Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen to Good People?

Just watched this a few minutes ago myself.  Excellent video!

Years ago, on a religion board, a poster commented that everything happened according to god’s will; in response, I posted this prayer:

“Then we thank you, oh Lord, for the children born allergic to their own skin; though it rends our hearts to hear their horrible screams, it gladdens us to know that their terrible agony is by your august will. “

This illustrates why it’s okay to be an atheist who is only mostly, but not entirely, certain that god isn’t real. In the unlikely event that he was real, he’d be a useless jerk, unworthy of worship or veneration.

Playing God’s advocate for a bit:
1. people dying from their tribulations does not mean that God gave them more than they could handle – they get an afterlife.
2. the woman being beaten has the free will as Job did during his trials — her choice will determine her afterlife.
3. intervening affects the will of the attacker, and anyone who hears of the attack later. It could lead to people abandoning faith in the presence of proof for example, and put their afterlife in jeopardy.
4. superman is (a) fictional, and (b) not all powerful and all good – he makes mistakes and, if real, would be judged in his turn too.

… and so on and so forth.
… most of these are like this. Suffering in this world, though terrible in some cases, is transient. However, as you suffer in this world and keep faith, so you will be rewarded in the next – which sort of makes up for it. The woman would not be un-raped but getting to heaven means she is no longer traumatized and the experiences of this life become meaningless.

God could engineer things, as suggested, so it looks like some natural forces prevented the atrocity and allowed the perps a chance to change their ways … however, consistently applied, this would impact on the choices people make again. Nobody would do anything really bad since there is zero chance to get away with it and it is likely to destroy faith. It’s not just those guys in the mix. What He’d have to do is allow some people to get away with it and others to get caught and so on … which is what happens.

This messes a bit with the inconsistency argument – God has to be inconsistent.

But you know, Marvin was right: it gives me a headache thinking down to this level.

They always use the “free will” argument. Apparently he cares more about the free will of violent offenders than of the victims. They don’t have much free will as they are being raped, murdered, beaten or in a fatal car accident that is caused by a drunk driver.  

Well put, The Other Weirdo. This life is but a sad, frustrating filtering process to theists. I work with a born-again fundie. One day he was frustrated about something, so to lighten things up I said, “Don’t worry, we’ll all be dead soon.” His response was to close his eyes, tilt his head back and say, “Ohhh, I can’t WAIT.” It’s frightening.

Generally speaking, people who can`t wait for death should be referred to emergency psychiatric care. Suicidal ideation is worrisome.

 My beef with the freewill argument is that apologists seem to forget about the existence of natural disasters and illnesses, suffering from those things has nothing to do with a person’s freewill as no specific person caused those things.

Re: “1. people dying from their tribulations does not mean that God gave them more than they could handle – they get an afterlife.”

The problem with this theodicy is that it basically renders our (physical) lives irrelevant. Anything that ever happens to anyone, for any reason, is ultimately “OK” because … well, no matter what horrid thing happened, s/he gets an afterlife! This can be used to justify any kind of atrocity one could imagine.

Far from promoting morality … which most theists claim their religion does … it promotes absolute amorality.

Yeah, I sank into nihilism as a Christian, because you have to hate (or be apathetic towards)  all humanity and life to say injustice in this world doesn’t matter, and God’s “justice” is somehow better.

I’m similarly disgusted by God’s claims of being the Heavenly Father. He’s a megalomaniacal jerk of a Father, worse than most human ones. Most parents don’t think their children ought to exist just to glorify them (well, except for those who apply the Bible verses which pretty much say that children are the glory of their parents).

Or, think of a human creator who created living beings with free will who were capable of suffering. Then that man made a world with trials and tribulations, knowing full well that many of his creations would fail his test. Instead of just snuffing out failures, he decided he would torture them forever, while the others who succeeded would lose their free will and worship their creator forever. You’d think that person was a psychopath.

