Bible Questions?

I agree with this, however if God created everything, then He must have created all the bad in the world too. Our is disease another result of our "wrong choices"!

 

But if there is nothing greater than god, and through him all things are made and understood and if you truly believe that why would you want to do anything other than study this beings teachings?

Of course one answer could be that the teachings of this deity are not that interesting or needed in this (or any other) day and age, as for knocking, your not going to bring up Pulsars are you?

 

Although God did create the diseases, without the imperfection brought on by the "wrong choices" those diseases would not infect us.

 

For one thing, there is much to learn about God from studying his creations.

Or the answer could be the teachings are interesting and are needed but that God's creations are also very interesting.

 

So God thought, "let me punish those who disobey me in many ways!"

Not only willI send you to hell (whatever concept of hell you believe in) but He also let poeple suffer with cancer etc. Ridiculous.

SO that answers my previous question, about why God doesn't prevent the bad from happening - it's because He created it to happen.

Not a God I want to spend my life worshipping when He bribes people by eternal death and disease.

 

Your basically asking why does a personal god allow bad things to happen to good people, it's a very good question and although it has been asked in many ways by many people still has not been answered by any of the religious apologists who frequent this thread.

Of course I also cannot offer you a reason why a god of love would permit suffering, but I can offer this theory instead,

We are a poorly evolved primate species in just the begins (hopefully) of our technological age, we live on a cooling planet that is often prone to Earth quakes, our pre frontal lobes are to small and our Adrenalin glands to large, we are prone to violence and panic and some of us are so retarded by our fear of death that they will believe in anything that will help them come to terms with the reality of the situation, and in the end managing only to preach fairy tails of immortality to those credulous enough to force themselves to believe it.

 

I believe there probably is some kind of higher power out there, but I really don't believe that it is the Christian God. I love learning about different faiths and will continue to question what I don't understand.

Your theory does make sense, it is crazy how there are so many religions all claiming to be right one - if I was born in India I would most probably be Hindu or Sikh, if in the Middle East - Muslim. It seems to be a matter of where one is born in the majority of cases.

I don't know what 'religion' is right, if any are, but I know that I will not worship a God who causes so much pain and destruction, regardless of whether or not we follow Him and who then attempts to make us believe that is all our fault!

 

On and on and on and on it goes the "heathen" rage and the "men of God" preach and defend their understanding of what is "the way to God".
After taking the time too read the entire thread, it seems as if every question is still pertinent and every answer has reached its climatic end of satisfying the confidence of ones own beliefs to themselves.If one were to love their brother as themselves would not the brothers allow "free will" of understanding?

 

No the "diseases" had other purposes than to harm us but now that we are in a "weakened" state they can do things to us that were never intended.

You still suffer with the idea that hell is some bad place God sends people but hell is the common grave of mankind, if mankind did not die then there would be no hell, so you could say mankind created hell by dieing.

Yes, God is "letting" people suffer with cancer, etc. But why? Is it because he gets some sadistic pleasure from it, no, in fact it probably causes him more pain than it does us and the only thing that helps him get through it is knowing that he is doing something about it.

God did not create it to happen, we chose for it to happen.

You keep talking prevention, should God not have created cliffs, so no one would jump to their death? Should there be no oceans, in fact no puddle of water deeper than a quarter or an inch, so no one could drown themselves? No trees, no rocks, nothing that we could choose to use to harm ourselves or others, what kind of a world would it be? Would you really want to live in such a world? Yes, God created all those "bad" things but personally, I would rather God gave me a world where those things exist and trust me to choose not to use them to harm myself or others with them, than live without them.

You are just not listening, God is not "bribing" anyone, let alone with eternal death and disease.

Mankind has choices, lots of good choices but a few bad ones as well and we are free to make those choices but all choices come with consequences, some with good consequences and some with bad, even atheists know that, if there was no God there would still be consequences for our choices, so why are you blaming God for our bad choices?

If a someone, after being told that something will injure them and why it will, does it anyway and is injured, you can't take it back. Is it now the fault of the one that warned them? The only thing you can do is fix the injury but what if the person refuses help, do you force it on them?

 

It has been answered many times in this thread, you just don't want to accept the answer.

 

(Proverbs 19:3) It is the foolishness of an earthling man that distorts his way, and so his heart becomes enraged against Jehovah himself.

 

No. This is called" natural selection".

