Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cybvax0.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!think!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh
From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: God and suffering
Message-ID: <803@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 29-Oct-85 16:40:50 EST
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.803
Posted: Tue Oct 29 16:40:50 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 1-Nov-85 01:45:56 EST
References: <389@decwrl.UUCP> <2203@sdcc6.UUCP> <351@pyuxn.UUCP> <2213@sdcc6.UUCP> <785@cybvax0.UUCP> <134@sdcc7.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 186
Xref: linus net.religion:7701 net.religion.christian:1499
Summary: 

In article <134@sdcc7.UUCP> ln63fac@sdcc7.UUCP (Rick Frey) writes:
[reordered somewhat for my purposes.... mrh]
> Sorry this got so long.  I have a tendency to get excited about these
> discussions and ramble somewhat.  I hope you can find the thread of coherency
> in this that makes any sense to you and I'll stop now and let you hammer on
> this and bring up specific questions rather than me trying to guess what
> you'll ask.

When I get excited and write too much, or write something that sounds good
but isn't pertinent, I edit.  I rethink what exactly I need to say, throw
out big hunks (maybe everything) and rewrite.

Please take the time to define your thoughts clearly, rather than saddle us
with the labor of trying to find meaning in a muddle.  Don't be sorry:
be ashamed, and do something about it.

Especially, make your paragraphs short and to the point.  I try not to go
over about 6 lines in a paragraph.  Usually that's all you need, and a
good subject sentence makes them easy to examine.  Most of your paragraphs
are much longer and unfocused.

> In article <785@cybvax0.UUCP>, mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes:
> > 
> > I can't follow your logic.  The above statement seems consistant with two
> > non-christian hypotheses:
> > 
> > 1)  That the hypothetical god is incapable of fixing those bad things, and
> >     thus not omnipotent.
> > 
> > 2)  That the hypothetical god doesn't really care enough about us to fix
> >     them, or wants them that way so that we can suffer.
> 
> The whole foundation for the question has to do with where did evil come
> from, who is/are responsible for it and can/should anything be done about
> the fact that it does currently exist by an omnipotent God.

A god that could do something about evil (if evil or gods actually exist)
may not need to be omnipotent.  After all, if evil is caused by Satan,
and Satan is not omnipotent, and Satan ceases to cause evil, that's enough.

> Part 1 - Where does evil come from.  While Genesis uses the word death, the
> Bible speaks of death (and I feel consequently evil) resulting from man's
> original choice to disobey God.  Not to make this sound like beginning Sunday
> school, but that is traditional Christian doctrine.

Right.  And traditional Christian doctrine is blatantly stupid on that point
as it takes two to tango.

> Part 2 - Who is responsible for evil.  If I put you off with the simplicity
> and dogmaticity (??) of my first response, it's mainly because to me, this is
> more of the crux of the issue.  As hard as it is to understand, I feel that
> both God and man are responsible for evil.  Man's part we've already looked
> at, but just to add one point, not only does the Bible say that Adam sinned,
> but Paul, in Romans, says that as Adam sinned, so do all men.  To me this
> means that I'm not suffering unjustly for something Adam did, I'm a joint
> instigator and cause of the problem.

That's nonsense according to many doctrines of original sin.  And if not
according to those doctrines, we then are irresistably tempted to sin by
our environment in a way we cannot control, and then punished for it.
That's as stupidly unjust as I can imagine.

> Back to responsibility and God's side of the issue.  To say that God is not
> the author of evil is in some ways true but in some ways misleading.  Nothing
> exists outside of God creating it and willing it.  In John 1:3 it says, "And
> without Him (Christ) was not anything made that was made an all things were
> made by Him."  God throughout Isaiah continually claims to be the sole
> creator of everything, so to some extent, God is the creator of evil.
> 
> But the crucial issue is the way that God is the creator of evil.  Since
> nothing exists outside of God creating it (forgive me for stating that as a
> given in contrast to your own beliefs, this is simply for the purpose of the
> discussion) God must have either directly created evil and sin or He must have
> created the means for those to come about.  And to me that's the crucial
> difference.  Forgive me if you feel I've taken a long way to get to a simple
> point, but lots of people feel they understand this concept (who disagree
> with it) but when you sit down to try to find oout where, they have all sorts
> of extraneoous notions about this process.  To state another fundamental
> assumpion (which I freely admit is a big one) as far as I can tell both
> rationally and experientally, free will (which I believe exists) necessitates
> the existence of the 'other' side to choose.  If God were the damager-God of
> Paul Zimmerman's arguments than there would still be the possibility of 
> good in the world even though this God had designed things to work the 
> other way.  