You don’t need to make some people burn in Hell; skip the horrible life-on-Earth-with-some-going-to-hell step and just make more mindless worshipping drones!

I guess God’s also a sadist. If everything was created to glorify Him, hell and the suffering of millions for eternity is also for God’s glory.

It’s horrifying if you think it through at all.

Yeah….I remember my idealizing death and the after-life as a Christian.

It sure didn’t help with my sinking into depression and suicidal ideation to think how much better being dead would be…

 i rarely do this, but..

+1000000

srsly. this is my instant, always response to believers. “if there’s a god, i don’t want to spend eternity with him/it/whatever. anything that could’ve stopped {horror x} and didn’t is not worth my worship, let alone eternal company.” fuck that noise. shuts em up every time.

God created us to be in a loving relationship with him and with each other.  Love must be given freely or else it isn’t true love. Therefore, God created humankind with free will, giving everyone the opportunity to be in loving relationships with him — or not if they so choose.

Along came the devil and planted doubt in the minds of Adam and Eve about God’s love for them.  He suggested that God didn’t want them to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because if they did, then they would be like God himself.  That wasn’t true.  God didn’t want them to eat of that tree because he didn’t want them to know what evil was.  He was protecting them.  But they doubted his love and chose not to return it.  They didn’t trust him and that meant they disobeyed him re: eating the fruit.  When God says “don’t”, he’s saying “don’t do that because you will get hurt and I don’t want you to get hurt”.

That bad choice introduced sin and evil into the world.  So it’s here because of people’s bad choices, not God’s lack of love.  Some people call evil the absence of good as darkness is the absence of light.  However, Norman Geisler, in his book, If God, Why Evil? says it’s more like a blight on something good — like rot on a tree or a wound on the arm.  What God made was good.  Humanity is responsible for ruining it, but, as I said, God gave us freedom of choice.  He didn’t create mere automatons.  We have no one to blame but ourselves.

God dealt with evil at the cross of Jesus Christ.  Sin and death were defeated by his death and resurrection.  That implemented the Kingdom of God which we only see partially at the moment.  It will not be fully completed until Christ’s second coming at which time evil will be dealt with once and for all.  Right now, the Holy Spirit is in the world, curbing evil so, without God, things would be much worse.

The cross of Christ represents the one and only way to assess the love of God.  Christ chose to die in our place that we might not suffer the eternal consequences of sin.  He offers the gift of salvation to all who want it.  Again, it’s a matter of free will and choice.  Some accept it.  Some don’t.

God does not remove all the consequences of sin.  However, I have seen him work much good in the midst of tragedy and suffering and difficulties, in my life, and in the lives of others.  And, while he may not zap all of our problems away, he promises to walk with us through them so that we will have victory.  That’s certainly how it has been in my experience.

God’s omniscience does not preclude our having free will.  Just because I know that my sister is going to walk the dog, that doesn’t remove her free choice to do that — or to stay home if it starts to pour rain.

As for the issue of natural disasters not being a matter of free will, ALL of creation was cursed when Adam and Even chose sin over loving God.  So they are a result of free will, as well.

And as for eternity in heaven making up for the difficulties of this life, I’m sure it will.  However, that doesn’t prevent me from living life to the fullest and enjoying God’s blessings now.  Christ came to give life and to give it abundantly, right now, here, on earth.  If you don’t want to enter into a relationship with him, that’s your choice.  Again, it’s all about free will!

Of course, there is the question of how anybody can even know what evil is if we don’t have something to measure it by, that is, an objective, moral, universal truth.  Some people say there is no such thing.  But if you believe it is NEVER right to rape and murder a child at any time for any reason anywhere, then you believe in an objective, moral, universal truth. 

Where does that truth come from?  If we are only here as mere accidents, evolved by chance, purposelessly, what makes one person’s view of truth more accurate than another’s?  Without God, we are left with competing “truths” from a variety of people.  Which person has the right one?  You can say, the person who chooses that which is for the greater good.  Well, Hitler thought killing disabled people, non-whites, Jewis was for the greater good.  What makes his view bad and another person’s good if both are just accidents of nature? 

