Posted on 02/17/2005 5:17:17 PM PST by ViLaLuz
The tsunami of sea water was followed instantly by a tsunami of spittle as the religious sputtered to rationalize God's latest felony. Here we'd been placidly killing each other a few dozen at a time in Iraq, Darfur, Congo, Israel, and Palestine, when along comes the deity and whacks a quarter million in a couple of hours between breakfast and lunch. On CNN, NPR, Fox News, and in newspaper articles too numerous for Nexis to count, men and women of the cloth weighed in solemnly on His existence, His motives, and even His competence to continue as Ruler of Everything.
Theodicy, in other words--the attempt to reconcile God's perfect goodness with the manifest evils of His world--has arisen from the waves. On the retro, fundamentalist, side, various men of the cloth announced that the tsunami was the rational act of a deity enraged by (take your pick): the suppression of Christianity in South Asia, pornography and child-trafficking in that same locale, or, in the view of some Muslim commentators, the bikini-clad tourists at Phuket.
On the more liberal end of the theological spectrum, God's spokespeople hastened to stuff their fingers in the dike even as the floodwaters of doubt washed over it. Of course, God exists, seems to be the general consensus. And, of course, He is perfectly good. It's just that his jurisdiction doesn't extend to tectonic plates. Or maybe it does and He tosses us an occasional grenade like this just to see how quickly we can mobilize to clean up the damage. Besides, as the Catholic priests like to remind us, "He's a 'mystery' "--though that's never stopped them from pronouncing His views on abortion with absolute certainty.
The clerics who are struggling to make sense of the tsunami must not have noticed that this is hardly the first display of God's penchant for wanton, homicidal mischief. Leaving out man-made genocide, war, and even those "natural" disasters, like drought and famine, to which "man" invariably contributes through his inept social arrangements, God has a lot to account for in the way of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and plagues. Nor has He ever shown much discrimination in his choice of victims. A tsunami hit Lisbon in 1755, on All Saints Day, when the good Christians were all in church. The faithful perished, while the denizens of the red light district, which was built on strong stone, simply carried on sinning. Similarly, last fall's hurricanes flattened the God-fearing, Republican parts of Florida while sparing sin-soaked Key West and South Beach.
The Christian-style "God of love" should be particularly vulnerable to post-tsunami doubts. What kind of "love" inspired Him to wrest babies from their parents' arms, the better to drown them in a hurry? If He so loves us that He gave his only son etc., why couldn't he have held those tectonic plates in place at least until the kids were off the beach? So much, too, for the current pop-Christian God, who can be found, at least on the Internet, micro-managing people's careers, resolving marital spats, and taking excess pounds off the faithful--this last being Pat Robertson's latest fixation.
If we are responsible for our actions, as most religions insist, then God should be, too, and I would propose, post-tsunami, an immediate withdrawal of prayer and other forms of flattery directed at a supposedly moral deity--at least until an apology is issued, such as, for example: "I was so busy with Cindy-in-Omaha's weight-loss program that I wasn't paying attention to the Earth's crust."
It's not just Christianity. Any religion centered on a God who is both all-powerful and all-good, including Islam and the more monotheistically inclined versions of Hinduism, should be subject to a thorough post-tsunami evaluation. As many have noted before me: If God cares about our puny species, then disasters prove that he is not all-powerful; and if he is all-powerful, then clearly he doesn't give a damn.
In fact, the best way for the religious to fend off the atheist threat might be to revive the old bad--or at least amoral and indifferent--gods. The tortured notion of a God who is both good and powerful is fairly recent, dating to roughly 1200 BC, after which Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam emerged. Before that, you had the feckless Greco-Roman pantheon, whose members interfered in human events only when their considerable egos were at stake. Or you had monstrous, human-sacrifice-consuming, psycho-gods like Ba'al and his Central American counterparts. Even earlier, as I pointed out in my book Blood Rites, there were prehistoric god(desses) modeled on man-eating animals like lions, and requiring a steady diet of human or animal sacrificial flesh.
The faithful will protest that they don't want to worship a bad--or amoral or indifferent--God, but obviously they already do. Why not acknowledge what our prehistoric ancestors knew? If the Big Guy or Gal operates in any kind of moral framework, it has nothing to do with the rules we've come up with over the eons as primates attempting to live in groups-- rules like, for example, "no hitting."
