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1. Earth is not overpopulated. There is no 7 billion humans.
2. Starving Marvin from Ethiopia is starving because other places of the world are over indulging themselves. Say, one great country that consumes 35% of what the world does. Got to come from somewhere. When one taketh, someone else loseth.
There's a grain of truth there. As I recall, until recently there was enough food in the World, if the West cut back on meats & ate lower on the food chain, & shifted the surplus to the World that is underfed. There's no real mechanism encouraging this behavior, though. Under capitalism & even socialism (to a lesser extent) there has to be some kind of recompense - although a sense of staving off starvation in the World might help.
On clean water, it's more difficult. Abundant clean water exists in Canada, Alaska, the Great Lakes region of the US & Canada. In other parts of the World, with effects of rising temperatures & glacier retreat, shortages of snowfall & melt water to feed rivers & aquifers - the impacts to drinking water are getting worse. Industrialization makes economic production faster, but also impacts the natural environment, & too often degrades it. Shortages of clean water also affect crop & food animal production, affecting the food part of the equation.
It's a tough set of problems. We need sustainable industrialization, agriculture, energy & food production - on land & @ sea. & somehow preserve the clean water we have, or come up with ways to process dirty water to make it potable. & we need to solve these massive tasks simultaneously, balance out the inputs & outputs, invent an economics/politics that foments the resource sharing necessary. It's going to be a long-term job. I don't see that we have much choice, unless we simply let nature take its course.
But nature doesn't work on a micro level on human populations, it's all macro. That kind of leveling would destroy a lot of the human resources needed for a soft landing on the economics/production/politics needed.
WEll god. How about making it rain in Africa so that people can grow their own food?
If man 'fell' then he wasn't perfect in the first place.
Actually, it doesn't require divine intervention to reclaim deserts. There are known techniques, which work & which are well within human means. It takes some knowledge, & mostly groups of people doing the work with an eye to stabilizing the soil, planting anchoring grasses, then scrub bush, working up to trees & pastures. Bits of African desert have been reclaimed in this way, it's doable.
May work for you but logically, it doesn't work at all because...
1. An omnimax deity would know what the results would be and, if it were loving and compassionate, would have come up with some other plan. Would you allow your child the choice of putting it's hand in the fire or would you install a fire-guard?
2. 'Choice' doesn't get your god of the hook with regard to the suffering caused by natural disasters.
3. If you are going to live happily ever after in your heaven without choosing to do bad things, why couldn't that situation have been created for when you are alive?
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Originally Posted by Good4Nothin
There has to be suffering, because that is what tells us something is bad and we should avoid it.
...and your omnimax deity couldn't impart that knowledge in the original design?
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Pain and pleasure, good and evil are relative and the positive can't exist without the negative also existing.
So what is going to happen in your heaven. If it's going to be pleasurable being there, are you going to have to suffer pain too.
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If we acknowledge the limitations of our intelligence, the problem just goes away.
You mean if you give your god a cop-out such as 'free-will', the problem goes away.
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Originally Posted by Good4Nothin
And people are starving because they don't have an ecological niche. We are completely out of balance with nature, thanks to our cleverness. Giving everyone food would not get rid of starvation. Food can't be distributed fairly and efficiently unless it happens according to normal economic principles. Engineered economic systems have all failed, and always will fail.
Nothing to do with the distribution of food and everything to do with being able to grow it .
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Originally Posted by southwest88
Actually, it doesn't require divine intervention to reclaim deserts. There are known techniques, which work & which are well within human means. It takes some knowledge, & mostly groups of people doing the work with an eye to stabilizing the soil, planting anchoring grasses, then scrub bush, working up to trees & pastures. Bits of African desert have been reclaimed in this way, it's doable.
Yes, providing one has the money and the resources...and the bits of Africa where it has happened have a water source, either natural or man-made. Most of Africa does not.
May work for you but logically, it doesn't work at all because...
1. An omnimax deity would know what the results would be and, if it were loving and compassionate, would have come up with some other plan. Would you allow your child the choice of putting it's hand in the fire or would you install a fire-guard?
2. 'Choice' doesn't get your god of the hook with regard to the suffering caused by natural disasters.
3. If you are going to live happily ever after in your heaven without choosing to do bad things, why couldn't that situation have been created for when you are alive?
My God? What bad things am I choosing to do?
Next time man should be created inanimate. Problem solved.
May work for you but logically, it doesn't work at all because...
1. An omnimax deity would know what the results would be and, if it were loving and compassionate, would have come up with some other plan. Would you allow your child the choice of putting it's hand in the fire or would you install a fire-guard?
2. 'Choice' doesn't get your god of the hook with regard to the suffering caused by natural disasters.
3. If you are going to live happily ever after in your heaven without choosing to do bad things, why couldn't that situation have been created for when you are alive?
Quote:
Originally Posted by gabfest
My God? What bad things am I choosing to do?
Next time man should be created inanimate. Problem solved.
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Originally Posted by Rafius
What does that have to do with what I said?
Is man going to be inanimate in heaven?
I've never considered anyone else being in heaven, so I wouldn't know.
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Originally Posted by southwest88 Actually, it doesn't require divine intervention to reclaim deserts. There are known techniques, which work & which are well within human means. It takes some knowledge, & mostly groups of people doing the work with an eye to stabilizing the soil, planting anchoring grasses, then scrub bush, working up to trees & pastures. Bits of African desert have been reclaimed in this way, it's doable.
Yes, providing one has the money and the resources...and the bits of Africa where it has happened have a water source, either natural or man-made. Most of Africa does not.
No, mostly it's local people with some training, & putting in the grunt work for the years required to see marked improvement in soils, crops, livelihood. See https://www.newscientist.com/article...im-the-desert/ (& notice that the article is from Oct. 2006)
Does anyone see a bigger picture with some having abundance and others starving and sick?
A lot of it is s*** luck as to where you were born
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There's no real need to invoke the Sky King
