How could a moral God allow suffering?

[Amandil]

Still having trouble with your terminology I see. Strawman- a sham argument set up to be defeated.

Still having problems with incomplete definitions, I see.

"A straw man is a common type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on the misrepresentation of an opponent’s argument. [1] To be successful, a straw man argument requires that the audience be ignorant or uninformed of the original argument.

The so-called typical “attacking a straw man” argument creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent’s proposition by covertly replacing it with a different proposition (i.e., “stand up a straw man”) and then to refute or defeat that false argument (“knock down a straw man”) instead of the original proposition."

From Wikipedia

Actually, given the odds, I have done quite well and even now have some of similar thought here. My argument is that the all-loving god that people speak of is inconsistent with observation…unless someone has a very different description of love than the people I know.

You haven’t even demonstrated what “all loving” even means or that you are using the term in any way consistent with how your opponent-Christianity-defines it.

So you haven’t done “quite well” at all. You’re argument and your “observations” have been terribly inadequate.

Your problem is that you think that you know what you’re talking regarding the Catholic Faith when it’s rudimentary at best.

 

[Achilles6129]

He’s the creator…certainly it’s His fault. If Gm puts out a defective auto and people are killed, is it their fault? You bet it is.
If a deity creates a sentient being knowing that they will displease him, he has condemned them before they are even conceived.

Statement 1:

“He’s the creator…certainly it’s His fault. If Gm puts out a defective auto and people are killed, is it their fault? You bet it is.”

Is not consistent with Statement 2:

“If a deity creates a sentient being knowing that they will displease him, he has condemned them before they are even conceived.”

In the case of Statement 2, the creation displeases the Creator of its own free choices, the Creator doesn’t “make it that way,” rather the creation itself makes it that way by disobeying the Creator. In Statement 1, GM literally made the car that way and so it is in fact GM’s fault.

But since God doesn’t force anyone to disobey him, it’s not God’s fault that they do disobey him. They freely choose and want to disobey him and so they do.

My argument is that the all-loving god that people speak of is inconsistent with observation…unless someone has a very different description of love than the people I know.

I would think that the Bible itself would teach you that the definition of “love” is indeed radically different from what human nature thinks that love is. All you need to do is read about the two witnesses, the beast, or study the Torah to understand that.

 

[Achilles6129]

God had no other choice? Yeah, I can see Him sitting there thinking to Himself: Well, I can’t see that I’ve got any other options here. It looks like I’m going to have to kill them. If only there were another way out. Something else I could do. But…I guess my hands are tied. Can’t blame me, anyway…

No, he doesn’t have any other choice. Explain what other choice he might have with an unrepentantly evil civilization.

 

[Bradski]

No, he doesn’t have any other choice. Explain what other choice he might have with an unrepentantly evil civilization.

You are kidding me, right? We’re having enough trouble with God’s omniscience. Don’t tell me we’re going to have the same problem with his omnipotence…

There are a lot of the usual posters slapping their foreheads right now and shouting at the screen: Why in heaven’s name did he say that!

 

[oldcelt]

Statement 1:

“He’s the creator…certainly it’s His fault. If Gm puts out a defective auto and people are killed, is it their fault? You bet it is.”

Is not consistent with Statement 2:

“If a deity creates a sentient being knowing that they will displease him, he has condemned them before they are even conceived.”

In the case of Statement 2, the creation displeases the Creator of its own free choices, the Creator doesn’t “make it that way,” rather the creation itself makes it that way by disobeying the Creator. In Statement 1, GM literally made the car that way and so it is in fact GM’s fault.

**But since God doesn’t force anyone to disobey him, it’s not God’s fault that they do disobey him. They freely choose and want to disobey him and so they do. **

I would think that the Bible itself would teach you that the definition of “love” is indeed radically different from what human nature thinks that love is. All you need to do is read about the two witnesses, the beast, or study the Torah to understand that.

I think there is a great deal of question about that under the Christian God. With infallible foreknowledge He could have created anyone of those people differently. He chose not to, unless you believe that God has no choices.

 

[oldcelt]

No, he doesn’t have any other choice. Explain what other choice he might have with an unrepentantly evil civilization.

Not creating them in the first place might have been a good start. Creating them differently would be another.

 

[oldcelt]

Still having problems with incomplete definitions, I see.

