Richard,
No, they are not. Evolution is a change in the gene pool of a population over time. There is no line between micro and macro.
So just because it is a Catholic website Catholic ideas don’t have to be backed up? Evidence is anything that can be used to determine the truth of an assertion. The things you posted from the Catechism are assertions. Where is the evidence that determine their truth?
I am not asking about the existence of God. I am asking how Catholics can say God is a loving God considering the ways so many babies have died. I have not addressed whether exists except to state my own personal position in response to direct questions.
So in your view, God should allow everybody to live on this earth forever, unless they need to be eliminated for the greater good? And this would be a better fate for those people then to spend eternity perfected in heaven?
Hey, I don’t know what God should do. But why create a world for those he loves in which some of those he loves will spend all of their Earthly time in horrible pain only to die? It might be good for people to have to deal with death and pain (it probably is), but when a baby will only experience death and pain (as has happened to many diseased babies), what good does it do for that specific baby God supposedly loves? What does the baby get out this? A baby cannot understand this suffering as call to work to develop as a better person. The baby will just be in pain and die.
Good! I hope you’ll read my earlier post (on page 2 of this thread).
No, our life on this earth is very important. It is important because only here can we make a true choice for or against God. These babies who’s fate you are concerned with (and very rightly so) may be the instruments of conversion or sanctification for many others around them. That does not mean that God is using them, but that the human race has demanded to know (really know, not just intellectually comprehend) good and evil, and God has allowed that to happen because he will not refuse to honor our free will. He will not do that because creatures without free will cannot love God and cannot be loved by him, and that is the ultimate goal for which each of us is created.
Your friend is very wise, because there would be no sickness, no adultery, no abortion, no murder ETC; every ILL of mankind stems from original sin.
We don’t know the whole story.
Suffering comes about in a number of ways, many of which are the doings of man. Generalizing the way you do does not really lend itself to a fruitful discussion. For example a baby in Haiti might drown in a flood cause by deforestation, caused by dire poverty, caused by years of bad government and economic punishment for their revolution a century ago. How is any of that not man’s doing?
You and I do not share an understanding about God, do we?
? It’s bizarre.
- the world has become one in which baby-killing can seem tolerable, or even admirable.It’s not a mystery; it’s a paradox. Here’s the answer:
).God created the world out of love and he said it was good. I know for certain that before man, there was earthquake. The planet inner plates move, which causes land masses to move. Our planet is a living planet.
- one could as easily ask, “Why do we, who are sinners, & admit we are, not suffer far more ?” Seriously. But the question seems to go unasked.
The “physical evil” to which I referred is not the hurricane itself, but the havoc, death, destruction, and suffering which result when a “properly behaved” hurricane hits a populated area.There aren’t any “good people”
As for physical evil - part of the answer may be, that a hurricane that devastates a city is not evil at all, but is, as such, a very good hurricane: it is doing what any well-behaved hurricane should. Hurricanes are meant to behave as hurricanes do - & it is.
Unfortunately, the goodness of a hurricane is compatible with the doing of great damage to buildings, animals, & people. This doesn’t mean it is wrong for those people to be in the path of a hurricane - only that what is compatible with being a good hurricane, is not necessarily compatible with being a healthy human being. The two goods are ill-adapted to one another - if the people in the path of the hurricane were a thousand miles away, or if the hurricane were blowing itself out over an ocean, both people & hurricane might carry on functioning as the beings they are, & no one need be hurt. But in fact they are at close quarters, so the hurricane is thought bad because it has in fact killed people.
Crimes are almost entirely good - the problem is that good things are combined in a way, & with an intention, that is bad. The separate parts of a crime may be very good - put together, the result is morally evil. It is bad to commit fraud - it is not bad to have the ingenuity, patience, ability to plan, the intelligence, & other intellectual gifts that make the commission of a fraud possible.
So causes of good & evil are often made up of thousands of other causes; an evil, is sometimes a good thing in a context in which its goodness will mean harm for something or someone else. Which if correct may mean that God allows evil because what is called evil is not evil as such, but lots of good things in combinations which have evil effects. Evil is not a thing as such - it is the absence of a good that ought not to be absent; it’s not a being, but a relation between beings. Maybe there is more than one issue here… To abolish evil, might amount to abolishing good things. Such as the will of man. For God to destroy it, in order to prevent sin, might even be to play the devil’s game, since the devil is the destroyer. Whereas God can use even evil for His own Good purposes
Which won’t explain why God allows Ichneumonidae to reproduce in the way they do.
Just MO
This is what the OP seems to be asking about, and Pete (and I, in support) was pointing out that God allows such things to happen because the universe is not yet perfected, and God does not as a matter of habit interfere with its machinations. When He does, it’s a miracle. When He doesn’t, he is allowing evil to exist, but also bringing good out of it.Your post just seems to say that it is a mystery and maybe it works out after death. It does not seem to address my questions.
What evidence is there that there was an actual fall? Science shows us that death and suffering (of animals) was in the world before humans. What is the evidence that there was a fall? How does the baby that dies even have a chance to choose God? Babies are developed enough to make choices.
I never said there was suffering that was man’s fault. But it all should not be seen that way. Death and suffering predate man.
Death and suffering predate man. How many times does this need to be said?
What about all the babies that died? What did they get out of their suffering? Is God using them as a means to help other help?