Does god hate science, are doctors going to hell?

[R_Daneel]

Free will is possible only if God shares His power with others. Power-sharing implies independence for all parties and the inability of one party to ensure that any particular decisions are made. The more parties there are the more improbable it becomes that they will all make the same decisions…

Did Mary have free will, or was she a special “robot”? What does “probability” have to do with omnipotence? God could have created everyone with the same disposition as Mary. That is all.

 

[tonyrey]

Did Mary have free will, or was she a special “robot”? What does “probability” have to do with omnipotence? God could have created everyone with the same disposition as Mary. That is all.

A virtuous disposition does not guarantee virtuous behaviour. Mary certainly had free will and she must have been chosen because she was a virtuous young woman. For anyone who believes Jesus is the Son of God it is absurd to suppose that from the moment He was conceived in her womb His grace would not have enabled her to remain immaculate…

 

[R_Daneel]

A virtuous disposition does not guarantee virtuous behaviour.

Why not?

Mary certainly had free will and she must have been chosen because she was a virtuous young woman. For anyone who believes Jesus is the Son of God it is absurd to suppose that from the moment He was conceived in her womb His grace would not have enabled her to remain immaculate…

So she was not chosen because she was virtuous, she was virtuous because she was chosen? If she was given a special grace by God, that special grace could have been extended to everyone. To be a woman (who is able to bear a child) is not so special, so that God could not extend that special grace to males.

 

[crazzeto]

First, God doesn’t hate anything he created. In fact, per 1 John 4 (16) God is Love. Moreover, God authored all truth which includes scientific truth. Good science complaments, rather than competes with faith. So always bare this in mind, we shouldn’t be advasarial with science, instead understand that good science will never contradict the Word of God.

There is a science releated evil though, the evil of idolotry. When people take science too far, make it their God and cry out “who needs God when we can send people into space”. For these people, Psalm 52 (14 in the Hebrew) seems very apt:

drbo.org/cgi-bin/d?b=drb&bk=21&ch=52&l=1&f=s#x

The fool said in his heart: There is no God.

 

[lumenorientale]

These are very kind words, thank you.

Not just kind words, R, but true as well.

And even if it were true, it would be “outsourcing” the needed help to some fallible human beings - and that would indicate laziness or simple indifference. Moreover, many times the other humans do not perform the needed help, and sometimes they are unable to do so. Even in these cases God definitely does not come out and actively help people. So I do not see that “loving” nature being manifested in actions.

Suppose I would see a homeless person, who needs help. Suppose, I could help him very easily. Suppose, I would not do it with the purpose to give someone else the opportunity to exercise “virtue” and perform the needed help. How would you charaterize my behavior? Would my behavior be labeled as “loving”? I doubt it. I would be viewed as a cold-hearted, lazy person without compassion - and rightfully so.

**You have humored me, quite charitably I might add, thus far with the assumption that God indeed exists. The fallacy in your statements above is that the assumption of God’s existence is made, but human limitations are placed upon Him: that is to say, that His nature of BEING God is not included. The nature of who and what God is allows Him to be omnipresent; truly and actually present WITHIN that work of mercy, such as feeding the poor man on the street. When I outsource to someone at work, I cannot be truly present in the act that the person is performing, simply because I am human and NOT om(name removed by moderator)resent. So passing up the chance to help the homeless person when you can is no comparison to God working through you. **

But this is exactly my point. If Mary was purposefully created to be free and able to choose to live without sin, then everyone else could have been created in the same way - Adam, too. And, as you say, it would have been different. Now, you may say that Mary was “special” and God extended some special grace which helped her to choose to live like she did. Of course, God could have created everyone with the same special grace.

Just because she was created free from sin, does not mean she may have stayed that way without making a free will choice. Adam was “conceived” without sin, and yet he chose to sin. Mary was given special graces, beyond being immaculately conceived, because she chose to seek God, to be His "handmaid."

No matter how we twist it, God could have created a world with free will and without sin

. Since that is the kind of world you guys assert God really wanted, and since he could have done it, the question arises: “why didn’t he do it?”. It simply makes no sense to posit a wise, intelligent, smart, powerful, good, benevolent creator, who wants something, who is able to do something and yet who does something totally different. It is this kind of contradiction (and this is but one of many) which makes the whole belief system impossible to accept as logical and rational. Looking from the “outside” I see an illogical, and irrational set of beliefs, where the basic assumptions contradict each other and they are contradicted by the actual world we all observe.

He did create a world with free will and without sin. It’s right there in Genesis. It was when man chose to disobey Him that sin entered the world. So there is no contradiction. And there is no contradiction between what we believe and what the world is actually like. Somehow, sin entered the world, and that’s why man can be so nasty, and why the world can sometimes be an ugly place. However, there is a way to overcome the nastiness. There is hope. There is a God that loves us, which explains why man can also be wonderful, and why the world can sometimes be a breathtakingly beautiful place.

[/QUOTE]

 

[MindOverMatter]

Given that after the fall of man god introduced suffering, i.e. infectious bacteria, viruses. Given it knew even if at first they were not deadly, that they would evolve to be. Does he hate humans for inventing cures which save the dammed? I mean if god says your time is your time who are we mear humans to go and invent penicillin?

Human involvement in the creation of cures, is a great good and a great foundation for the growth of moral virtue in the human heart, since the creation of a cure and the sharing of it is an expression of charity to ones fellow human. It is therefore good for human beings to be involved in the creation of cures since it brings them closer to the nature of God. God loves doctors.