If you’re a fan of Richard Dawkins and believe that we are all merely “dancing to our DNA” as he put it, then we have no freedom of choice, but are determined by our biology.  And if one is born a rapist, then how can we fault him if he’s just doing what his DNA demands him to do?

How does an atheist answers these questions?

Any god that chooses this much suffering as punishment for eating fruit is unworthy of anyones love.
Back in the real world, I guess we are lucky your god is only fictional.

Bad and good things happen without a reason. Things happen, that’s all.

 Oh gosh, so many ideas to dig into. I’ll pick just the first and let others tackle the remainder of this big post.

———

“God created us to be in a loving relationship with him and with each
other.  Love must be given freely or else it isn’t true love. Therefore,
God created humankind with free will, giving everyone the opportunity
to be in loving relationships with him — or not if they so choose.”

To put it bluntly, this is equivalent to saying we “choose” to not be in a loving lifelong relationship with the unicorn we had a dream about when we were five.

Except that unicorns are less likely to be imaginary, since inserting them into the universe doesn’t require rewriting as much of Physics as God does.

“Free Will” does not exist in this situation anyway. You cannot choose what you actually believe in a vacuum of information. A person who does not believe in God could at most “choose” to let himself be brainwashed in order to change his beliefs, which still does not make him a legitimate believer in the sense of having Free Will. Feel free to argue, if you do in fact think that you can just make yourself sincerely believe that unicorn is right beside you right now, while at the same time not having to trick your own mind to do it.*

What this supposed choice comes down to is that God is eternally punishing people for something entirely outside their control and entirely in his: whether they have reason to think he exists when he’s hiding from all detection. You might as well taser a blind man for failing to tell you what color your necktie is.

Which is not to claim that atheists are “spiritually” blind, whatever that useless word means. It would be stupid to take it that way.

*Orwell might have had something to say about this.

 Here’s what I don’t get:

“God created humankind with free will, giving everyone the opportunity
to be in loving relationships with him — or not if they so choose.”

“Along came the devil and planted doubt in the minds of Adam and Eve
about God’s love for them.  He suggested that God didn’t want them to
eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because if they did,
then they would be like God himself.  That wasn’t true. ”

First of all, this is merely a serpent in Genesis, not necessarily the devil. But in any case, evil already seems to exist in the world before Adam and Eve made any kind of choice, or else the serpent couldn’t have explicitly lied to them.

“God didn’t want
them to eat of that tree because he didn’t want them to know what evil
was.  He was protecting them.  But they doubted his love and chose not
to return it.  They didn’t trust him and that meant they disobeyed him
re: eating the fruit.”

Secondly, the choice of Adam and Eve obviously wasn’t free if it was
under false pretenses because the serpent led them astray. Also, since they
had yet to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they
could not yet know the consequences of their actions, i.e. the difference between good and evil.

Thirdly, if God didn’t want them to know what evil was, then evil obviously already existed, if only perhaps as a potentiality that God tacitly endorses.
“When God says “don’t”, he’s saying “don’t do that
because you will get hurt and I don’t want you to get hurt.””

Lastly, this is plain wrong. God does not care if they get hurt, because free will and inevitable evil and suffering to come from its exercise is apparently too important.

God created a tree in the middle of the garden for no other purpose except to tempt. He then punished two people for eating from it despite them not knowing the true consequences of their actions and having been tricked, thus their actions were not free.

These are the most basic problems with the first few paragraphs. I hope I need not go on.

 I said the same thing recently: that IF the God proclaimed by Christianity is real, he could only be the Old Testament deity. You know, the one for whom the phrase “Lord, lead me not to temptation” originated (God Tempts Abraham, later redacted to God Tests Abraham to expunge a contradiction), when the Yahwists and Elohists didn’t even try to deny the idea that God was fully responsible for all the evil that happens in the world. Their vision of God wasn’t as a loving father, but as a terrifying destroyer, whose favor could be curried to incite destruction upon your enemies.

