[net.religion] reply to Lord Firth

david@cvl.UUCP (David Harwood) (03/16/85)

This is a reply to another reply:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>From: root@trwatf.UUCP (Lord Frith)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: reply to Teitz
Message-ID: <746@trwatf.UUCP>
Date: 12 Mar 85 23:47:21 GMT

> On the other hand, who will test God? Could we coerce Him
> so that He proves Himself in a series of replicable experiments?
> Hardly. It is we who are to be tested...

The intention is not so much to "test" God but to discover through
intellectual means if God really exists; if there is some proof of
his existance; or if what is said of him is really the truth.  This
last issue might be considered testing God, but without such tests
we cannot be assured that he is indeed everything he says he is.

Reason provides an added dimension to perceiving the world.

> What sort of God would be challenged by intellectual twits who
> are full of themselves? No, I think things are just so.
> (As for why there is suffering -- again, that seems a
> test of mankind rather than of God.)

Starving thousands of helpless people in remote third-world countries
seems to test little.  If we are to believe that God is just and
merciful we should see it in everyday life... yet reality provides
glaring contradicitions.  How can we love a God that allows (or
according to your reasoning CREATES) such suffering when it seems
to serve no useful purpose?  If anything, reality provides a
great deal of evidence that God is not merciful or just.

If God were willing to answer your questions, wouldn't YOU want
to know why he did things this way?  And if his arguments weren't
reasonable, wouldn't you object to them?


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
	Pascal, the famous apologist for Christianity, said that
the heart has its reasons which reason cannot understand. My feeling 
is that everyone who sincerely wants to know whether there is a God 
will be given sufficient reason for faith, but that not everyone is 
sincere. You have only to look around to see that many lord it over 
the others -- in their hearts, they would presume the place of God. 
They hardly want to find out that they were wrong.
	If there is God, then we may believe that we are created
in the image of God, so that if there is suffering, then we may
therefore believe that the knowledge of good and evil, of what
gives life or destroys it, may be a reflection of the nature of God.
For, without suffering, and consciousness of the causes of suffering,
we would not be moral beings, since good and evil, as we ordinarily
understand them, would simply have no meaning.
	I am not saying that that our creation is fulfilled; we are
certainly not what we should be. But, as Paul says, we do not 
know what we shall become, but we know that we shall be like Him.
	There is a very old Jewish commentary on the "tree of
knowledge" of Genesis, whose fruit was said to awaken mankind's
moral self-consciousness, and to make them like gods. The comment
is that they were become like gods in having knowledge to create and
destroy worlds. Today, we certainly have the fruits of a very 
powerful and dangerous technology; but what shall we do with it?
	You say, "Why is there suffering?" Then you would say that 
this "reality provides evidence that God is not merciful or just."
But I would say, with John, that if a man possesses more than
enough, but turns his heart against his brother in need, then how
is God's love in him? Or, with the Gospel, how does it benefit
a man to gain everything of the world, but to lose his very soul?
No, the existence of suffering is largely witness against us, that 
we are not merciful, and are not yet justified. However, we shall
be justified by following the example of Christ.
	The Lord said to Job, "Are you to accuse me in order to 
justify yourself?" Here, the meaning is not that Job was a "sinner", 
as such, but that Job presumed, as also did his "friends", wrongly 
against God that our suffering should be related to our notion of 
His justice. But as Jesus said about the man who was blind from birth,
this suffering did not originate with his sins, or even those of his
parents, but so that the nature of God might come to be known 
through him, as was in the case of Job, and also of Jesus himself.
	While the wisdom of this is not very explicitly clear to us, 
it is intuitively clear to most adults that somehow we are made better
moral beings, by our experience of suffering, our own as well as that
of others. Something this obvious is generally overlooked, especially
something about our own common psychological nature, but my point is 
that, whether or not we understand this, through suffering, we are 
made a new creation, I would say, more nearly the image of God.

					David Harwood

root@trwatf.UUCP (Lord Frith) (03/19/85)

[Lord Frith]

Starving thousands of helpless people in remote third-world countries
seems to test little.  If we are to believe that God is just and
merciful we should see it in everyday life... yet reality provides
glaring contradicitions.  How can we love a God that allows (or
according to your reasoning CREATES) such suffering when it seems
to serve no useful purpose?  If anything, reality provides a
great deal of evidence that God is not merciful or just.

[David Harwood]

> Pascal, the famous apologist for Christianity, said that
> the heart has its reasons which reason cannot understand. My feeling 
> is that everyone who sincerely wants to know whether there is a God 
> will be given sufficient reason for faith, but that not everyone is 
> sincere. You have only to look around to see that many lord it over 
> the others -- in their hearts, they would presume the place of God. 
> They hardly want to find out that they were wrong.
>
> If there is God, then we may believe that we are created
> in the image of God, so that if there is suffering, then we may
> therefore believe that the knowledge of good and evil, of what
> gives life or destroys it, may be a reflection of the nature of God.
> For, without suffering, and consciousness of the causes of suffering,
> we would not be moral beings, since good and evil, as we ordinarily
> understand them, would simply have no meaning.
>
> I am not saying that that our creation is fulfilled; we are
> certainly not what we should be. But, as Paul says, we do not 
> know what we shall become, but we know that we shall be like Him.
>
> There is a very old Jewish commentary on the "tree of
> knowledge" of Genesis, whose fruit was said to awaken mankind's
> moral self-consciousness, and to make them like gods. The comment
> is that they were become like gods in having knowledge to create and
> destroy worlds. Today, we certainly have the fruits of a very 
> powerful and dangerous technology; but what shall we do with it?
>
> You say, "Why is there suffering?" Then you would say that 
> this "reality provides evidence that God is not merciful or just."
> But I would say, with John, that if a man possesses more than
> enough, but turns his heart against his brother in need, then how
> is God's love in him? Or, with the Gospel, how does it benefit
> a man to gain everything of the world, but to lose his very soul?
> No, the existence of suffering is largely witness against us, that 
> we are not merciful, and are not yet justified. However, we shall
> be justified by following the example of Christ.

