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God gave humans free will. Millions of Children dying is not the result of lacking ressources. It is the result of shitty humans denying them.
The ultimate cop-out. Anything good? God. Anything bad? Free will. Nevermind, like, children with leukiemia.
Well, they obviously did something bad in the womb, like touching themselves.
We do have treatment for Leukemia and it has a very high success rate. The problem is the lack of people willing to register as donors.
So yes, everything good comes from god. Or rather god gave us the means to do good, that we couldn't do without him. But it is the free will of good people that turns the ability into reality.
I don't see how the opposite is not correct: god gave us the means to do evil, that we couldn't do without him. But it is the free will of evil people that turns the ability into reality
Is Einstein evil, for without his theory of relativity, nuclear weapons were not developed, or is he good, for he furthered physics fundamentally?
Is Antonine van Leeuwenhoek good, for his microscopic research lead to microbiology, which led to modern medicine, or is he evil, for without it, there couldn't be weaponized anthrax?
The possibility, that something good can be used for evil, does not remove the merit of having the good in the first place. Or to put it in mathematic terms:
Plus times Plus equals Plus
Plus times Minus equals Minus
The first factor, which comes from god, is always positive. But the final outcome is determined by the second factor, which is free will.
The first factor, which comes from god, is always positive
I'm sure the babies is Sodom and Gamorah really had it coming.
I'm sure the babies of the Cannanites when Moses and the Israelites were told to genocide them really had it coming.
I'm sure all the babies that died in Noah's Flood really, really had it coming.You're not going to convince anyone on an Atheist thread, because we've heard the dogma before and have used logic and reason to come to our own conclusion instead of blindly having faith. Ironic that you're encouraging blind faith while trying to sprinkle logic into your argument.
Both people you mentioned are humans. According to the bible, they are both evil because all humans are born into sin.
You also cannot say all good things are from God for so so many reasons. But the most obvious one is that you don't know god, and you don't know their intentions. What we DO know is that either evil came into existence without God, and God isn't powerful enough to stop it. Or god allowed it to exist. Or god created it themselves. So which one is it? Also, god has free will so why is their free will good but ours is evil?
Are you by any chance familiar with Stockholm Syndrome?
Can you elaborate what you mean by this?
How does the concept apply in your eyes? Because you aren't handed everything on a silver tablet? It is funny and sad, how the underlying entitlement in this assumption goes back to how the bad in the world does come from free will of bad actors. If people, in particular western capitalist people, would be less entitled, maybe they would realise that the ressources of the world are not for them to exploit and waste in a few generations, even more so by brutaly opressing and murdering the people they take them from.
So we get climate change as a just punishment for our greed. And if you ask, how it would be a just punishment, look at the exhaustive information we had on it. There is evidence of climate change being known to science in the 19th century already. There is now more than 50 years of knowledge and warning in the general public. And what do we do? Destroy, destroy and destroy.
But to be specific about Leukemia, particularly in young children. It is directly linked to deliberate pollution, fueled by nothing but greed. The children of Basra are suffering from Leukemia because of the depleted uranium used in American tank shells in the Guld and Iraq war. Why did they put the uranium in the tank shells? Because of their greed, making a cheap and destructive shell, while "getting rid" of the left over uranium from nuclear enrichment. Of course also many veterans and their children are suffering from the use of these weapons.
You are projecting your Stockholm Syndrome, believing the destructive greed at the core of our societies to be in your favor, when in fact it is just harming you. You cannot think entitlement without greed. And the violent rejection of some religions comes from the danger its gratitude poses to a capitalist order, reliant on everyones greed.
You're on an atheist board, preaching...
Stockholm syndrome describes the psychological condition of a victim who identifies with and empathizes with their captor or abuser and their goals.
I hate the greedy, destructive society we're in, but I also see how people have leveraged faith as a platform to make things the way they are.
but I also see how people have leveraged faith as a platform to make things the way they are.
So by this logic, would you reject human rights and democracy, as they are regularly abused by western imperialism as a reason to invade countries and steal their ressources, furthering the very order you hate? Or would you consider communism or socialism an alternative, but then run into the problems of how Stalin, Mao and others used them to justify horrible crimes too?
Nice strawman.
No I reject the imperialism, but am powerless against it alone. Human rights are important, and the concept of every vote counting? Seems solid, too bad popular vote lost in the U.S. election a lot lately
Dictators are awful, and they lied about their parties intentions. Do you not realize... they were lying fascist dictators?
Are your legs tired? You've been jumping to a lot of conclusions.
I suppose we could always just pray harder.
I’m sure that’ll work… despite having done nothing to rectify anything in the past.
Where do you get this idea from?
In the scriptures god demands people to fight injustice and opression.
Your god also demanded genocide on more than a few occasions. What has that got to praying cancer away until the cancer kills you?
As for the efficacy of prayer… are you really going to sit here and tell me that praying about issues has ever done a lick of good, compared to working to resolve the issue?
