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““Sometimes a disease is just a disease.”
That has an underlying current that says such are not allowed by God to correct evils. A disease, as all things, are in His hands regardless of how we decide to define such.”

Well! That’s an interesting read on it. Calvinism was based on the belief that God was something of a control freak, to the point that there was not even free will. He rather extended his philosophy to the concept of predestination wherein it was already decided by God who would, and would not be saved. An individual was not even allowed to reject God’s grace. You were in, or out, and you had no choice in the matter.

Folks hereabouts reject that notion (Libertarianism and that sort of thing). For most, there is the implicit assumption that our actions have consequences in the physical and metaphysical world. Personally, I rather like that idea. It makes me feel like less of a “religious appliance”. Obviously others think differently, which makes it fun to compare and contrast.

As to natural disasters, I’ve never really felt that God ALWAYS (not yelling, merely emphasizing) gets involved in each and every tsunami or fender-bender. It’s a big Universe, and I figure he’s got a few other things to be concerned about than whether we get drowned, or have a boo-boo on our finger. S-word happens, but I don’t blame God for it, anymore than I believe that God caused the Holocaust. There’s enough sociopaths in government, and on my street to cause all of the man-made disasters/atrocities one can imagine without blaming God for it. You might want to have a kinder attitude towards our Deity. After all, he was nice enough to create us. I’m sure he must have some redeeming qualities (pun intended).

God gets a bad wrap when those with religious credentials claim disasters are “God’s Will”. It is certainly a counter-intuitive notion at the least, and a wrong-headed notion about God at the worst (just my opinion, I don’t claim to KNOW God’s nature). Mortality has limitations. :-)

“I believe that AIDS (just a disease) was allowed as an act of mercy.”

Oh my goodness! That one certainly seems to have come out of left field. Not trying to put words in you mouth, but do you suppose we could replace AIDS with....pancreatic cancer like my mother died from? Could we paste any human affliction into this space? Just wondering, because if God really, really controls and manipulates EVERYTHING, it makes him look like a very nasty fellow indeed. Certainly not the kind of person I’d let babysit my daughter.

(God. I’m just discussing this with the nice gentleman. Not dissing you by any means. I don’t need a lightning bolt through the window in December. We just laid carpet.) :-)

Of course, I don’t believe AIDS is manna from Heaven. AIDS is a bad thing, and I certainly don’t want to get it as an act of mercy (or any other kind of act for that matter). You might want to think that one through again. Just sayin’.