Even granting all those absurd premises, there's no reason why the other
side should be so noxious, omnipresent, and unavoidable.  For example,
bad people could continue to live forever, and good people could die and
go to heaven (good riddance. :-)

> Basically it comes down to this.  God created man and willfully and
> deliberately gave them the gift of choice (made them choose, whichever you
> prefer) and in creating that choice process, God allowed there to be a
> consequence for choice away from Him.  This is where things get fuzzy, like
> Laura was saying, omnipotent doesn't mean able to create paradoxes (i.e.
> round squares).  That's not a limit to power, simply the necessity of a world
> with specific meanings.  So could God have created a world where people have
> free will but yet do not suffer for their mistakes?  Possibly.  Could God
> have created a world with free will but where there is no choice away from
> God?  To me that seems like a paradox.

But neither of those in any way answers my two hypotheses.

> Second to last part.  Since this 'world' God's creating right now must have
> the ability to choose going away for God to meet the criteria for free will,
> there is still the question of why must their be consequences for wrong
> actions?  You can imagine two scenarios.  One, where the football coach tells
> everyone to run laps and no one does and nothing happens and another where
> the football coach makes everyone 'pay' for their disobedience.  While one
> might seem much more fogiving and loving than the other, each situation has a
> different thrust for the goals they're trying to accomplish.  In the don't
> worry about it situation, there is little impetus for change and my under-
> standing of why someone might create a scenario like that would be to let the
> players play.  In the second scenario, there is a specific desire on the
> coach's part for the players too conform to what He has called them to do.
> I'm not trying to discuss the relative value of either so much as I'm trying
> to say that either free will necessitates the secoond scenario or maybe God
> simply chose to have things be that way.

Maybe the football coach is a sadist and is exercising the players more than
is safe or healthy.  Maybe he's just feeding his ego.

> Last part.  Our world now consists of free will, consequence for choice or
> action and a still relatively undefined thing called 'suffering'.  The
> question that this all reduces down to is that since God has given us the
> ability to choose either for Him or against Him and since He wants us to
> choose for Him and we as people do not consistently choose God, there must be
> some method for God to get us back on the right track.  I'm not sure who said
> this but some said "Pain is God's megaphone to a deaf world".  People have
> the ability to turn off their ears when it comes to God (just like they can
> close themeselves off to parents, friends, education, almost anything).  God
> would love to just tap us on the back and have us turn aroound and say,"sorry
> God".  But when a light tap doesn't work, it becomes a firm pat then a
> stronger grab till He eventually drops an atomic bomb on yoour shoulder.  If
> this seems wrong to you, it's a simple question of priorities.  If life on
> this earth is more important than what God tells us about our eternal lives,
> then for God to mess up our life on earth for that is a waste.  But if we are
> going to live eternally and live with the choice that we make on this earth,
> then I'm up for God doing anything it takes to get me into a right
> relationship with Him.

Substitute Hitler for god in most of the above, and it is analogous.  But we
dislike Hitler and you like god.  Why?

> The very last thing.  I kind of glanced over it in the last paragraph and
> it's a crucial question.  Why don't I naturally choose to do what God wants?
> Why do I (we) seem to have this tendency to want to go away from God?  In
> answering it I would say two things.  First of all, I've felt like my whole
> life has been lived on a balance, even more like trying to balance a circular
> disc on the tip of a pin.  God seems to have created me amazingly in terms
> of seeing both sides of things, always being on the edge of knowing what's
> right and what's wrong and realizing there's a consequence for my actions.
> But much of this was a learned discrimination.  At times I've tried as hard
> as I could to shut God up and put Him in a nice little box.  I succeeded for
> almost two years during high school but God worked His way back out my
> Freshman year in college.  All my experience (all 22 years!) has shown me
> people who somewhere insde realize that there is a consequence for action and
> it's just a question of how much of it do you want to face vs. how much you
> want to do just what you want to do no matter what it does to anyone/thing
> else.  People can get incredibly hard, and it's not so much of a blanket
> thing, where you're either completely open or completely closed.  I was
> willing to face my problems of cynicism and being overly critical (not that
> they're solved by any means) but I hid from and ignored what God was trying
> to tell me about my relationships with friends.  So someone can be compltely
> open and amazing in one area and a complete bonehead in another.  But every
> thing I've seen in terms of morality and conscience confirms in me that
> God created each of us with a picture of Himself inside of us.  We can
> live trying to prune our lives to fit that picture or we can whitewash over
> it build any type of hoouse we want.

So you choose to dignify your malleability and conformism by claiming that
you have a picture of god within you?  Is god that way too?  Frankly, I
consider that a blatant case of wishful thinking based on zero evidence.

> This is one of my favorite quotes by one of my favorite authors and this is
> the second time that I've got to use it this week.  (I know you're not a C.S
> Lewis fan, but the quote is still right on the mark in terms of what God
> is saying to us as people).  "There are those who will say to God, Thy will be
> done and there are those to whom God will say thy will be done."  From later
> on in the same book (The Great Divorce) he says, "No soul who truly seeks
> after joy shall be denied."

Mystic bullshit.
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh