Do Religious People Really Believe in Their Religion?

[Charlemagne_II]

*Mt 22:36-40 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And He said to him, " `YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’ 38 "This is the great and foremost commandment. *

There isn’t any way around it. If anyone commits this sin, he is doomed. God grants all our wishes, even the wish never to know Him up close and personal. Atheism is that wish. If the atheist wished otherwise, he would choose otherwise. There is no such thing as honest atheism, since atheism is rooted in self deception. “The fool in his heart says there is no God.” (Psalm 14) Why he chooses to be deceived is what the atheist has to figure out for himself. No one can figure it out for him.

 

[Sailor_Kenshin]

I ‘stole’ this from some other poster’s siggy line, but feel it is germane here:

“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”
— C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)

 

[Sailor_Kenshin]

Genesis 3:
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Editorial:
Verse 4: God told Adam & Eve the DAY they eat of the tree, surely they shall die. That did not happen. Ergo, when he told them that, he was either wrong or lying.

Verse 5: Well, seems that’s the truth.

So who lied, exactly?

They died spiritually, and we fell.

Is that so hard to understand—for atheists, who largely claim to be too smart to believe in God and His laws?

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Anything you do for your own enjoyment, rather than the glorification of God, is sin.

Are you saying that human enjoyment and recreation is a sin? I might be misreading you here, so I apologise if I am. But we must be careful to also remember that human enjoyment is an expression of the glory of God. We are commanded to enjoy our selves, but we must do so in conjunction with the holiness of God. God rejects the kind of enjoyment that is taken in rejection of Gods holiness. God doesn’t reject recreation in general. To enjoy ones self is not a sin.

 

[JDaniel]

I ‘stole’ this from some other poster’s siggy line, but feel it is germane here:

“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”
— C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)

Well, that was well worth the punishment you’ll get for the crime!

God bless,
jd

 

[sinnerdexter]

If some priests just made up a religion with an invented god, they would obviously be obsessed with ensuring that people believed in it and were committed to it, since that would be the weak spot in the entire charade. That is why I find it quite suspicious that religions are so often preoccupied with whether people have faith in what they posit, whether people obey what the doctrine asserts, or whether people praise what is stipulated by the mythology to be really praiseworthy. All these concerns boil down to a constant fretting over whether people are actually buying the deception and how clearly they are showing that they have fallen for it.

But if god were real, why would he, knowing himself to be the omniscient, eternal, divine creator, be so preoccupied with whether a collection of tiny minds on Earth believed in his existence, whether those people were praising and blessing him, or whether they were slipping away from his control by worshipping false gods? All these concerns are characteristic of earthly kings and governments which fear that their citizens will lose faith in their legitimacy, but the Bible never explains why the infinite god of the cosmos, who is in charge no matter what we think, is so perpetually nervous about whether he is still supported by the populace or not.

 

[JRKH]

If some priests just made up a religion with an invented god, they would obviously be obsessed with ensuring that people believed in it and were committed to it, since that would be the weak spot in the entire charade. That is why I find it quite suspicious that religions are so often preoccupied with whether people have faith in what they posit, whether people obey what the doctrine asserts, or whether people praise what is stipulated by the mythology to be really praiseworthy. All these concerns boil down to a constant fretting over whether people are actually buying the deception and how clearly they are showing that they have fallen for it.

And if these priests have made up this religion, why have they done so? Why would they require of themselves to take vows of “Povery, Chastity and Obedience”? Why would they reqiure celibacy among the Priesthood? Why would the supposed founders of this faith willingly suffer imprisonment, torture and even willingly go to their own execution? These things are counterintuitive of the type of thing you propose above.

But if god were real, why would he, knowing himself to be the omniscient, eternal, divine creator, be so preoccupied with whether a collection of tiny minds on Earth believed in his existence, whether those people were praising and blessing him, or whether they were slipping away from his control by worshipping false gods? All these concerns are characteristic of earthly kings and governments which fear that their citizens will lose faith in their legitimacy, but the Bible never explains why the infinite god of the cosmos, who is in charge no matter what we think, is so perpetually nervous about whether he is still supported by the populace or not.

First I know of nothing in any religious context that indicates God is “nervous”, let alone, “perpetually nervous” about his support among we His children. This view on your part places limits on God, like there must be larger things for Him to be concerned with in the Cosmos and why would He waste His (presumably) limited time worrying about us. Why should we assume that an all powerful God cannot handle all things in the Cosmos with equal attention to detail?