Yes, 12/26 was a warning, though not about the hazards of wearing bikinis. What it comes down to is that we're up shit creek here on the planet Earth. We're wide open to asteroid hits, with the latest near-miss coming in October, when a city-sized one passed within a mere million miles of Earth, which is just four times the distance between the Earth and the moon. Then, too, it's only a matter of time before the constant shuffling of viral DNA results in a global pandemic. And 12/26 was a reminder that the planet itself is a jerry-rigged affair, likely to keep belching and lurching. Even leaving out global warming and the possibility of nuclear war, this is not a good situation, in case you hadn't noticed so far.
If there is a God, and He, She, or It had a message for us on 12/26, that message is: Get your act together, folks--your seismic detection systems, your first responders and global mobilization capacity--because no one, and I do mean no One, is coming to medi-vac us out of here.
Perspectives will change in Heaven, because we see things not so clearly now. I have sinned and so have you, Eve and Adam were just the first. Although it did seem like a verrry easy thing to do to just NOT EAT THE STUPID APPLE.
But .. we all became sinners because of their original disobedience. It was not our choice - it was their choice.
I have always believed the reason GOD was willing to attempt his plan of sending Jesus was because we became sinners not by choice - but because of Adam and Eve's choice.
And .. yes, it does seem like it would have been very easy not to eat "the stupid apple".
What bothered me was that when Eve first ate the apple - nothing happened - no change took place. It was only after Adam got into agreement with Eve and he also ate the apple - then the change took place. I believe that Adam was deceived because he saw that when Eve ate the apple nothing happened - so he doubted what GOD had said - that they would die if they ate the apple.
I've always wondered what GOD would have done had Adam dragged Eve into a meeting with GOD and pleaded for GOD's forgiveness after Eve ate the apple ..??
You are very correct - it was satan's suggestion that caused Adam and Eve to doubt what GOD had said. My Pastor always says, "words are seeds" - they're spoken either in faith or in doubt.
But .. the point I was trying to make was the fact that a husband and wife are ONE .. and while Eve had been deceived and ate - nothing happened until her husband got in agreement with her by taking a bite of the apple himself.
Barbara Ehrenreich should step carefully. God is not mocked.
She ought to just do us all a favor and crawl under her bed and stay there. Forever.
Wrong. The conclusion logically follows from the premises.
If you want to take issue with that statement, you can question the validity of premises 1 and 2, but not premise 3 or the conclusion that naturally follows if premises 1-3 are all true.
No, you complain from apparent ignorance and act as though God just sits on high and causes nasty things to happen. If you aren't on His side, what does He owe YOU. ZIP. His enemy, you probably think is cool or something, and he's the destructive nasty one. You have your choice of masters and yourself to blame for the choice - and everyone else in this world has the same choice and options you have in that regard.
You want to collectively disbelieve God, curse him, turn your back on Him and treat him like crap, then have the gaul to fault him for the mess you've made of his creation by your own choices. No, your conclusions do not follow. The blame doesn't lie with God, it lies with you and the Master you do serve.
If you come pee in my pool and curse me, what do you suppose my reaction might be? Must be all my fault you got thrown out and can't come back and I must be evil for holding you responsible. God is merciful; but, he's also Just. Try putting some perspective to it - you might learn something.
You are WRONG.
You are wrong because you do not understand what the phrase "the conclusion logically follows" means. It's impossible to have a conversation about logic with someone who doesn't understand such a fundamental concept.
So I'll explain it for ya, because I'm such a nice guy:
Premise 1: A can of Coca-Cola costs $30.
Premise 2: A six-pack of Coca-Cola is the same price as six cans individually
THEREFORE
Conclusion: A six-pack of Coca-Cola costs $180
The conclusion is FALSE. You know that.
But the conclusion LOGICALLY FOLLOWS FROM THE PREMISES. In other words, if premises 1 and 2 were correct, then the conclusion would be correct. If coke cans really did cost $30 each, and six-packs were the same price as 6 cans individually, then six-packs really would cost $180.
The problem with that argument is that premise 1 and premise 2 are both FALSE. Coke cans cost closer to $.50 apiece, and there is a slight discount when buying a six-pack as opposed to six cans individually.
This is the previous post:
(1) If God exists then he is omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good.The conclusion DOES LOGICALLY FOLLOW. What you disagree with is most likely Premise #2, not the logic of the argument itself. Premise #2 is that if a perfectly good God existed, there would be no evil. I'll bet you think that is false.