If prayer was effective at anything, don’t you think we’d have solved world peace by now? World hunger? Miracles would be dime a dozen. It’d be the cure for cancer.
Or are you going to suggest we’re just not praying hard enough? (Well I’m not. Even if mythical sky daddy existed, I wouldn’t worship a being that gaslights the fuck out of people like that.)
The scripture doesnt tell people to just pray and sit by idly. It tells them to take action. So of course you dont pray cancer away, you go to a doctor and take proper medical treatment.
You wrote four paragraphs projecting your assumption, when i already said the opposite of that in the comment you replied to.
So do you thank God when the doctor fixes you, or do you thank the human who actually relied on science, and other existing, real philosophies, and sciences, to you know... Actually fix you?
Prayer and God have no place in society. Have trust and faith in your fellow humans, and we may all actually stop hating each other one day.
My assumptions? Or 18 years of life being told that by evangelicals +3 years seminary.
Sorry, but you’re glossing over plenty of other instances, including the entire book of Job (whose entire purpose is to gaslight the fuck out of you.)
Edit: james 5:14. actually, here's the whole text of James chapter five, cuz, really, context is important... instead I'll just add empphasis for the specific points here.
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. 4 Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
7 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. 8 You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. 9 Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing at the door. 10 As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. 11 Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.
12 But above all, my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your “yes” be yes and your “no” be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.
13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord 15 And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit.
19 My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, 20 let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
Famines have been around for a lot longer than humans, as have causes of faminine, such as blight and volcanic winter.
And whatever free will we have (whether God-given or otherwise) isn't enough to overcome our instincts for dominance hierarchy and exclusionism, which figures into the (decades old) bullying crisis, An Oklahoma official calling Nex Benedict filth (and their kind, all trans gender persons, I infer). It also keeps billionares from using their ill-gotten gains to actually engage in large public-serving projects without turning them into capitalist enterprises.
As Stephen Fry noted, bone cancer in children is a pretty dick move. Unlike the plot armor (or tone armor) of our stories, children are disproportionately represented in mortality of disasters and epidemics. If God created everything then God is responsible for everything.
For us naturalists, on one hand we're captains of our own destiny: only we can reach for the stars and cure famine and warfare. On the other hand you can endeavor to teach a dog calculus and run head first into upper limits, and so it might be with us naked apes. As much as we want to imagine ourselves as galactic civilization material, we may just be simple hunter gatherers trying to bat out of our league.
And when we perish from pollution, disaster and ultimately famine, our gods die with us along with our mathematics and symphonies.
isn’t enough to overcome our instincts for dominance hierarchy and exclusionism,
Think again. Why do you think this? Why do you assume these to be given? Because we are living in a society that has bastardized what it means to be human and has elevated the worst of human traits to be cherished as something to strive for. And in such the reasons for perishment you mention lie in nothing but the results of that horrible barbaric culture we have inflicted on ourselves. American "Christians" are a prime exmaple of that. While Jesus was very clear about greed, ill gotten wealth and the duty to use your wealth for the betterment of society, it was bastardized in the delusion that rich people deserve to be rich and poor deserve to be poor.
It is such a blatantly corrupted version of what the scripture tells, that only those who themselves are deeply corrupted can say this and make themselves believe this.
But we see so many examples throughout human history, where people did not fall victims to what you believe to be impossible to overcome instincts. Humans are a product of their society just a smuch as their society is a product of them. The scriptures give us guidance how to create a society where we do not succumb to the worst of our traits, but aspire to the best of them.
I totally agree with this and I don't even believe in a god. Because if a god did exist, he's still the root of all evil in us since we were made in his image. Wouldn't be human suffering if humans didn't exist.
Think again.
I've thought about it plenty, thanks.
Why do you think this? Why do you assume these to be given?
Because the same problems reoccur time and again, and we don't try anything new. You might be able to point to an outlying incident, but that doesn't change the trend.
There might be a solution in sociology. The same science that shows us voters will vote to harm rivals sooner than they'll vote to help themselves out. The same science that shows how and why people spend their rent money on microtransactions and bad bets. The same science that shows how a nation go from detaining degenerates to mass execution in a matter of a couple of years.
We might work out a trick to get our school administrators to rethink funding massive contact sports programs rather than school lunches, but for the time being, we don't have that, and we're not figuring it out, and then there's people like you turning to scripture like homeopathy. You might say one person sinning is a choice, but when hundreds of millions behave contrary to their best interests, that's a flaw in the system.
And that's before we look at the specific history of how Christianity was repurposed into the pro-America, pro-capitalist, pro-property ideology that has elected officials disparaging dead high-school students.
But feel free to expect miracles in the future, if that's what you need to do. I'll base my expectations on the common behavioral trends, not the outlying data points. It'd be nice if I'm pleasantly surprised, but I don't expect it.
An "all loving" god would let people die like flies.