Where is God during the attacks on Copts in Egypt, and what is God doing as evil grows during your prayers? (Evidence for Atheism)

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Religion for the sake of community and the advancement of the human spirit has served its purpose. Its now sciences turn to lead us into the next phase of life.
Interesting…

Science tells us that there is this thing called “gravity”…yet I have never seen it. I don’t think any scientist has ever filled a jar with the stuff. BUT…we are expected to “believe” that it exists.

Science is nothing more than a faith based religion in itself.
 
Great post. However, isn’t it unreasonable of God to expect us to continue spending effort doing something without seeing any results for it? It seems so unjust that it sounds as if Jesus is telling God something he didn’t already know when he says, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” as if God doesn’t realize how weak it actually is.

Moreover, God expects us to use our reason, and our reason suggests that after trying something repeatedly and not seeing the results we want, to quit doing that and try something else. Is it not unreasonable for God to expect us to continue praying without seeing positive results?
  1. God is incomprehensible.
  2. IT is a mystery. (Three persons - consubstantial - begotten not made…)
  3. Jesus said to pray unceasingly. (No strings attached)
  4. There are thousands of examples where prayers were answered much later in unimaginable ways
  5. The Lord Works in mysterious ways.
  6. Time is different outside of our experience, referred to by the Church as the ‘eternal present’… one giant bucket of pieces of now…
  7. We think of time, perceive time linearly, like a timeline… we don’t really know much about space and time yet everything we believe about the universe is based on our observations within the constraints of the observable universe… we are really, most likely, quite clueless… like looking at yourself in a dirty and cracked mirror…
  8. Pray for answers to all your questions and the answers will come to you if you have an open heart and mind and are willing and able to accept the answers… guaranteed…
 
I would rather worry about what are you doing to reflect the Christ of whose mystical body you are a member, rather than scolding the Almighty because you don’t see Him (a kind of blindness that should not surprise us, unless we had the pretension of thinking we actually could see - Jn 9:41).

I can tell you that surely the Lord is not in your sad, depressing (and, especially, useless) complaints. He certainly is in the hearts of those who are praying so that the evils of this world may be attenuated. Not that God can force man to behave against his own will, just like He is not forcing you to love Him with all your heart as He rightfully deserves. However by the suffering, sacrifices, penance and prayer of many, the Father often times dispenses extraordinary graces over the world, so that evil is attenuated in its disastrous consequences, tragedies are avoided or contained, and souls that would have fallen into everlasting fire may be granted special light to repent and be thus saved.

To seek truth? No. Your intention is that of an upset child screaming at his father. Be more humble, and if you truly suffer for those deaths, join those who trust in God and pray if nothing else is at reach. Pray for the victims, that they may enter everlasting peace in Christ. Pray for the survivors of this tragedy, that they may find the blessed hope that you, in the comfort of your home, seem to be on the point of losing. Pray for the men and women that are offering their time, abilities, and oftentimes their very life, to bring relief in such places. Pray for those who bring upon innocents such persecutions, for they do not know what they are doing. And pray to the Father for the sake of Christ’s sorrowful passion, that He may withhold His day of wrath against all evildoers.

You speak of misery, but I perceive you do not know the least of it. Which is good. I am glad for you. If you did know misery, you would also know hope, and you would most certainly know just where God is.

Do you want to seek the truth? Then kneel before a crucifix, and look into His eyes. Picture Him being savagely scourged at the pillar, He who is the innocent Lamb. Imagine how alone would the witnesses have felt, if watching the innocent Son of Man being so grievously hurt, they had exclaimed: “where is God?” Imagine how terribly empty the statement would be: “where was God while Christ was being scourged, crowned with thorns, and crucified?”

I apologize if I come across very blunt, but your “evidence for atheism” comes across as very hostile and deserves no patience and no kindness whatsoever. We are the church militant. We are called to pray and to suffer, trusting without hesitation in the lead of Christ and upholding without fear the faith of our fathers. We keep the light on. Others - those who cause corporal or spiritual suffering - turn the light off. You must be on one side or the other, as there is no in-between.

In Christo crucifixo.
A Very wise post. Good on you for your frank impatience. We are the Hands of Our Lord in this sadly fallen world. Excellent post.
 
Where is God as the world grows more evil in spite of your prayers? What is God doing in answer to your prayers?

