I've completely forgotten why God doesn't intervene

[Alameda]

or isn't there a reason?

God would have to have not given her the false hope that if she prayed enough, or if she spent all her savings to take the child to, say, Lourdes, he might possibly decide to save her child. That's what I can't get past. God promised through Jesus that he would answer prayers, but he just doesn't.

Nothing nightlurker.

I don't believe in god and I don't believe in an afterlife which is why I can get absolutely no comfort from the idea of a heaven or that the children are better off anywhere than with their family and friends.

I cannot fathom how god can preside over a world where such unbearable suffering takes place and yet he is never blamed for it, and yet when wonderous 'miracles' happen he gets all the credit.

But it's a circular argument isn't it? You will never convince me of god's existence, and I have never seen any proof of it (despite being the recipient of two of these so-called 'miracles'), and conversely I am not going to convince you that it's all superstition invented at a time when science could explain nothing.

Never the twain shall meet . . . .

Exactly seeker, no matter how many prayers I had said my friend would not have survived. She just wouldn't. She had a Grade 4 brain tumour. No praying, holy water or anything else would have saved her.

I know her religious friends did pray for her.

When we were experiencing IF my dh's boss (who is very religious) put us on his prayer list for our first two cycles. We m/c both pregnancies. We kept our 3rd cycle quiet, no prayers, our baby survived and was born healthy at term.

Maybe god was just trying to prevent more atheists coming into the world? But then if he was omnipotent he would have known about our ivf cycle anyway, so did he grant our fourth baby life? And if so why?

Exodus 32...

10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.

11 And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?

12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.

13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever.

14 And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.

15 And Moses turned, and went down from the mount,

..............................

God 'threatened' to erupt his 'hot wrath' and 'consume' the people around the mountain.

This is the problem with worshipping a volcano. They are not the most preditable of deities and are likely to turn (or pour) on you when you least expect it.

Honestly, this is a fascinating discussion - but it sums up why I have lost my faith. If I, a lesser mortal, would give my heart and soul to save a suffering creature - why would God, the supposedly ominpresent, omnipotent and omnibenevolent being fail to intervene?

Free Will - I thought God created us all in his own image, so why would we have the capacity for evil?

As someone who doesn't believe in god i do find it very hard to understand how those who do can read a post like Nonio's, and still love a god that allows that to happen, especially if you believe that he CAN intervene? I try to understand, i really do, and try to be respectful to others beliefs - i've a few beliefs of my own that others may find a bit flaky. I can only think that you have no choice but to reconcile it, no matter how insubstantial the justifications, as that is easier than confronting the possibility that your faith is built on some pretty shaky foundations.

I think it is a shame that TheJackal chose to post in such a convoluted and confrontational way, as a lot of the points made were really very good - just a pity that the poster seemed to think showing off ones intellect was more important than engaging in a meaningful discussion.

Yahweh (let's use his name as there were hundreds of gods back in the days of superstitious volcano worship) was also a bit of a cruel tease. Instead of using his supposed omnipotence to make the Egyptians readily free the supposedly enslaved Hebrews, the Bible says he used his power to do the opposite. No reason whatsoever is given for this. Why is that? Is it really because this Hebrew god was a cruel tease and played with people like a cat plays with a mouse? Or is it that the Bible HAD to claim Yahweh used his omnipotence to make the Egyptians hard to get in order to explain away why there WERE hard to get? Of course, Yahweh never sent any instructions to Moses and Moses never had umpteen identical meetings with the Pharaoh. All that happened, most likely, is that a Egypt was devastated by a succession of freak natural events caused by the Santorini eruption in the Med (and probably other triggered eruptions in the Suez Canal) and this gave the Hebrews the chance to make a dash for it. Maybe there was a Moses....maybe there wasn't...maybe there were two Moses characters moulded into one for better story telling. Who knows? The story was told as it was in order to cast in the minds of the Hebrews and their descendents a rock solid argument for carrying on worshipping volcanoes. It had to sound like Yahweh was using his power to get what he wanted. In order for the story to allow this show of strength, the Pharaoh had to be stubborn. There had to be resistence in order for their to be a show of strength...and a Yahweh win in the end.