As to the other matters, my answer is that there is much we do not know about God and that the descriptions you provide above have more to do with our limited understanding than with the reality of God. We read, write and process things in ways that we understand; in structures that we can grasp. That is why God is called king, and why our relationship to Him is described in “King - Servant” ways. That is the structure that those doing the writing understood.

As to why would God be, “so preoccupied with whether a collection of tiny minds on Earth believed in his existence, whether those people were praising and blessing him, or whether they were slipping away from his control by worshipping false gods…”, the answer can be found in the great commandments and in the Life of Christ. Love…
For God so loved the world that He sent His only Son…
I give you a new command, that you Love one another as I have Loved you…

Peace
James

 

[NaturalEnquirer]

But if god were real, why would he, knowing himself to be the omniscient, eternal, divine creator, be so preoccupied with whether a collection of tiny minds on Earth believed in his existence, whether those people were praising and blessing him, or whether they were slipping away from his control by worshipping false gods? All these concerns are characteristic of earthly kings and governments which fear that their citizens will lose faith in their legitimacy, but the Bible never explains why the infinite god of the cosmos, who is in charge no matter what we think, is so perpetually nervous about whether he is still supported by the populace or not.

Man’s worship of God is not for God’s sake, but man’s. God wants us to worship the right deity in the right way for the sake of love and truth. He wasn’t jealous of, for example, the golden calf in the sense that he feared for his legitimacy. He was jealous in the sense that worshipping it would be destructive for the people doing so.

 

[colmcille1]

**Man’s worship of God is not for God’s sake, but man’s. ** God wants us to worship the right deity in the right way for the sake of love and truth. He wasn’t jealous of, for example, the golden calf in the sense that he feared for his legitimacy. He was jealous in the sense that worshipping it would be destructive for the people doing so.

Hi NaturalEnquirer,
This is true. It also goes some way towards explaining why we can be regularly surprised by the joyous unfolding of Faith via said worship. Our faith in our fellow-man is constantly renewed because His Love decrees it so.
God Bless,
Colmcille.

 

[ContegoFides]

If I believed that this present life were just a brief test to determine whether I would be admitted after death to another life of eternal bliss, it is inconceivable to me that I would ever commit a sin, since it would simply be foolish. Yet I hear Christians all the time say that they were ‘weak’ or ‘tempted’ on a given occasion to sin, and so did so, thus jeopardizing their own rational best interest in enjoying infinite bliss for the sake of a brief moment of trivial indiscretion. But since sane people are never tempted to bend down and touch the third rail of a subway because they are tempted by a piece of candy they spot lying there, I would assume that no sane Christian would ever be tempted to sin. Since they so often do sin, however, demonstrates that they don’t really believe in the doctrine they profess.

Similarly, if I believed that my present life were just a brief test prior to a possibly infinite afterlife of heavenly bliss, nothing that goes wrong here could ever seriously bother me. If we were all at a giant garden party given by God, and he imposed a forfeit on someone and made him blind for the duration of the party prior to admission to Heaven at the end of the afternoon, that blindness would be no more distressing than being ‘it’ for a little while in a schoolyard game of tag. So the fact that Christians wail in despair when some serious but mundane tragedy ruins only this life for them makes me again suspect that they don’t really believe what they profess.

I do imagine that Christians seriously think that they believe, but this is only because they have never seriously examined the incongruities of their behavior in the situations I have sketched above.

This position is actually a bit silly. It assumes that people always act rationally. It also makes broad sweeping generalizations that are not warrented with respect to evaluating the philosophy itself. For example, it assumes that all Christians think alike or have the same degree of faith. There’s a huge difference between someone like Mother Theresa and a twice-a-year christian. The latter is very likely to “wail in despair” when some “serious but mundate tragedy ruins only this life for them.” The former would rejoice in that she could unite her suffering to the cross of Jesus for the salvation of souls.

It is true that a weak faith can be destroyed. Jesus Himself told us this in the parable of the sower (which specifically addresses those who have shallow faith that is destroyed when trouble comes their way). And, yes, too many Christians 1) do not really know their faith, and 2) do not deeply inculcate it into their souls. Those that do are extraordiarly powerful, even if weak by the standards of this world, because God acts through them to do great things. Mother Theresa is a good example of this, as well.