(2) If God were omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good then the world would not contain evil.
(3) The world contains evil.
Therefore:
(4) It is not the case that God exists.
you do not have to believe that a conclusion is true in order to believe that it follows logically
you cannot say that a conclusion does not "follow logically" just because you think the conclusion is false
He Shall.
I'm telling God jokes right now.
What's wrathful and spins in circles? God in a blender!
Why did Jesus cross the road? No, he rode the cross!
How many priests does it take to change a lightbulb?
4: one to unscrew it, one to screw another in, one to transfer both of those priests to another parish before the unions find out that they've used non-union labor, and one to pay off the old light bulb so it won't tell the press it was un-screwed.
No lightning bolts yet, huh? See, so long as we have free will, God WILL be mocked.
Is your conception of God really so pathetic that you think all He wants from humans is for us to bow before him and shower him with praise and never mock him? That sounds more like a six-year-old with superman powers than it sounds like an omnipotent God.
I'll try to make the same point in a brief manner:
1) Mainline Christians say God controls the whole world
2) Mainline Christians say the existence of evil is the result of free will, and that explains how the harm from evil can exist in our world
3) But the Tsunami was not the result of human free will
4) And the Bible says nothing about Tsunamis having free will--in fact, natural disasters are often described as acts of God
5) so any natural disasters at least have God's permission, if they weren't caused by Him outright
6) so God gave permission for the Tsunami to slaughter a quarter-million human beings
7) a loving God would not slaughter so many human beings
therefore
Conclusion: there is no loving God.
Explain which of the premises 1-7 you disagree with.
This answer might not satisfy you, but it comes down to the fact that for Christians, many things are taken on faith.
IF God owes us an apology (and I stress the "IF") it's for allowing the arrogant ignorance of Barbara Erenreich to parade itself around in public where impressionable children might be contaminated by her anti-religious vitriol.
Personally, I prefer to think that He's just not through with her yet.
1. I do not know of a mainline Christian denomination that teaches that God actively "controls" every event on the Earth.
2. In Christian Ethics, there is a difference between objectively undesirable events in the natural world, and the subjective "evil" of human action.
3. No one has said that it was, the point is moot.
4. I believe you are using insurance company terminology, not quoting the Bible.
5. God does not "permit" what exists, He is the cause of it coming into existence.
6&7. Are a straw men based on moot or spurious points in you line of reasoning. If the premise is flawed, so then the conclusion.
I offer as evidence for the existence of God the reaction of the sentient human race to the plight of those hurt by this disaster. In a world devoid of God and good, this would be an empty waste of resources.
God will/will not be mocked. He will not be mocked without consequences. That is the unwritten/unsaid part. He is holy, soverign and to be feared. There are two roads in life. Choose wisely.
I'm doing fine, AFE. How are you doing these days?
What I meant was, God could prevent anything if he so chooses. He had the option to stop the Tsunami, and he chose not to.
2. In Christian Ethics, there is a difference between objectively undesirable events in the natural world, and the subjective "evil" of human action.
Yes. That's my point as well. Just because God says he wants to allow human free will, and that's the explanation for why people are evil, that tells us nothing about why He would allow natural disasters.
3. No one has said that it was, the point is moot.
No, it's necessary to establish even simple things when logically reasoning through something.
4. I believe you are using insurance company terminology, not quoting the Bible.
Come on, the Bible is full of stuff about mountains jumping like rams, etc. God even floods the whole Earth just to commit genocide.
5. God does not "permit" what exists, He is the cause of it coming into existence.
If He is aware of it, and He could prevent it, but chooses not to, then he's tacitly permitting it.
6&7. Are a straw men based on moot or spurious points in you line of reasoning. If the premise is flawed, so then the conclusion.
Alright, I'll re-phrase them:
6) so God gave tacit approval for the Tsunami to slaughter a quarter-million human beings
7) a loving God would not allow so many people to be slaughtered for no good reason
8) There was no good reason for the slaughter (unless you think God is going back to his genocidal history... those were his Glory Days, ya know)
Just got up and have to go to work...look for response later tonight!
Sun is shining, spring is on the way and I'm hitting 'the road' again...see you in AZ in April!
I wonder how many Death Cultist headcutters will be coming down to wish us well? :)
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