It’s amazing how similar our paths have been. I began as a Bible-believing Christian who wanted to take his faith more seriously. I set out to *really* find “god/God,” no matter where it led. I wanted to know I was on the right path. (This seemed to be, after all, the biggest issue of my life!) After years of searching, studying, praying, reflecting, questioning, and debating, I realized EVERY believer is just making it up as they go along. Atheism followed soon after.

Show me 2 billion Christians, and I’ll show you 2 billion different religions.

 Well right off the bat, you’re wrong. God said “if you eat this, then in that day you will surely die.” The serpent said “no, you’ll just get more knowledge and be like god.” They didn’t die. They got knowledge. Who lied?

Not to mention that it’s idiotic to expect obedience from people who don’t know the difference between good and evil.

I love pointing out that the god character of the Bible does in fact lie. In Numbers 11 he promises to feed a group of complaining people. He tells them they will eat meat for an entire month, that it’ll be coming out their noses, that they’ll eat so much darn meat it’ll make ’em sick of it. So what does this god character do? He sends them meat, immediately followed by a plague that kills off a number of them, seeing to it they will NEVER fulfill His promise. The kicker here is that in doing so, God either sends them straight to hell (so much for “God doesn’t send anyone to hell”) *or* straight to heaven (in which case SCORE! What kind of punishment is THAT meant to be?)

Anyone have any other tales of Bible-god lying???

I think there are a gazillion other stories much like ours, and with good reason.

We’re all such funny people here. 🙂

 http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20120328.gif

So you admit that god created Adam and Eve without the knowledge of good and evil and then unreasonably expected him to obey his commands. That’s like putting a toddler in a room full of candy and telling them not to touch the candy.  Who created the devil? What it god? If it was, why would god create a being that he had to know would ruin his perfect creation? If Adam and Eve were created with only the knowledge that god wanted them to have, then how did they have free will?

Love must be given freely or else it isn’t true love. Therefore, God
created humankind with free will, giving everyone the opportunity to be
in loving relationships with him — or not if they so choose.

The threat of Hell pretty thoroughly obliterates the possibility of giving love freely to God.  If my choices are to love God or be tortured for eternity, then I’m no more free to choose to love God than a mugging victim is free to choose to hand his wallet over to the person pointing a gun at his face.

It sounds to me like your proof of God is based on how well he treats you or others.
I don’t prove the existence of the police based on how fast they respond to a 911 call.  If there is no force stopping the rape of a woman, which is what you base your athiesm on.  Is there some force causing the man to rape or kill. If so what is it?
Why does God have to intervien in my life to prove he exist?  Could the sun rising every morning be enough to show there is a God?  With all the energy you put into this video and web site, I would say you believe in God, You’re just pist off at him because he doesn’t do what you want him to do. Which would make you God!!  

Simple, logical, rational, reasonable…yet somehow uncomprehensible to the theist. WHY IS THAT? MaryLouiseC, are you going to respond to *any* of this?

Actually, that’s what the theist believes, not the atheist. Supposedly there once was nothing but a lonely god, who one day spoke a magic incantation of POOF! there was a world and a sky and plants and animals and Starbucks everywhere, etc. I love it when theists try to claim WE are the ones who think something came from nothing, when it is actually THEIR claim.

That’s a silly question, Jsmith. Your father exists. How do we know? Evidence. You have no evidence for any gods. If you did, this conversation would not be happening. Father = real, gods = fake.

“You’re just pist off at him because he doesn’t do what you want him to do. ”

Why do you assume we feel anything on the subject of God? I don’t believe in Bigfoot, Jackalopes, Chupacabras, Santa, Unicorns, Dragons, Ghosts, Aliens, UFOs, Zeus, or Allah. I don’t hate these things, how can one hate something that does not exist? Do you hate what you don’t believe in?