As I’ve postited before to you Sinndexter, you must judge a philosophy on its merits, not on those who fail to live up to it.

 

[Aboveallbereal]

If I believed that this present life were just a brief test to determine whether I would be admitted after death to another life of eternal bliss, it is inconceivable to me that I would ever commit a sin, since it would simply be foolish. Yet I hear Christians all the time say that they were ‘weak’ or ‘tempted’ on a given occasion to sin, and so did so, thus jeopardizing their own rational best interest in enjoying infinite bliss for the sake of a brief moment of trivial indiscretion. But since sane people are never tempted to bend down and touch the third rail of a subway because they are tempted by a piece of candy they spot lying there, I would assume that no sane Christian would ever be tempted to sin. Since they so often do sin, however, demonstrates that they don’t really believe in the doctrine they profess.

Similarly, if I believed that my present life were just a brief test prior to a possibly infinite afterlife of heavenly bliss, nothing that goes wrong here could ever seriously bother me. If we were all at a giant garden party given by God, and he imposed a forfeit on someone and made him blind for the duration of the party prior to admission to Heaven at the end of the afternoon, that blindness would be no more distressing than being ‘it’ for a little while in a schoolyard game of tag. So the fact that Christians wail in despair when some serious but mundane tragedy ruins only this life for them makes me again suspect that they don’t really believe what they profess.

I do imagine that Christians seriously think that they believe, but this is only because they have never seriously examined the incongruities of their behavior in the situations I have sketched above.

You see my dear chap we are all human and all weak.

Look at he case of so called “moral atheists”. This is an oxymoron and any man truly convinced of atheism is a fool tohimself of not acting in a totally machiavellian way yet few if any atheists do so and those who do are regarded as sociopathic by other atheists.

You are right in part. many Christians act as if there is no God. However many atheists act as if there is one. We are none of us truly consistent. Not you. Not I.

 

[sinnerdexter]

This position is actually a bit silly. It assumes that people always act rationally. It also makes broad sweeping generalizations that are not warrented with respect to evaluating the philosophy itself. For example, it assumes that all Christians think alike or have the same degree of faith. There’s a huge difference between someone like Mother Theresa and a twice-a-year christian. The latter is very likely to “wail in despair” when some “serious but mundate tragedy ruins only this life for them.” The former would rejoice in that she could unite her suffering to the cross of Jesus for the salvation of souls.

It is true that a weak faith can be destroyed. Jesus Himself told us this in the parable of the sower (which specifically addresses those who have shallow faith that is destroyed when trouble comes their way). And, yes, too many Christians 1) do not really know their faith, and 2) do not deeply inculcate it into their souls. Those that do are extraordiarly powerful, even if weak by the standards of this world, because God acts through them to do great things. Mother Theresa is a good example of this, as well.

As I’ve postited before to you Sinndexter, you must judge a philosophy on its merits, not on those who fail to live up to it.

However, God is supposed to be all powerfull. This means He could eliminate all Sin wihtout it causing any detrimental effect to His other plans, or violating our free will. This is what being all powerful means.

So why does God not do this, but instead leaves us able to sin and fall from His grace. It could be otherwise if God willed it, but He dosn’t. The only conclusions are that God does not exist, or He wants us to be tortured in Hell (not the act of a loveing God at all).

 

[sinnerdexter]

And if these priests have made up this religion, why have they done so? Why would they require of themselves to take vows of “Povery, Chastity and Obedience”? Why would they reqiure celibacy among the Priesthood? Why would the supposed founders of this faith willingly suffer imprisonment, torture and even willingly go to their own execution? These things are counterintuitive of the type of thing you propose above.

Actually they aren’t, they are exactly what is needed to achieve the things that I was talking about.

In a society that is authoritarian (that is it controls by using authority), you need to have ways to control the members of that society. Rituals and enforced vows are vary good ways to do so. Look at ant conutry’s military forces, look at how much emphasis they put on rituals and vows. Military’s around the world rely on such vows and rituals to keep the people in that society (military units and such) together and allow the people in them to sacrifice themselves for the benifit of that unit.

And, when you look at the miltary the officers and generals all still subcribe and put a lot of worth into these self same rituals and vows (probably more so than the new recruits do).