After reading this news article from the Associated Press, God appears conspicuously absent from their plight.
Two revolutionaries were crucified with him, one on his right and the other on his left. Those passing by reviled him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, if you are the Son of God, (and) come down from the cross!” Likewise the chief priests with the scribes and elders mocked him and said, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. So he is the king of Israel! Let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him. He trusted in God; let him deliver him now if he wants him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” The revolutionaries who were crucified with him also kept abusing him in the same way.
  • Mt 27:38-44
Why does God sometimes intervene very obviously, other times less obviously. sometimes almost imperceptibly, and other times apparently not at all? God’s ways are not our ways. It’s a mystery which has to be accepted with faith and trust in God’s goodness. Why did God not intervene during the Holocaust, or during the Islamic conquest of Christian lands, during the great religious wars which killed so many in Europe during the Reformation, or when Communists murdered Christians in a wholesale manner in Spain, Russia, China, and Mexico? The answer is that he did intervene. Without God, who knows how much worse those situations would have been? Our job is to develop the spiritual insight to perceive God’s hand even amid the horrors and suffering which are part of life in this troubled world. He is there. He loves us. John quotes Christ as saying “I will not leave you orphans”. The problem is that our expectations distort our perception and make it difficult if not impossible to see the hand of God actively involved in all facets of our lives and of human history.
 
Interesting…

Science tells us that there is this thing called “gravity”…yet I have never seen it. I don’t think any scientist has ever filled a jar with the stuff. BUT…we are expected to “believe” that it exists.

Science is nothing more than a faith based religion in itself.
JB, Newton’s Law of Gravity is: Fg = G (m1*m2)/(d^2). Gravity and its effects can be consistently observed, demonstrated and analyzed. You can easily demonstrate its existence by dropping an egg from your kitchen counter, or understanding its influence in the movements of the planets to name a few. Faith is not required, it is a scientific fact that it exist. It does not demand any moral submission nor does it have any human institution dictating your actions and their consequences or rewards.
 
Perfection is in the next life. here we live in a damaged and brutal world. We must trust God, be faithful to his will, live right, and have faith.
 
Great post. However, isn’t it unreasonable of God to expect us to continue spending effort doing something without seeing any results for it? It seems so unjust that it sounds as if Jesus is telling God something he didn’t already know when he says, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” as if God doesn’t realize how weak it actually is.

Moreover, God expects us to use our reason, and our reason suggests that after trying something repeatedly and not seeing the results we want, to quit doing that and try something else. Is it not unreasonable for God to expect us to continue praying without seeing positive results?
I think you are looking at this wrong, if I may be so bold. I think what God desires is that every individual human being accept His invitation to divine love. The reason why we exist is so that we can accept this invitation, love God in return with our whole being, and experience eternal happiness (i.e. heaven) which is what God created us for. Suffering is a part of getting people to realize this and accept it. I’m sure there’s plenty of people around here that would agree that constant indulgence of a child’s every whim does not engender a spirit of love towards the parent.

Is this a cheap way to let God off of the hook? No, God, being omnibenevolent, desires infinitely that every human being attains heaven. God, being omniscient, knows with infinite certitude what is necessary for each human being to make an informed decision to accept the invitation or not. God, being omnipotent, has the power to give every human what they need. If at the end of this life the human says yes, then all of those periods of suffering are seen as part of heaven in that they “woke up” the individual to accept the invitation of heaven (what is finite suffering when compared to infinite happiness?). If the person says no to the invitation (presumably because they wanted things their way and didn’t get it), then all the good things that happened to them become painful because they are only experienced finitely. Regardless of where you end up in the next life you can’t claim that “you didn’t know” or “you didn’t want this.”

Too many people (in America at least) seem to think that the relationship a human has with God is a sort of quid pro quo relationship where the human adheres to God’s laws and then God gives them goodies or rewards for doing it. Suffering is seen as God punishing us for not obeying the laws, so if you’re suffering then you must have done something wrong, which is difficult to rationalize when the suffering is seemingly without warrant. This view is erroneous because it puts the end of all our desires selfishly on us and what we want in this finite life. It’s like when I was a kid and I thought that I could get things from my parents by being good and then that would give me a “claim” to a reward. The actions, though good, were not done in love but as a means to get what I wanted.

Look into the lives of many saints and you will see that many of them bore immense suffering with great humility, expectation, and happiness. Why many of them could go to terrible deaths happy was something that has always been puzzling to me and still is emotionally to some degree.
 
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