The only defense against being taken advantage of is to ask for proof, without which any assertion is true, no matter how far fetched.

 You asked at one point if you made any sense. The answer is no. Your rambling post had absolutely nothing to do with the OP.

I see alot of “Free Will” arguements. So God doesn’t exist because he imposes “free will” If he uses free will, lets us make our own choices without interfering, how would know if he existed? To me the video doesn’t say God is not real. It says if he is real, he’s unfair and doesn’t care. Your argument is not from a true athiest point of view. You’re not saying God doesn’t exist, it says if he does exist, he is unfair.

Evidence is something we look at to make a judgement.  The order and complexity of the universe is “evidence” of a god. Just like the complexity of a computer can be evidence of humans. Computers exist because someone built them. Thier complexity and order could not happen by chance.  I’m not making the judgement that humans exist, but I am providing evidence. Just like I am providing evidence for the possiblity of God. You’re looking at the evidence and making a judgement that there is no God. I look at the same evidence and say there is a possibility there is a God.

You don’t live in my nieghborhood.  My point: I don’t have to get a response to belive they exist. Can you prove that it wasn’t God that responded to my prayer?  

So you don’t require proof to believe god responded to your prayer but you DO require proof to believe god did not respond to your prayer. That makes perfect sense.

Based on that, Santa IS actively tracking my naughty and nice scorecard. Prove to me that he does not. 

Who said I didn’t need proof. The proof to me is that he responded to my prayer. I asked you to prove or convince me he didn’t. You didn’t do that.  You made a comparison to Santa. Who’s making sense. Prove to me God does not respond to my prayer. 

Because there’s something in this life, and people judging and shunning you (at the absolute least) for something that should be inconsequential can make this life – the only life – hell.

 Bingo!

I don’t ramble. And I also don’t put down other people on the Internet. Open your eyes and see the bigger picture of how this world works. All the answers are there and I’ve found them already. One day you will too. Good luck

God cannot be logically compared with a human parent. Human parents are, by definition, limited … by their own nature, as well as the nature of the children they raise. By contrast, an omnipotent god has no such limitation. He not only “made” his children, he “made” their nature itself.

As for having the free will “to make choices that may hurt you,” that’s entirely different from having the free will to make choices that hurt others and cause them to suffer, even though they’re innocent of that choice. You wrongly assume that all evil in the world is the direct result of choices made by those who suffer, themselves; that is absolutely not true. You also assume there’s no “evil” not caused by human action, which also is not true; natural disasters & disease, for instance.

All of that was, or is, under your god’s control … assuming he exists. He must want that evil to occur to people who did not make a wrong “choice.” There is no rational way to avoid having to make this concession. His supposed omnipotence makes it unavoidable.

Lastly, I question the logic of assuming that an omnipotent being wants his creations to “love” him. A desire for love is a human trait. To assume he wants our love is to think of him as a very big and powerful human being. An omnipotent being, on the other hand, would most certainly not merely be a super-powered human. Odds are, such a being’s nature would be far different from ours.

 Because the god people keep trying to poisen children with their superstition and keep others from having equal rights. When the god people will learn to keep their religion to themselfs, you”l see no judging from atheists.

Can we narrow your theory down to your disbelief of an omnipotent God on the basis of allowing suffering to occur? Is it possible that an all controlling God can control himself? If there were no suffering, natural disasters and dsease, would you believe in God. Some people would call that place heaven.  I’m amazed at your logic. I can tell you have done your homework. You talk as though you know God better than anyone else.  Anyone can read about a sunset on the ocean and assume to know everything about it. But the person who has been there can tell you what it smells like, sounds like, looks like, and even tell taste like. It doesn’t mater what the person who read about it says. It doesn’t come close to experiencing it.  You can question my logic, but you can never take away my experiences.