Humans are a social species, and such socially bonding rituals, and the giving up somehting to prove your devotion to the group are vary powerful psychological motivations to keep the individuals working as a group. This is why religions requier people to give up things (vows of poverty or chastity) and they have elaborate rituals: It exploits the human social bonding behaviours (and yes I do mean exploit as in how a drug exploits the reward behaviours of the brain).

First I know of nothing in any religious context that indicates God is “nervous”, let alone, “perpetually nervous” about his support among we His children. This view on your part places limits on God, like there must be larger things for Him to be concerned with in the Cosmos and why would He waste His (presumably) limited time worrying about us. Why should we assume that an all powerful God cannot handle all things in the Cosmos with equal attention to detail?

On of the fundamental tenets of christianity is that God is infinite. So he does not have “limited” anything, let along attention time. God is supposed to be all powerful and all knowing. What this really means is that nothing is beyond Gods powers (and attention time is a power). Also, if God created the universe, then He must exist outside of Time as Time is part of this universe (and thus was created with it). If God exist out side of time, then any “time” (in reference to God) is meaningless, so there would be no problem with much attention any thing would take up.

What you are doing here is redefining God to fill in the Gaps of what you know to be real. This “God of the Gaps” is an extremely weak religious position because it means that God is only limited to the unknown, and when the unknown becomes known, then God looses power. But, if as christianity says, God is all poweful, then there can be nothing that can reduce Gods power. In other words, to take the position of the God of the Gaps as you have, and still claim to be a christian is to say that you don’t believe in the Christian God (you are essentially worshiping a false idol - somthing which is very much against christian beliefs).

From your responses, we can conclude that you really don’t believe in God, just that you think you do.

As to the other matters, my answer is that there is much we do not know about God and that the descriptions you provide above have more to do with our limited understanding than with the reality of God. We read, write and process things in ways that we understand; in structures that we can grasp. That is why God is called king, and why our relationship to Him is described in “King - Servant” ways. That is the structure that those doing the writing understood.

This is called “Shifting the Goalposts”. By taking this position, you can argue that nomatter what anybody says, the requierments for a good argument against you is imposible, not because the arguments are wrong, but because you can change your position whenever you like for any reason.

To put this in a very simple analogy:

It is like if I was trying to argue that the ocean is red, but then when you show me the ocean is blue, I just turn around and say " But I was argueing that the ocean was blue." It makes no sense and is an intelectual dishonesty (as well as being a logical falacy too).

 

[sinnerdexter]

As to why would God be, “so preoccupied with whether a collection of tiny minds on Earth believed in his existence, whether those people were praising and blessing him, or whether they were slipping away from his control by worshipping false gods…”, the answer can be found in the great commandments and in the Life of Christ. Love…
For God so loved the world that He sent His only Son…
I give you a new command, that you Love one another as I have Loved you…

Your arguemnt is only true if two conditions are met:

1. God Exists as stated in the bible
2. God loves us

If either of these are false, then your argument is false.

As I (and others) have shown in this and other thread we have debated, God does not really act as if He loves us, also ther eis no proof that God exists.

So (1) is in doubt as no evidence support it and (2) is disproven. As both need to be true for your argument to be true, this line of arguemnt from you is a really shaky argument to take.

The disproof of (2) goes like this:
God as described in the bible is both All Powerful and All Knowing. Therefore God knows of our suffering and has the power to prevent it without that prevention impacting on anything else. If God loved us, then He would not wish us unnecesary suffering. As suffering is not necesary (God can still achieve whatever suffering is meant to achieve without us having to suffer because He is al powerful), then if suffering exists, the only reason for it to exist is if (a) God wants us to suffer (not the actions of someone who loves us), or ( God does not exist.

As the only two conclusions disprove either (1) or (2) from above, your argument can not be true. As your argument is not true, it can not be used as proof of anyhting.

 

[LilyM]

However, God is supposed to be all powerfull. This means He could eliminate all Sin wihtout it causing any detrimental effect to His other plans, or violating our free will. This is what being all powerful means.

So why does God not do this, but instead leaves us able to sin and fall from His grace. It could be otherwise if God willed it, but He dosn’t. The only conclusions are that God does not exist, or He wants us to be tortured in Hell (not the act of a loveing God at all).

This sounds like you want God to be a parent who plays tennis with their child but lets the child win every game until they’re 21, lest their fragile self-esteem be hurt by losing.