"A straw man is a common type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on the misrepresentation of an opponent’s argument. [1] To be successful, a straw man argument requires that the audience be ignorant or uninformed of the original argument.

The so-called typical “attacking a straw man” argument creates the illusion of having completely refuted or defeated an opponent’s proposition by covertly replacing it with a different proposition (i.e., “stand up a straw man”) and then to refute or defeat that false argument (“knock down a straw man”) instead of the original proposition."

From Wikipedia

You haven’t even demonstrated what “all loving” even means or that you are using the term in any way consistent with how your opponent-Christianity-defines it.

So you haven’t done “quite well” at all. You’re argument and your “observations” have been terribly inadequate.

Your problem is that you think that you know what you’re talking regarding the Catholic Faith when it’s rudimentary at best.

My my…how you do go on. It is not my job to define all-loving, or any other attribute of something I don’t believe in. No one here has been able to adequately explain away the little problems with omniscience, omni-presence, omnipotence, etc. If your God put us here just to satisfy His need for love…He is a narcissist of the first order. colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/RelSci/Narcissism.html

A nicely written summation of my views on omniscience:

First, I want to point out that there’s a problem about God’s foreknowledge of our free acts. It’s not that I think God’s omniscience and consequent foreknowledge imply His predetermining what our acts will be, despite the fact that the Bible says the two go hand in hand. The trouble lies elsewhere, in the fact that God’s foreknowledge of what the unsaved would do, together with the His perverse determination to create them nevertheless, makes Him what lawyers call an “accessory before the fact,” and therefore responsible at least in part for the outcome. After all, it is up to God whether to create free creatures or not. Just as we must bear responsibility for the consequences our freely chosen actions, so must He. The New Testament God, every bit as much as the Old Testament one, creates us as sinners in an evil world, knowing well what the consequences would be for some of us, namely the worst evil of all, hell. At the very least, therefore, He shares responsibility for these evils.

reasonablefaith.org/can-a-loving-god-send-people-to-hell-the-craig-bradley-debate
So far as your strawman accusations, the OP was how can a moral God allow suffering? I at one point answered very simply…He can’t. Naturally, many here wanted other answers to other questions…they set the tone…I have played the defensive.
Then you have to judge my knowledge of the faith. How long were you an atheist? How long have you been a Catholic? I sat in he pews and attended classes for 50 years.

Whether you like it or not, the inconsistencies that I have pointed out are very real and people either have to deal with them or live blind faith.

 

[ericc]

For all intents and purposes oldcelt is a materialistic atheist who is hedging his bets by claiming to be a deist thinking and hoping that simply being sincere about his “deism” will save his skin in case he’s wrong.

He is not a deist. He said he believed in a divine Jesus Christ. Which just negate his position that God never interferes after Creation. He could not defend his deist god in previous posts. He has no bets to hedge because he was once a believer but has fallen away which according to the Bible is a big enough sin. Moreover, he tries to lead others away from the Christian God by promoting his non-existing, non-defensible deist god which shall compound his sin. I do pray for him but he continues to dismiss the Christian God and that is sad. Perhaps he is a true blue atheist in disguise under a deism skin but I hope I am wrong.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . I find no joy in a young life ended so horribly, only sorrow. I watched the reports on this girl daily. It was a truly horrid thing to observe.

You care - that is the sacred heart of Jesus, encompassing all humanity in each person’s suffering.
It is real to the Core of existence.
It is no simple reflex in one’s limbic system that perhaps should be obliterated so that one should feel no pain.
The joy lies in the existence of this girl and our suffering reflects the intensity of that love.
The heart, the flowers, her happy pretty face, comforted by angels.
Would you have that she never existed?
Her pain and suffering is ended. She is with God.
I will pray that she intercede, being closer to God, to help you with your struggles, to bring you peace.

 

[Amandil]

My my…how you do go on. It is not my job to define all-loving, or any other attribute of something I don’t believe in.

It is your job to find out how Christianity defines it, and other terms and definitions it uses to explain what it believes if your going to pontificate about what it professes.

oldcelt:

No one here to me has been able to adequately explain away the little problems with omniscience, omni-presence, omnipotence, etc.

FTFY

Because you impose your beliefs onto the terms and create strawmen to knock down when told you’re incorrect.

oldcelt:

If your God put us here just to satisfy His need for love…He is a narcissist of the first order.

