…but he can allow it to continue. He does allow it to.
But how can you stop something that is happening to you? God let’s it happen.
Aren’t there evils that are not part of human nature? Natural evils such a drought, tsunamis and hurricanes. Isn’t it a bit reductionist to say that evil only comes from man. Evil also comes from the natural world that God created.
The existence of evil does not prove the nonexistence of God. I would imagine that those who argue otherwise are swayed by emotion.
I really don’t think that the historical evidence is as sound as it’s made out to be, nor that the miracles really are miracles.
A little bit of research into the Fatima incident reveals that not all witnesses saw a dancing sun. I find that very revealing.
Shame they couldn’t set up scientific conditions to test unprejudiced reactions - mind you, I don’t notice everything that goes on, up to and including whether the sun dances or not - the question is, who would be delusional? Those that saw the dance and expected to see the dance, or those who expected *not * to see the dance and did not? Are such expectations necessarily directly causal?
There were a few “conformity experiments”: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
Subliminal messaging/control doesn’t really work, and I’m not proposing that any group of people actively tried to deceive others.
Mystic Banana said:(Furthermore, you could reverse all this - view the believers as disbelievers in exclusively mundane causation, making them able to see what was real, and the disbelievers as believers in exclusively mundane causation, deluding themselves in visions of normalistic phenomena - making the accusation of delusion, subsequently, wholly reversable also)
The possibilities are endless! Oh, to see the World with unprejudiced eyes!
You tell them that God loves them so much that He even allows the greatest evil of all: the ability to reject Him…teachccd
Actually, I’m pretty sure God has allowed “bad” things to happen all the time. One might argue that he’s taken a more direct hand in it from time to time as well. Furthermore, what may seem like a bad thing at one point may lead to a greater payoff later. I don’t like to use the example, but it might be like in chess when you see someone lose the queen early on and then they beat you later.
This is a touchier issue and I’m still stuck with the chess thing. Say you’re playing a game against God, He is allowed to pass turns and is trying to teach you something. He knows all the strategies, all the moves, and all the consequences. Nonetheless, there are instances he says pass and suddenly thousands of options are eliminated and opened up. He isn’t interested in forcing anyone to win, but rather in getting you to realize something. At the end of the game, he has your answer, you got it or you didn’t. Yes, he knows you before you were even born, but there are times he’s saying pass and waiting for your move. Yes, it’s a convoluted example, but I hope it helps. I can’t really word it differently without sounding funny.