That child won’t in any way grow or develop as a tennis player, much less as a person able to cope with both good and bad things happening, unless they learn

a) that they CAN lose and
b) that inevitably they sometimes WILL lose a game or two, but that it’s not the end of the world because they can use it constructively to learn and develop greater skills, and can become a good player in spite of occasionally losing.

See God, like any good parent, wants His children to learn and grow and develop their potential, and excel as human beings. In other words to become great as saints and people.

Which involves a learning process, and also involves the risk of hurt and failure.

He doesn’t want them to be mediocre - not doing anything wrong, but being only moderately good and obedient, and that only by default rather than by choice.

The often-used metaphor of gold or silver being refined to it utmost purity by being put through fire is apt here - the fire in our case being the trials and tribulations and risks attached to the possibility and reality of sin.

 

[sinnerdexter]

This sounds like you want God to be a parent who plays tennis with their child but lets the child win every game until they’re 21, lest their fragile self-esteem be hurt by losing.

Nope.

That child won’t in any way grow or develop as a tennis player, much less as a person able to cope with both good and bad things happening, unless they learn

a) that they CAN lose and
b) that inevitably they sometimes WILL lose a game or two, but that it’s not the end of the world because they can use it constructively to learn and develop greater skills, and can become a good player in spite of occasionally losing.

God has the ability (because he has infinite power) to do both. He could let “the child win every game until they’re 21”, and the child would still grow and develop as a tennis player (hey, I did it with my neice and nephew and board games, and God is supposed to be more powerful than me - the trick is to let them win, but challenge them at every stage).

A close run game and advice will allow you to show how some thing will work and some will not. Usually what I do is say why the move I am doing will not work and why the move they do will.

See God, like any good parent, wants His children to learn and grow and develop their potential, and excel as human beings. In other words to become great as saints and people.

Which involves a learning process, and also involves the risk of hurt and failure.

God has the power and knowledge to be able to just instill us with this knowledge and not have it affect our free will or anything.

In the face of an all powerful God, your arguemnts are not valid.

The only way you can make your arguments valid is if you put limits on God, but then He would not be the christian God if you did that. God is more than just a “parent”, He is a parent that can do anyhting He knows, and He knows everything.

Job 42:2: " know that You can do all things,

And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. "

"No purpose of Yours can be thwarted": This means that no matter what else occurs, the purpose that God sets out can not be changed unless He wants it to be changed. So if God wanted there to be no sin, but still allow free will to choose it, He can do that!

This means that the only reason that anything occurs is because God wills it to be that way. Thus, if there is suffering in the world, the ONLY reason it is there is because God wants us to suffer, and for no other reason.

A loving God would not want us to suffer if He could prevent it. As the only reason for suffering is because God wants us to suffer, then we can conclude that either God does not exist (and suffering has some other cause/reason), or God is a monster who wants us, mere mortals completely under his dominance (Job 42:2 remember), to suffer.

He doesn’t want them to be mediocre - not doing anything wrong, but being only moderately good and obedient, and that only by default rather than by choice.

Again, only if you limit God ability to do things. If God is all powerful then God can make us do what He wants, and still have free will.

The often-used metaphor of gold or silver being refined to it utmost purity by being put through fire is apt here - the fire in our case being the trials and tribulations and risks attached to the possibility and reality of sin.

However, God being all powerful could sort the Gold or Silver atom by atom (the technology to do this actually exists now, made by finite humans - or are we more powerful than God), or even just create it pure form the start and prevent any contamination from occuring at all.

The reason that people have a problem with this is because we humans are not very good at understading infinity.

As an example:

Can God create a rock so heavy He could not lift it?

If God has infinite power, then He must be able to make a rock that is too heavy for Him to lift, but also if He has infinite power He can lift any rock no matter how heavy it is.

For us, this seems like a contradiction, but to a being of unlimited ability it is not. God can create a rock thatis too heavy for Him to lift, but then He just lifts it.

So can God eliminate our ability to sin, but still allow us to choose to sin?

Yes, even finite power beings can solve this.

How I would do it is allow people to choose to sin, but not have thier actions effect anyone else. IF I had the power, just create a temporary reality to put them in with “faked” entities that they sin against. In computer games this could be done by creating an instanced area as the user tries tocommit one of the sins.

If a mere mortal can think up a solution to the problem of being allowed to sin but not allowing them to sin, then a being with infinite power and infinite knowledge could do the same.

