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Ok! I rarely rant on about any god about what they do or don't do as if I believe they exist, however, please do NOT confuse what I believe to be true with what I debate with OTHER people about that THEY believe to be true.
In this case I am not arguing whether a god exists or not. I am presenting the post based on the belief of others that a "good god" exists, who if he/she does, committed an act contrary to that notion toward one of his or her devotees. In other words, the perception and the action contradict each other.
It is normal that bad things happen to 'good' people when 'good' people are not inside God's realm.
Planet earth is never inside God's realm ever since Adam's fall. Rather it is inside Satan's realm. That's why Satan is referred to as the 'god of this world'. For the same reason, 'good' people are urged to make their way back to the Kingdom of God (or His Kingdom in Heaven).
Planet earth more or less assembles the wilderness where disasters are allowed and wolves are everywhere. The sheep are supposed to make their way to go back to the Shepherd. And the Sherpherd has not yet given up (He will not until all the sheep are found) and keeps looking for His sheep. Some found sheep can still be under His sheltering. So there are still good things amongst the bad things.
There is a place where the situation is even worse. This place not only is outside God's realm but also that the Shepherd is simply absent as He already got His sheep. So any place not inside God's Kingdom should be expected to be earth-like. And any place where God's influence is absent should be expected to be hell-like. Simple as that.
How did you get that from that? I was simply posing a question based on WHAT is often claimed, not by ME, but by many Christians.
Many believers present their god as a loving father, concerned with their well-being and safety. Scriptures are often mentioned such as "his eye being on the sparrow" so it is even on his "children." The New Testament states that if evil, earthly fathers know how to give their children good gifts, how much more their heavenly father (god)? This concept of a good, merciful, caring father-like god who created everything (nature) who can do anything seems contradictory when a story like this is presented. Being struck dead by a bolt of lightning sounds like something an angry Greek god would do, but certainly not a divine father likened to a doting dad enraptured with love for his devotees.
Which is true and right on the spot. It's when they start falsely attributing events caused by humanity to God that things go wrong. God is Love but God didn't cause this hurricane or that earthquake or whatever. Sure if you think God did all that then you will wonder how God can be loving, but all of that is a result of human action. We pollute our Earth and then we blame God when we have extreme weather. No, that's not God. That's us. God is love--but we have to stop putting things humans did onto God to be able to fully understand that.
Very true, but should a "good" god in control of all things allow bad things to happen to good people? I think we all can agree that being struck dead by a bolt of lightning in grand fashion like that is NOT exactly a good thing.
No. Because part of God's deal was that we have our own free will. If we didn't have free will, our choices would have no meaning--because they wouldn't be real choices. If we have no choice, or if God saves us in every little instance, how can we make fear-based vs. love-based choices? And how could we every have any experiences and even know what love means if we didn't know what fear meant?
Originally Posted by AREQUIPA True, but the fact is that God and the Bible are 2 different things.
You cannot capture the concept of love in a book; love is an action while a book is just mere theory (and a-priori inaction).
Well the other thing is that an action may be out of love, but it's highly specific to the situation. Killing someone for the h.ll of it is not love-based, but killing someone to save 10,000 people may be done out of love. We can't really say that "this action is loving" and "this action isn't" because it's highly dependent on the circumstances. A mother could abort her child out of love because she doesn't want her child to grow up in the abusive, underprivileged environment she had to. (Love-based.) Or a mother could abort her child because her parents pressured her to. (Fear-based.) A mother could choose to have her baby cause she wants to give that baby a right to life. (Love-based.) Or a mother could choose to have her baby cause she is afraid of the social ostracism that would come with aborting. (Fear-based.) In all 4 cases, she may or may not abort, and it may or may not be in love. There's not necessarily a direct relationship between certain actions and certain intentions.
What matters most to God is the intention of your actions. At times you may carry out an action that is with good intentions, but that is perceived by others to be with malicious intent. And that is what explains many scenarios where it seems that God is "just letting evil happen." God isn't only thinking about what an outcome means for you or me, but for everyone.
God also knows what alternatives may have happened. Maybe God did save those tsunami survivors...from a worse natural disaster. We don't know. So because we hardly know all the factors that go into an outcome, it's incredibly hard to judge God as loving or vengeful based on the outcome of an events.
It is claimed that he also controls nature but we all know how violent nature can be so why does a "loving god" use nature to bring about such deadly results even on his own devotees? Here's an example and a grand one at that (sad as it is):
It could have been an act of mercy. We are heading toward the darkest time this world as ever seen.Scriptures are clear that this existence is a mere shadow of an eternal nature of the soul. Who are we to judge how God works?
No. Because part of God's deal was that we have our own free will. If we didn't have free will, our choices would have no meaning--because they wouldn't be real choices. If we have no choice, or if God saves us in every little instance, how can we make fear-based vs. love-based choices? And how could we every have any experiences and even know what love means if we didn't know what fear meant?
Agreed. In order to have the ability to love, one also has to have the ability not to love.
But that is not the sum total of all atheist arguments. That is only meant to leave the traditional theist in a hobbsons delima, to try to force them to admit that their God can not be omnipotent and morally perfect in a world in which he allows (or even creates) evil.
There are other arguments that go directly to the existance of an omnipotent God itself, and in my view one should be presuaded by the logic of those arguments independent of whether the conclusion is something they personally enjoy. (Though not eveyone agrees with that. Some say that most important aspect of the religious experience is how it makes you feel, and even if it's not actually true, more is to be gained from believing the lie then believing the truth.)
An omnipotent God COULD have chosen to create a world without evil.
A morally perfect God Would have chosen to create a world without evil, if he were able.
There is evil in the world.
So if there is a God, he is either not omnipotent or not morally perfect.
(I would use the term "suffering" here, but evil will suffice in my opinion if were not going to get into semantics.)
The simple fact that God COULD have created a world without evil doesn't mean he SHOULD have. What if God had a sufficient reason to create a world that would allow evil?
A. God created humankind with the ability of free will, and desires people to come to him on their own accord
B. Perhaps the environment that would allow the greatest number of people to come to know God would be one of evil
C. Therefore, it is NOT contradictory for a perfectly moral God to allow evil.
Additionally, I see no reason for a morally perfect God to be obligated to create a world without evil. Again, you are assuming a morally perfect God would have no reason to do otherwise, but of course, that is speculation.
From a doctrine standpoint, and for contextual reasons, please realize the Christian point of life is not happiness. Nowhere in the Bible does it state life should be happy and problem free. We are to expect issues, and the more we experience, the more we realize the situation is hopeless WITHOUT a God. Ironically, without God, there is no true solution to the problem of evil.
There is more than one possibility assuming god is perfectly moral and omnipotent. Assuming what an outcome should be in this context is speculation, and shirks the heart of the matter. Evil exists... and in thousands of years we have yet to find a solution; on the contrary, last century was the bloodiest on record, showing our enlightenment arrogance has not bought us anything better.
I think most people that have an issue with God from the perspective of evil do not have an issue due to logical reasons; rather, they have a problem due to personal reasons.
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True, but the fact is that God and the Bible are 2 different things. 