 

He still created them - if He knows everything, He would have seen that created the diseases would lead to this.

If I see someone suffering, even though I know that eventually I will help them over it, I would scrape that and run and help them now - not let them continue to suffer.

Yep,we chose for cancer and aids and all the other horrific illnesses to happen!

I take responsibility for my actions. But I refuse to believe that a God who claims to love us all so much, will even allow such illnesses to exist, let alone hurt people.

To me it appears to be a bribe - albeit a bad one. He is saying "love and and follow me and eventually you will have eternal life with me, but along the way you will suffer and hurt and may cause suffering and hurt to others. I don't want this to happen - but I know good will come out of it".

Sorry, but no.

Like I said earlier, if I had caused the injury, but had warned them it would happen before they did it - I would not sit back and just let it happen and not do anything to intervene. I do not like the "I told you so"culture.

 

Yes, God created the entire web of life, each part depending on another but God, after he gave us free will, no longer sees what we will do and did not know it would lead to this.

Even if you knew that doing so would make it worse and not better?

Yes, we did.

Do you really take responsibility for your actions? Then why do you continue to blame others, God, for them?

Do you remember me telling you that we chose this for ourselves, God did not choose this for us. We basically said to God we can do a better job of running things than you can. So what was God to do? Was he to say no you can’t and I’m not even going to let you try? So now you’re saying it’s God’s fault that this is all happening, he shouldn't have even let us try to run things. God didn’t put suffering and hurt in the world, we did. But God is working out a way to end all the suffering and hurt, once and for all, once we realize that we can’t do a better job of running things than God. If would stop us before we realize we can't we can't do a better job, then for the rest of eternity we'll be saying to God; we were just turning the corner and just another couple of years and we would have got it right without your help.

So what are you going to do to prevent them? How would you intervene?

What do you do to prevent people from smoking? They’ve been warned.

Have you ever seen someone dying from smoking related causes? I have, it’s not pleasant.

So what do you do when you see someone smoking? Give them a stern talking to, take the cigarette out of their hand and put it out? What if they just reach for another, do you restrain them maybe handcuffs or a straight jacket, may be prison or a mental institution?

Do you, “Ms I’d intervene”, do anything?

 

I don't blame God - I don't even believe in him.

Not even going to answer this as we have been going around in circles and both have very different opinions on this and neither of us will budge!

Yes I have, and it's horrible.

Slightly different - I didn't create cigarettes or the cancer they can lead to. I can advise them of course, but I know that any illness that occurs wasn'ta fault of my creation.

Yes, I know you'll say that the cancer was not created in the sense to harm and we have done that ourselves through our mistakes - but it still wouldn't exist if God hadn't created it in the first place.

The choices I make in my life, or the advice I might give to others are important, but they are nothing compared to what you are saying. I cannot save or destroy millions upon millions of people - God can. A lot of people close to me smoke and yes I wish they didn't, especialy when you hear about lung cancer, but I do not have the opportnity to stop it all and take away the possibility of pain and suffering. God does. If I were a God, yes I would love my people, but I would let allow them to go through what we have done in this world with only the hope of eternal life at the end. A parent allows their children to make mistakes so that they learn, yes, but they do not let them suffer repeatedly, often for something they haven't done.

No need to be sarcastic.

 

Doesn't sound very omniscient to me... where does it say this in the bible? Don't you think that by telling them NOT to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil that god most certainly knew what would happen if they did?

Punishing the grandchild's grandchild's grandchildren...
Allowing one person (or two if you don't want to only blame Eve) to ruin it for all mankind...

It would be interesting if governments worked like this... "okay citizens, some of you have fucked it all up for everyone else, but we're not going to do anything, clearly you guys like it better this way. We'll be here when you want to get back to believing in us."

 

I believe everything happens for a reason even if it looks horrible at the time.

 

Perhaps it does, although when you look at some things that happen it is hard to figure out what the reason could be. But, I guess it can't only be the good things that happen for a reason.

Quick question if you don't mind - do you believe in the Christian God? I'm trying to work out what stance your answers are coming from

 

Srudying the teaching is just the beginning. The real knowledge comes from living them.

white noise.

 

I agree. It's difficult to figure out. There are two ways to look at it. If everything is a mistake then we look for someone/something to blame, but if everything happens for a reason we can focus on all the lessons learned.

Yes.