Only if you let God not be infinite in power or knowledge (but then could He be called a God then, certainbly not the christian God at any rate), can you impose such limits on Him (remember any limit imposed means that God is no longer infinite).

 

[sinnerdexter]

Also, there are many cases of human suffering which cannot possibly teach their sufferers anything, such as when infants are born with cancer and die before the end of their first year of life, or when profoundly mentally challenged people become gravely ill but are incapable of deriving any meaning from this experience. The most the believer could say to rescue faith from these challenges is that when other, sentient people see this suffering in others, they learn some important moral lesson and experience further development.

But then a story comes to mind from the end of the Second World War, when the German population of East Prussia was trekking westwards to escape the advancing Russians. The Russian troops advancing through a deserted forest found a dead woman who had delivered a child and apparently died in childbirth, after which the child had been eaten alive by wolves. Now no doubt things like this have happened countless times in the history of humanity when no one has ever even had to the chance to learn a moral lesson from seeing the dead child after the wolves had killed it. In these cases, a human, the innocent child, would have suffered horribly with no possible compensatory benefit of anyone learning a moral lesson from witnessing evidence of that suffering afterwards, nor with any moral benefit of a lesson to the child with its primitive brain.

In such a case we have an infinitely good God permitting terrible suffering for a human who does not deserve it and when it serves absolutely no instructive purpose. Since this act is evil, God is evil, and since he is evil, he is not perfect, which is an essential aspect of his definition, so he does not exist.

 

[NaturalEnquirer]

Your arguemnt is only true if two conditions are met:

1. God Exists as stated in the bible
2. God loves us

If either of these are false, then your argument is false.

As I (and others) have shown in this and other thread we have debated, God does not really act as if He loves us, also ther eis no proof that God exists.

So (1) is in doubt as no evidence support it and (2) is disproven. As both need to be true for your argument to be true, this line of arguemnt from you is a really shaky argument to take.

The disproof of (2) goes like this:
God as described in the bible is both All Powerful and All Knowing. Therefore God knows of our suffering and has the power to prevent it without that prevention impacting on anything else. If God loved us, then He would not wish us unnecesary suffering. As suffering is not necesary (God can still achieve whatever suffering is meant to achieve without us having to suffer because He is al powerful), then if suffering exists, the only reason for it to exist is if (a) God wants us to suffer (not the actions of someone who loves us), or ( God does not exist.

As the only two conclusions disprove either (1) or (2) from above, your argument can not be true. As your argument is not true, it can not be used as proof of anyhting.

Yes, this is pretty much how Aquinas formulated it eight hundred years ago. He thrashed it very soundly. Peter Kreeft’s “Making Sense out of Suffering” is a great book on the subject. As is CS Lewis’s “The Problem of Pain”. Really, this argument has been beaten so hard that it’s kind of astonishing to me that it keeps coming back.

The thing is, it doesn’t have intellectual teeth, but it has emotional teeth. When we hear stories of terrible, pointless suffering, such as your woman giving birth in the forest, our hearts rend. “It shouldn’t be like this!” we cry. And our tears cloud our thoughts.

The thing is, despite our tears, you can’t do anything but assert is that suffering is inherently evil. It is at least possible that our suffering, and the suffering of the woman in the forest, and even the suffering of children, is somehow a necessary part of a greater good.

We can’t know. Our lives are the lives of amoebas in a microscope slide; only the scientist on the other side of the microscope can truly see the big picture. And apparently, the scientist thinks that suffering is not inherently evil, because he voluntarily endured the worst suffering that our world has to offer. He suffered as much as the woman in the woods. He suffered every bit as much as the baby that was devoured, and he came out glorified on the other side and told us, “Be not afraid.”

I don’t deny the emotional punch of suffering. But using it to tear down the belief structure which allows suffering to be redemptive rather than just bad luck is tragically misguided.

 

[NaturalEnquirer]

Again, only if you limit God ability to do things. If God is all powerful then God can make us do what He wants, and still have free will.

You misunderstand the doctrine of omnipotence. What it means is that God can do anything which can be done, not that God can do anything which sinnerdexter can say. Asserting that he can control our every move and leave us with free will is like saying he can draw a four-sided figure and it will be a triangle.

Jimmy Akin does an excellent job explaining this point here:

jimmyakin.org/2010/08/th.html

So can God eliminate our ability to sin, but still allow us to choose to sin?