This speaks for itself.

oldcelt:

A nicely written summation of my views on omniscience: reasonablefaith.org/can-a-loving-god-send-people-to-hell-the-craig-bradley-debate

More crying that God didn’t enact preternatural abortions or make people into robots with no possibility to choose evil(in which case if he did you find a way to complain about that as well).

Creation, nor the act of creating, is evil. So the statement doesn’t follow.

oldcelt:

So far as your strawman accusations, the OP was how can a moral God allow suffering? I at one point answered very simply…He can’t. Naturally, many here wanted other answers to other questions…they set the tone…I have played the defensive.

Whatever you say.

oldcelt:

Then you have to judge my knowledge of the faith.

Not a “judgment”, an observation.

oldcelt:

How long were you an atheist? How long have you been a Catholic? I sat in he pews and attended classes for 50 years.

Apparently quality does not necessarily follow from quantity.

oldcelt:

Whether you like it or not, the inconsistencies that I have pointed out to me re very real and people either have to deal with them or live blind faith.

FTFY

 

[oldcelt]

It is your job to find out how Christianity defines it, and other terms and definitions it uses to explain what it believes if your going to pontificate about what it professes.

FTFY

Because you impose your beliefs onto the terms and create strawmen to knock down when told you’re incorrect.

This speaks for itself.

More crying that God didn’t enact preternatural abortions or make people into robots with no possibility to choose evil(in which case if he did you find a way to complain about that as well).

Creation, nor the act of creating, is evil. So the statement doesn’t follow.

Whatever you say.

Not a “judgment”, an observation.

Apparently quality does not necessarily follow from quantity.

FTFY

After all the discourse on this and related threads, I am more convinced than ever regarding the nature of God.

 

[Amandil]

After all the discourse on this and related threads, I am more convinced than ever regarding the nature of God.

No doubt that the discourse had nothing to do with it either.

 

[oldcelt]

No doubt that the discourse had nothing to do with it either.

You like making statements on things you cannot possibly know, don’t you?

 

[Amandil]

You like making statements on things you cannot possibly know, don’t you?

Imitation is the best form of flattery.

You call them “observations”.

 

[oldcelt]

Imitation is the best form of flattery.

You call them “observations”.

Well, they say to imitate the best.

 

[believer691]

before My Return, I am sending you, before Me, the Ark of Alliance, I am sending you the Woman of the Apocalypse, the second Eve, who will crush the serpent’s head with her heel; I am sending you, before Me: My Mother, to open a broad highway and level it in this desert; I am sending you the Queen of Heaven, the Door to Heaven, to prepare you, and to school all you who still lie in the dust, to come forward and make your peace with Me, your King, before My Great Return; I am sending you the Queen of Peace to thresh from one corner of the earth to the other and gather you one by one; True Life In God (TLIG.ORG)

 

[ajecphotos]

You like making statements on things you cannot possibly know, don’t you?

To be honest, i think that statement covers everything you have written in this thread!! lol

 

[Achilles6129]

You are kidding me, right? We’re having enough trouble with God’s omniscience. Don’t tell me we’re going to have the same problem with his omnipotence…

There are a lot of the usual posters slapping their foreheads right now and shouting at the screen: Why in heaven’s name did he say that!

No, I’m not kidding you. Please explain to me what God is supposed to do with an unrepentantly evil civilization.

I think there is a great deal of question about that under the Christian God. With infallible foreknowledge He could have created anyone of those people differently. He chose not to, unless you believe that God has no choices.

Again, remember what I said above: it’s not God who “makes anyone that way,” it’s the individual who makes themselves that way by their choice to disobey God’s commands. So no, God cannot “make anyone differently.”

Not creating them in the first place might have been a good start. Creating them differently would be another.

God created them with an intent that they should dwell with him forever. In other words, God’s thoughts towards them are only good; it is not his will that any should perish. It’s not God’s fault they decided to shred his plan and go their own ways.

 

[Bradski]

No, I’m not kidding you.

It’s OK, I knew you weren’t kidding. I just said it as a means of expressing complete bewilderment and astonishment.

 

[Amandil]

It’s OK, I knew you weren’t kidding. I just said it as a means of expressing complete bewilderment and astonishment.

But neither have you answered the question.