This may sound plausible to philosophers sitting in the confort
of their drawing rooms, but intellectual arguments such as this
will not convince the thousands dieing of starvation every day.
Is their purpose in life only to convince we who might learn from their
example?  Somehow I doubt that.  What kind of God would create
someone who's sole (soul?) purpose were to experience nothing but
a slow and painful death for the benefit of others?

The existance of suffering may be witness against us, but how does it
spiritually benefit those that must suffer and have no way to
intellectualise it?  Especially if they know nothing of your God?
People are struggling in pain every day who have no concept of your God
or who will be unable (not unwilling but unable) to positively benefit
from such experiences.

You might claim that without evil we will not understand what true
good is.  My response to that is, "Without good, the evil is
also meaningless."  Many will never experience a merciful end to
their sufferings.  Thus that suffering is meaningless.

> The Lord said to Job, "Are you to accuse me in order to 
> justify yourself?" Here, the meaning is not that Job was a "sinner", 
> as such, but that Job presumed, as also did his "friends", wrongly 
> against God that our suffering should be related to our notion of 
> His justice. But as Jesus said about the man who was blind from birth,
> this suffering did not originate with his sins, or even those of his
> parents, but so that the nature of God might come to be known 
> through him, as was in the case of Job, and also of Jesus himself.

You haven't grasped the point.  God is slaughtering thousands for the
intellectual and spiritual sake of a few.  I'm sure that makes the
childern of Ethiopia feel real good:  "Yes kids, God really loves you...
you aren't being judged at all!  Your deaths really DO have meaning!"

Problem is:  They'll never know this (somewhat contrived) philosophy.
They pay the price... and we, the pampered few, will benefit from it...
maybe.

> While the wisdom of this is not very explicitly clear to us, 
> it is intuitively clear to most adults that somehow we are made better
> moral beings, by our experience of suffering, our own as well as that
> of others. Something this obvious is generally overlooked, especially
> something about our own common psychological nature, but my point is 
> that, whether or not we understand this, through suffering, we are 
> made a new creation, I would say, more nearly the image of God.

And I contend that this sort of argument is still in the realm of
comforting drawing-room philosophy.  It is hardly comforting to
think that a few thousand people are about to starve to death so
that I may pick up the paper and read about it.  Am I REALLY made
better by someone elses suffering?  Not likely.  It would be more
beneficial to spare those thousand people their painful deaths
than for me to read of their demise in "The Washington Post."

This sort of explanation hardly displays the "perfect wisdom of a
divine creator."  Some will claim that such suffering is caused by
man's original sin.  Others will claim that it is Saten's handywork.
Some try to reconcile evil into the overall "divine plan" as you have.
All in all, I don't think that the above argument provides a
satisfactory answer to the problem of evil.
-- 


UUCP: ...{decvax,ihnp4,allegra}!seismo!trwatf!root	- Lord Frith
ARPA: trwatf!root@SEISMO

"And Frith made the world"

davet@oakhill.UUCP (Dave Trissel) (03/20/85)

>[David Harwood]
>
>  My feeling
>  is that everyone who sincerely wants to know whether there is a God
>  will be given sufficient reason for faith, but that not everyone is
>  sincere. You have only to look around to see that many lord it over
>  the others -- in their hearts, they would presume the place of God.
>  They hardly want to find out that they were wrong.
>

Please step back David and look at what you are saying.  You are making a
bold claim that everyone who doesn't believe in your version of a God is
insincere.  Do you really think that?  What about someone like myself
who grew up a dedicated Christian but when confronted with the contradictions
involved chose to honestly face what reality was instead of blindly clinging
to earlier beliefs in God.  And it was very painfull.  I didn't WANT to change
my beliefs.  It was much more psychologically confortable not to have to.
But there was something within me, a yearning for Truth, that forced me to
be honest and accept the consequences of being honest.

Back in my earlier years I would have said just what you did.  So I very well
understand why you said it.  But I suggest that you examine the damages your
belief system holds as well as its advantages.  Do you think it beneficial
that you feel justified in labeling millions of people insincere just because
they don't accept the same concepts as you do?

If there were ever to be such a thing as a judgement day, I wouldn't be
afraid.  Since God supposedly sees into the heart, He/She would know I've
dealt with the issues of Her/His existence with all integrity and openness.

Dave Trissel                    {seismo,gatech,ihnp4}!ut-sally!oakhill!davet