Thats a pretty good point, but where did the get the ideas that people aren;t suppose to judge one another?

Can we narrow your theory down to your disbelief of an omnipotent God on the basis of allowing suffering to occur?

The issue here isn’t whether or not I believe in your god. For me the question is whether or not the posited Abrahamic god actually desires the existence of evil. I suggest that he does, becausee logic permits no other conclusion.

Is it possible that an all controlling God can control himself?

Of course he would be able to! “All controlling” means “all” + “controlling.”

If there were no suffering, natural disasters and dsease, would you believe in God.

Whether or not I believe in your god is not the point, at the moment. I cannot and will not place before you some condition which … if you think you fulfill it … will compel me to believe in him. My belief (whether current or future) is not at issue just now. What we are doing is exploring the logical ramifications of the commonly-posited Abrahamic god. Once we’ve gotten beyond that, then we might discuss what it would take to convince me he exists.

I’m amazed at your logic. I can tell you have done your homework.

Thank you.

You talk as though you know God better than anyone else.

Actually I don’t “know” him at all. I do, however, “know” much of what his believers say about him.

Anyone can read about a sunset on the ocean and assume to know everything about it. But the person who has been there can tell you what it smells like, sounds like, looks like, and even tell taste like.

So you’re saying that god can’t really be discussed, he can only be experienced. This is not a new or even unusual proposition. It’s a component of most mysticism, and was a core notion of the classical Gnostics, not to mention the initiates of other mystery-religions in ancient times.

You can question my logic, but you can never take away my experiences.

I’m not sure I ever expressed a desire to “take away your experiences,” or anything else you have. All I am doing is teasing out the ramifications of asserting that an omnipotent deity created and rules over the universe. You can suggest logic is of no help in the matter, but that isn’t going to convince me not to pay attention to it. “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” didn’t work for the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz, either.

He apparently did interfer enough.

Are you a lawyer or did you debate in college? You broke down every thing I said and gave a rebutal. I’m impressed!  I love a good debate. We have differnent reasons for believing what we believe.  Will we ever persuade one another to the other side. I doubt it. I know there have bee times I wondered if there really is a God. I’m sure you and many others have wondered, Is there a God?  After reading the Bible, I’m convinced that if what I read is true, I will never understand the complexities of the universe. If the Gospels are true, If John 3:16 is true. God loves us!  

And this adds to the existing conversation how?

Are you serious! You’ll see no judging from athiest. You apparently haven’t been reading anyone elses post.

 It’s called Pascal’s Wager.

As for your post, unless you are commenting on my post to MaryLouise. This adds nothing. Or unless you are commenting on ThinkingAtheist’s post, which is also a reply to MaryLouise, it still adds nothing.

I love random points as much as the next person, for example, I like cheese, it has calcium which is good for bones.

Do a Google search for “Pascal’s Wager.” Your argument here advances nothing in our conversation, strategically speaking. Not only that, but you’ve left out all the other possible god/heaven scenarios that might also exist. Have you ever considered that you might die and stand before a god other than yours? You might be in more trouble than the atheists if that’s true. How worried are you about that? Not much? Now you know how *I* feel.

That quote was NOT written by me. You have me confused with someone else.

I’m very familar with Pascals Wager. That’s where the information came from. Yes, I have consider other Gods. Why are you making an assumtion on which God I believe in? Why are you makeing an assumtion that I’m worried. So, no I don’t know how you feel. I thought this conversation was based on evidecne, not feelings and assumtions.  

I did not realize that pointing out tangents was the same as telling you not to contribute. Stop jumping to conclusions and read the words on the screen. 

 I thought this conversation was based on evidecne, not feelings and assumtions. 

*This* conversion is based on Mary’s interpretation of scripture. *Your* conversation does not discuss why Mary’s interpretation is wrong or right, it does not discuss why my rebuttal of Mary’s comments is right or wrong, instead it tries to start a NEW dialog with a variant of Pascal’s Wager which has nothing to do with *THIS* conversation. Feel free to start a new thread. 