I'm explaining all this because I am wanting to demonstrate how the fickleness of Yahweh is due to the need to make the story fit....at the expense of logic. Is it logical that Yahweh would make the job of getting the Hebrews out of Egypt far more difficult? No.

There reason why Yahweh does not use his supposed omnipotent power to intervene and save thousands of lives is because he is a character in a fictionalised journal that originated thousands of years ago and survived only due to worshippers moving away from the location of the deity (volcanoes).

Judges 1:19
And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.

This verse is hilarious. The god who supposedly created the entire universe is stumped by iron chariots, a material he supposedly created?

So basically we have theists here trying to rationalize pain, suffering, and evil as good and that GOD is good regardless of what this GOD does or doesn't do. Like those rationalizing drowning all the life on Earth in Genesis was some how their benevolent GOD cleansing the Earth in a mass genocide. Kinda like trying rationalize it's a good thing when a kid drowns a kitten on youtube, or a mother drowns here kids in a bathtub.. But often is such things justifiable and rationalized as good when you come into religion that pretty much circles itself into making morality meaningless.

poshbird1,

You sound more like a Pantheist. And it is pretty sick that we humans as a species see pleasure in the suffering of others / animals. If you rationally think about that, it's pretty sickening.

[quote]
It's hardly self-inventing though. If you believe the Biblical account, the very first human beings on Earth knew about and were taught about God.[quote]

Yeah, accept it doesn't reflect reality.. Aka self-inventing truth. The biblical account isn't even original to the bible and it derives from older myths that came polytheism. Much of which are clearly wrong..

[quote]
The huge long posts just start to feel like being bludgeoned after a while, don't they?[quote]

Then why respond if you aren't going to address the information provided? Basically, we understand that there is no evidence of Jesus or a GOD, and people are just relying on 100 percent pure assertions and assumptions of truth on the premise "I believe".. That's great for personal belief, but not so great in an online discussion where you are asked to back that up, or provide something other than "I believe".. See some people have a higher standard for "truth" by expecting one to establish and validate it, and as well demonstrate it. Especially when such burden of proof is on the shoulders of the one making the claims, and not the one's questioning. Religion and faith based beliefs rely entirely on absolute negatives to which make good arguments on bait and switching burden of proof so they don't have to face having to do so..

[quote]
May I recommend this book. It was written initially in an attempt to disprove the existence of Christ but in his reaserch the author became convinced of that he did exist. It's a good read.[quote]

Actually, isn't he a Christian atheist.. Last time I checked he converted to Christianity but follows these premises:

Quote:
Christian atheism is an ideology in which the belief in the God of Christianity is rejected or absent but the moral teachings of Jesus are followed.

Though I might be thinking of a different fellow. And most of those arguments "for" the existence of a Jesus rely on invested interest sources and not any sort of contemporary source. It's like taking a UFO buffs word for it that alien space ships landed in his back yard. I went over the problems of the evidence used to which is also highly reliant on corrupt greek texts to which includes verses that are added to the bible that shouldn't even belong in the bible ect. So when put to the test, all they have is "I say so" and "Believe".. That is essentially the weight of their evidence.

Cassettetapeandpencil

Yeah, I think I am thinking of someone else.. But the argument points remain.. Please find me a book that has contemporary evidence.. Something other than what tries to rely on corrupt Greek texts or the supposed Gospels that magically quote someone who's been supposedly dead for decades via word for word with their t's crossed and i's dotted. It's quite interesting that none of which is in the bible is written by Jesus himself.. And it seems that only the people of this religion are essentially the source material of this supposed Jesus that doesn't even show up in any contemporary history or records. In fact, the story of Jesus really didn't start becoming known until the Gospels started becoming popular and successful as a religion that breaks away from Judaism ect.. What's worse is that in this time period, people like Jesus who preached this sort of stuff were a dime a dozen, and some who are actually known in contemporary records. You should look up "The rivals of Jesus" ..

video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3126202689810625112

Quote:
Technically, from the religious point of view, God doesn't truly kill anyone. God isn't destroying the spirit, he's bringing it home."