Yes, even finite power beings can solve this.

How I would do it is allow people to choose to sin, but not have thier actions effect anyone else. IF I had the power, just create a temporary reality to put them in with “faked” entities that they sin against. In computer games this could be done by creating an instanced area as the user tries tocommit one of the sins.

So Cain swings his club at Abel, and is instantly transported to an alternate reality where Abel is some kind of simulacrum? In this new reality, Cain clobbers Abel; in the first reality, robot Cain gives Abel a big hug?

So every sin results in the creation of a brand new reality populated with homonculi that exist only to do the sinner’s bidding. It won’t be long until every human on earth is isolated in their own little pocket realities, interacting only with these faked instances.

You think this would actually be superior to the Christian view that God actually respects our choices? That our acts have some sort of impact on the world, beyond our private personal sandboxes? Suit yourself, I guess. But you’re not presenting any sort of logical argument against God here, you’re simply pouting that he doesn’t do things the way you like.

Only if you let God not be infinite in power or knowledge (but then could He be called a God then, certainbly not the christian God at any rate), can you impose such limits on Him (remember any limit imposed means that God is no longer infinite).

The set of all even numbers is limited, but infinite.

 

[ContegoFides]

Also, there are many cases of human suffering which cannot possibly teach their sufferers anything, such as when infants are born with cancer and die before the end of their first year of life, or when profoundly mentally challenged people become gravely ill but are incapable of deriving any meaning from this experience. The most the believer could say to rescue faith from these challenges is that when other, sentient people see this suffering in others, they learn some important moral lesson and experience further development.

But then a story comes to mind from the end of the Second World War, when the German population of East Prussia was trekking westwards to escape the advancing Russians. The Russian troops advancing through a deserted forest found a dead woman who had delivered a child and apparently died in childbirth, after which the child had been eaten alive by wolves. Now no doubt things like this have happened countless times in the history of humanity when no one has ever even had to the chance to learn a moral lesson from seeing the dead child after the wolves had killed it. In these cases, a human, the innocent child, would have suffered horribly with no possible compensatory benefit of anyone learning a moral lesson from witnessing evidence of that suffering afterwards, nor with any moral benefit of a lesson to the child with its primitive brain.

In such a case we have an infinitely good God permitting terrible suffering for a human who does not deserve it and when it serves absolutely no instructive purpose. Since this act is evil, God is evil, and since he is evil, he is not perfect, which is an essential aspect of his definition, so he does not exist.

Your assertions are incorrect because 1) they do not take into account the greater context of the mystery of suffering and 2) presume that you (a limited being) are in a position to judge God.

The latter reason is self-evident. The former reason involves the greater context, which is about more than simply the victim. There is also the free choice of the perpetrator - even if only indirectly involved by creating circumstances for evil to be done. The evil choices of some can be inflicted upon those who have no choice - abortion is a good example.

Additionally, you have limited yourself to the “instructional” nature of suffering while ignoring its redemptive value. Suffering, when united to the cross of Jesus, has redemptive, salvific value - and not only for the person who suffers, but possibly for others as well. I say “possibly” only because the person to receive the benefit must accept it in some way, at least at the moment of death.

Suffering and evil result as the consequence of free will (even if it can be traced only to our fallen nature through original sin, such as the wolf example you gave above). We are given true free will in order that we my have an actual loving relationship with God (without free will, there is no real relationship). Thus, because the choice is genuine, the real consequences of choice for evil can be extraordinarily atrocious - even upon the innocent, and even indirectly.

The infinite justice and mercy of God meet at the cross of Jesus, who is God. The sufferings of the innocent are joined with Jesus’ suffering, and have redemptive value for others. Not only that, but by participating in Jesus’ suffering, the innocent may actually enter into a deeper relationship with Him upon death, and thus experience reward greater than any suffering experienced here on Earth.

In other words, God gave us free will that we may really come to know and love him, and thereby achieve the most profound state of happiness forever. Because our free will is genuine, we can choose evil. The consequences of evil choices affects the innocent and can even reverborate and affect others for ages. God’s answer is to come down from Heaven, become one of us, and suffer with us in order to redeem us.

Thus, when the full context of both the here and now as well as eternity are considered, God is all good.

On the other hand, to the atheist, such evil is insurmountable - because the atheist limits himself to see only the physical world around him. Which, ironically, is itself an evil choice because it violates the first commandment.