You will never convince a believer to stop believing with facts and logic because their minds don’t work that way. To believe in god *requires* abandonment of logic and common sense.

To the believers on this page, you’re wasting your time here and you’re likely to receive bullying and abuse.

Don’t take it personally, it’s because we think you’re deluded idiots.

I find it interesting that you say believers are likely to recieve bullying and abuse. Most of the athiest I talk to say they are abused by believers. I agree with the statement that our minds don’t work the same way.  But to say I have abandoned logic and common sense because I made a decsion about what I believe based on what I have studied for 30 years. I guess I am a deluded idiot with a Masters Degree.  I’ll take that abuse.

Ok, so you say that the complexity of human life points to a creator…why just one? Why not many? You gave computers as an evidence of human ingenuity, but we have Macs, we have PCs, we have many programmers that add  onto this every day… I see many creators, if I go by your example. Second, EVEN if there was ONE or MANY creators, WHICH one from the popular  explanatory stories will it be??? From my background, I am more familiar with the Christian and Muslim explanatory stories…and there is very little plausibility  that those Gods would have created this world. For one, they are wrong on the age of the universe…as they are wrong on how to cure diseases, as they are wrong on relationships… as they are wrong on many, many other things. We now have a better understanding of how these things work. For the unknown, we are still searching. If anything, those stories point to very primitive humans inventing incredible fables to try to create systems of cooperation and make sense of their surroundings…. That is ALL any of the explanatory stories that I have came across tells me. 

We know what the Christian believes, we no what the thesit believes.  What does the thinking athiest believe about how we got here?

I find it narrow minded to say there is no evidence of God.

so the devil is more powerful than god? Wasn’t he also created by god, actually? Also please, please, please watch the impossibility and the absurdity of concept of free will given by Sam Harris here. He speaks for many non-believers in the way we perceive this strange notion, the notion that an individual exists in a vacuum and makes decisions devoid of ANY influence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCofmZlC72g&feature=share

Please define supernatural. Where did you get your information about God being supernatural. Could evidence of God be seen when I looked at looked at the stars last night or saw the sun come up this morning. You said there is no evidence for God. I say it is evidence. We’re on teh same jury, we just look at the case differntly.

I don’t claim to have evidence for things that don’t exist. I never said I did. I have no evidence for the non-existence of Jesus, Thor, Zeus or the Easter Bunny.

The burden of proof is on those who make positive assertions. If you feel you have evidence, then you are welcome to present it. It’s not narrow-minded of me to withhold belief until I see evidence. And FYI, ancient scriptures do not count as evidence, since surely you do not accept the existence of the Vedas and Upanishads as proof of the Hindu deities.

I hate it when religious people cry, “aha, but who created the big bang!” as if they’ve got you.

I reply, “ok so who created god then”, shit- for-brains.

Geeze, Ran, I think that was uncalled for.  Not going for a “gotcha”.  I was just asking for thoughts on the subject.  I do think it’s pretty incredible to think that life and consciousness is nothing more than chemical reactions and electical impulses.  Pretty amazing that evolution has led to the level of complexity and order we find in our world, huh?

If you subscribe to evolution, then does that include survival of the fittest?  If you believe in survival of the fittest, why are you concerned with justice?

Understood.  So doesn’t injecting a system of “justice” interfere with that process and artificially hold up those of our species/society that are not well-suited for our environment?

Think to the defining moments of your lives. Im sure much of it is happy. A birthday or wedding or birth. But t really think about those moments that truly define you. The death of friends, family. Failure, disappointment and pain. These are the true teachers of man. Without these things, life would be meaningless. And yet with the blindness of children we ask why. We wish for a life free of bad things, yet this would destroy our humanity. Without pain there could be no pleasure. Without evil, there can be no god.

“Without evil, there can be no god.” You said it! Thank goodness there is no god.