hard time following this question. We sinned because God made us free, but still loving us, he wanted to save us, hence Jesus died for us.
6. What do you mean frequently? How do you know they do not appear today, wouldn’t you just dismiss them as nonsense if you did hear reports of them?
7. So what?
8. So What?
9. So what? This is just silly.
   – You seem under the opinion that Christians are committed to a fundamentalist understanding of the bible. I see no reason for thinking this to be the case. The bible is made of different genres and each need to be read appropriately. I read the NT fairly literally, because it is of the genre of history, chronicle, and letter writing. Parts of the OT, one may read less literally.
10. The only really serious question that you have asked and it can’t be answered in 30 words of less. Read CS Lewis’s Problem of Pain, NT Wright’s *Evil and the Justice of God, *or David Hart’s The Doors of the Sea. But as for God being unloving, that is nonsense. He suffered miserably and died a terrible death in order to save us and open heaven to us. And St Paul says, “I reckon the sufferings of the present life are not to be compared to the glory that awaits us.” That doesn’t sound unloving to me.

 

[Poof]

1. Let’s say God makes a rock. No matter how heavy he makes it, he can always lift it. So therefore there is something he cannot do, and make something that he cannot lift or something in that nature.
2. If God exists then why is there so much pain and suffering and poverty and bad people in the world? Why did he create people so greedy?
3. Say I don’t believe in God but I live my life exactly the way God says you should. I live it in the most perfect way I can, why would I still go to hell if God is so loving and forgiving, and I live my life the way he says I should but I simply do not believe in him? Sounds real loving to me.
4. If God said that with as much faith as a mustard seed you can move a mountain, why didn’t he act upon it? Why couldn’t he have a group of scholars and himself record him in writing with him moving a mountain.
5. If God and Jesus don’t want us to sin and if we sin we go to hell, then why did Jesus die for our sins? If we didn’t sin then he would of died for nothing.
6. Angels seemed to appear frequently 2000 years ago. Why don’t they today?
7. No geological proof of the great flood.
8. Dinosaurs were around way before people so how would Adam and Eve exist?
9. If Adam and Eve DID exist, then how would they have all these kids? The kids would have to reproduce and therefore we would all be the results of incest.
10. There are bad things in the world, why doesn’t God stop them, if he loves us with all his heart? Letting someone suffer relentlessly, when you have the power to stop the pain easily, is not love.
    Sounds to me he was a hypocrite and couldn’t even act upon his own teachings.

Angels, Demons and miracles are very, VERY, real.

Ever hear of exorcisms?
Ever hear of Lourdes?
Ever hear of the miracle of Luciano?
Ever hear of the miracle of the sun?
Ever hear of the apparitions and fulfilled prophecy at Kibeho?
Ever hear of Padre Pio?
Ever hear of Joan of Arc?
Ever hear of Guadalupe?
Ever hear of Alphonse Ratisbonne?
Ever hear of fulfilled prophecies of Fatima?

What about our amazing catholic church that withstood 2000 years of persecution, schisms and attacks?

What about all those Christians who died for their faith! What about all those catholic saints who have suffered and died for Jesus throughout history!

Please, there is just so MUCH evidence that God exists. It’s almost common sense. If ever you are wavering in your faith, please stay strong! God is very real. Good luck!

 

[greylorn]

1. Let’s say God makes a rock. No matter how heavy he makes it, he can always lift it. So therefore there is something he cannot do, and make something that he cannot lift or something in that nature.
2. If God exists then why is there so much pain and suffering and poverty and bad people in the world? Why did he create people so greedy?
3. Say I don’t believe in God but I live my life exactly the way God says you should. I live it in the most perfect way I can, why would I still go to hell if God is so loving and forgiving, and I live my life the way he says I should but I simply do not believe in him? Sounds real loving to me.
4. If God said that with as much faith as a mustard seed you can move a mountain, why didn’t he act upon it? Why couldn’t he have a group of scholars and himself record him in writing with him moving a mountain.
5. If God and Jesus don’t want us to sin and if we sin we go to hell, then why did Jesus die for our sins? If we didn’t sin then he would of died for nothing.
6. Angels seemed to appear frequently 2000 years ago. Why don’t they today?
7. No geological proof of the great flood.
8. Dinosaurs were around way before people so how would Adam and Eve exist?
9. If Adam and Eve DID exist, then how would they have all these kids? The kids would have to reproduce and therefore we would all be the results of incest.
10. There are bad things in the world, why doesn’t God stop them, if he loves us with all his heart? Letting someone suffer relentlessly, when you have the power to stop the pain easily, is not love.
    Sounds to me he was a hypocrite and couldn’t even act upon his own teachings.

Counting up all those questions, I nearly ran out of fingers!

They’re all legitimate, but indicate a much larger problem— about the applicability of Catholic theology to Catholic religious teachings.

Most of your problems will go away if you adopt two simple readjustments to your accepted theology:

1. 
   
   *]God is not omnipotent or omniscient, and is logic limited just like us. (He cannot declare that 2+2=5 and make it stick, either.)
   
   *]God did not create the human soul.
   
   As for #6, try this hypothesis: The angels who appeared in the past were actually space aliens. Who knew better? They don’t show up today in face-on meetings with humans (that humans are allowed to recall) because their “angel” cover is blown, and too many have been shot. Besides, what would be the point of it?

 

[Poof]

As for #6, try this hypothesis: The angels who appeared in the past were actually space aliens. Who knew better? They don’t show up today in face-on meetings with humans (that humans are allowed to recall) because their “angel” cover is blown, and too many have been shot.

Are you serious?

 

[unclet95]

Yeah no offense but that alien-angel thing isn’t really going for me. Sorry :nope:

 

[sean1i0]

Well, I’ll probably come back later to add more on to this, but let me just clarify this now: Omnipotence is NOT the ability to do anything; it is the ability to do anything that is not contradictory or meaningless. Secondly, don’t forget that God did not create a world in his original vision wherein people were greedy: That is a result of the fall. That is important to always keep in mind when considering the state of the world. The other thing to keep in mind is something that, as far as I can recall, St. Augustine originally said and St. Thomas reiterated: God would not allow any evil to occur out of which he could not create a greater good. And ultimately he cannot stop every act of evil without destroying our free choice, so he found a greater good to bring out of it.

Really, these questions have such rich answers and you could spend multiple graduate semesters talking about them, but we don’t have that kind of space here. I would recommend first of all that you find a way to read some St. Thomas Aquinas; perhaps a book by Peter Kreeft or Edward Feser would be easiest to start out with, but St. Thomas is the model of clarity and profundity in reason and faith. To my mind he is the single greatest philosopher or theologian who has yet walked the earth and reading him, I would say, is ultimately the best way to increase clarity in your own thoughts, because of the way he illustrates his process of thought to the reader.

In Christ,
Sean