Reply:
That's how they rationalize things like death, drowning, and animals ripping each other a part just to survive while at the same time calling this GOD "perfect" or stating that his creations were "perfect".. Maybe this omnipotent GOD should have created a "perfect world" where pain and suffering is simply impossible, and non-existent.. So no matter how much they try to rationalize it, they are ignoring the problem of it to begin with. So let me put it to you like this:

I were this GOD... Evil, pain, suffering, starvation, the need to compete for resources, or hate ect simply wouldn't exist. End of story.. But that is when we come back to reality and realize the real world.. :/

Quote:
If I recall correctly, it was the Hebrew texts with the additions, if you're talking about the NT. Finding ancient Greek versions has resulted in several new translations of the Bible.

Reply:
It's not a surprise the bible is being edited to conform to the times.. Except now we can tell when it's being done.. And no it wasn't the hebrew text versions, it was the Greek versions. There is a reason it's called a corrupt greek text and not the corrupt Hebrew texts. the New Testament was translated from Greek, the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew text. The corrupt Greek text to which NIV and the KJV are based on are not reliable translations.

www.biblestudy.org/basicart/bible-errors.html

Quote:

Jay P. Green, Sr., General Editor and Translator of the Interlinear Greek-English New Testament, states in his preface:

"The market-place is being glutted with new books which are being represented as VERSIONS of the Bible. Each one claims to be the very word of God, yet there are literally thousands of differences between them . . . . they all leave out dozens of references to the deity of Jesus Christ, and they add words which tend to question His virgin birth, His substitutionary, fully satisfying atonement.

"This is due to their decision to depend upon an Alexandrian [Egyptian] textbase, instead of that body of God's words which has been universally received and believed in for nineteen centuries, known to us as the Received Text.
"These new versions [such as the New International Version Bible, New Jerusalem Bible and others] are not only marked by additions, but also by subtractions, since some four whole pages of words, phrases, sentences and verses have been omitted by these new versions. And these are words attested to as God's words by overwhelming evidence contained in all the Greek manuscripts . . . . 

Continued reply:

And most people know that the Kings James Version of the bible is one of the worst translations as well. And then you get the new effort regarding the conservative bible you can read about on Conservapedia.. A total and utter hacking of the bible itself with the supposed claim of divine thought for thought translation vs word for word. Yeah, nothing can go wrong there :/ .. But regardless of corrupt texts or not, there is no actual contemporary evidence of the existence of Jesus existing. And giving in light of the fact that people like him were common Charlatans in that era, and what his story has to do with Egyptology and other common beliefs that predate him, it's quite unlikely he ever existed. It's a text book case of a fictional character based on common beliefs, mythology, philosophies ect of those time periods.

Now I am open to evidence, but in reality there isn't any to go on.. You don't even have a contemporary record of the supposed 500 witnesses..

nightlurker,

The KJV is among the newer translations. But yes those there after are getting even worse than the KJV. Especially the Conservative bible.. :/

"god isn't destroying the spirit, he's bringing it home'

And what a way to bring them home! You have to wonder why he didn't just 'bring them home' peacefully while they were in their sleep or was there a reason why people had to watch everyone they love, babies, old people and so on drowning. Or maybe halt the population growth by stopping people getting pregnant. But oh, I forgot, it's not to be taken literally as someone said further up thread.

God really does have the ultimate get out of jail free card, doesn't he!

What an odd use of a life, time, energy and brain power, researching something you believe doesn't exist and spending you time trying to convince others that thing doesn't exist.

I believe in God.

Jackel - why do you say the KJV is among the newer translations, when it dates from the early 17th century? The KJV OT is very much translated from the Hebrew, though they used the Septuagint for comparative purposes at points.

Its not only people of faith that strive to address the huge problems in the third world. Many secular organisations are involved in bringing aid to those suffering. The only difference is they don't think there is a supposedly loving god sitting back and watching it. And hence they don't need to go through any intellectual contortions to try and justify it.

What an odd use of a life, time, energy and brain power, researching something you believe doesn't exist
Its not that odd ... I don't believe god exists but the idea of god most certainly does and is a very powerful force in our world. Trying to understand how ideas about god(s) arose in various human societies is valid.