Is God good?

Yeah, I know you have trouble with both being true but that's how I understand the theology.As for theodicy I don't want to be on this thread. I'm gone.

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No jar. I think he thought it was his duty to Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Let's let Adolf Hitler speak for himself.

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Does it bring glory to your resident deity or your religion to blatantly lie abouit things?You do know that the idea that Darwin brought forth was the survival of the FITTEST, not the strongest? Cretins have created that strawman and then beat it like crazy. To me that is at best deceiptful and at worst just obnoxious.

Jaywill merely quoted Hitler and everybody jumps on him about HITLER's error as if it were his own. That's ridiculous. Hitler WAS clearly giving HIS OWN view of Darwinism whether he got it right or not and we know he didn't, but his kind of misunderstanding was very common. He did use the idea of evolution, however distorted, to fuel his murderous intentions.Hitler got the idea of "fittest" wrong, as so many did and do, but you can't let Darwin completely off the hook for the racism Hitler and others took to murderous proportions, or the idea of exterminating people for whatever failure to be "fit" by some standard or other. I remember being flabbergasted in a high school discussion in 1957 by all the Jewish kids who agreed with Hitler about eugenics which they attributed to the theory of evolution. It's such a good idea to get rid of the inferior people you see, they just mess up the genes, get rid of them and improve the human "stock." I was shocked at the idea in general but I was also shocked at Jewish kids accepting it, since Hitler was still fresh in people's minds. When I expressed my dismay I was teased for worrying about my inferior genes. Now the Jewish kids didn't think of it in racist terms, but they were all in favor of SOME kind of weeding out of the not-so-"fit" however they understood that.So you guys need to understand that somehow or other Darwinism DID spawn all these unpleasant ideas, whether that was directly Darwin's fault or not.But Darwin did say at least one thing that would directly feed racist notions, in Descent of Man, Chapter 6, On the Affinities and Genealogy of Man:
Charles Darwin Descent Of Man Chapter 06 » Internet Infidels Since Darwin clearly had the idea that different people groups were on different levels or at different stages of evolution from lower to higher, although that is usually considered not to be what Darwin thought, you can't really blame the racist murderers for thinking they got the idea from him.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Firstly, what makes you think tha Hitler was even appealing to "Darwinism", and if he was, what makes it any more sincere than his appeals to Christianity (which certainly HAS fostered anti-semitism) ?Isn't it also true that eugenics owes more to ideas of selective breeding which predate Darwin?And that the Darwin quote reflects the ingrained racism of the time, rather than adding to it?But all this is getting way off topic.

Started to answer Jar's Msg 422 but it really belongs on the Catholicism versus Protestantism thread so I'll take it there.

Oh I think it does reflect the ingrained racism of the time but Darwin explicitly applied his theory to it.I'm doing a post now on Hitler and "Christianity." Stay tuned.

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Oh I think it does reflect the ingrained racism of the time but Darwin explicitly applied his theory to it.

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But not in any significant way. Reject the racist assumptions of the time, and the connection goes away, without any impact on the theory. All it tells us is that Darwin accepted views that were very common at the time. It really isn't at all important,Oh, and I hope your post goes back to the anti-semitism in the Gospels, and doesn't try to blame it all on the Catholics.

Hi Crash, OK - so maybe I was a bit strong on my post - but it is an emotive issue (at least it is for me).I didn't say Faith was a psychopath - but that some views that people like her hold can be viewed like that - in particular for me, the nonchalance with which acts like the Flud can be written off with an airy "It's God's will".Psychopathic - "A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behaviour without empathy or remorse" - From The Free Dictionary.I would argue that viewpoints that do not take consequences into account and appeal to authority only are certainly amoral and definitely without empathy.I would respect the likes of Faith if she said "Well what God did was a terrible thing and when I get to heaven I will be discussing this with him as I don't agree with it myself".But instead we get "If God deemed it just then it is just." No thoughts of consequence - no concerns over the unborn babies, or the newly-born ones gasping down the flud-waters, or the children desperately trying to tread water until they gave up in terrified exhaustion. Or of all the braying terrified animals....these are the consequences of God's decision in this matter. Anyone truly moral (as in what our normal society would class as moral) couldn't possibly square those actions.I don't see why someone can't believe in God whilst disagreeing with some of His actions. Why do people have to believe and agree in every detail no matter how seemingly bad? In my opinion what separates a normal viewpoint from a psychopathic one is that very ability to weigh consequences in a moral and empathic framework against blind obedience to a higher authority.And while I concede my post was strongly worded and I did not mean to infer that Faith was per se a psychopath - I still maintain that viewpoints such as the take on the Flud being 'just and right cos God decreed it' to be far from a normal sane, rational and healthy viewpoint.

Hello Faith While my post is strongly worded (perhaps emotively too much so) and I do not think you per se are a psychopath (as compared to views held being so), please see my post to Crash above.

I think one flaw in your point of view is that it is not actually held by the people in whom you discern unity. When I see a Free-Gracer denying that a Lordship Salvationist belongs to the same religion as he does --- denying that an L.S. is even a Christian --- then I find it hard to accept your assurances that they actually belong to the same church.

I wondered about that myself. There are four or five or so who are far enough out that I have to wonder if they are part of the church myself, and it's the ones who have excommunicated the rest of us that are in question. From my point of view we do all share the basic tenets on that list, so that's how I answered, but you're right, they don't want to own the rest of us as part of the church. Most of these groups are fairly recent developments, though, since Ryle wrote that list. It could be, however, that he wouldn't regard some of these groups as belonging to the church either.

You're in denial. I think the original title of the book was thus: " On The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection: Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life " So Hitler's comment about favored races was exactly consistent with the original description of the subject matter of the book.See Wikepedia http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oG7hTq4ctQzDsAyLxXNyoAThe bald face lying should be attributed to those who attempt to make out that the Gospel of Christ and New Testament was Adolf Hitler's main inspiration for Nazi Holocaust. And that is what poster jar tried to deceive us with.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

You know he didn't mention human evolution in the Origin? He was talking exclusively about varieties or subspecies of animals, not what we now call "races", which today refers only to humans. Yeah, those bald-faced liars with their actual evidence of what Hitler said and thought.

The matter was not irrelevant, I think. It came out in the exchange about a transcendent or universal standard of morality. When it was claimed that one was not needed to be good, I argued that such good was not strongly founded in anything much more than a personal preference.This I made the comment that as anyone has his preference so Adol Hitler can have his preference too. That is when YOU attempted to pen Hitler's motivation for the Holocaust on Christian Theology.I correctly pointed out that his motivation has a lot more to do with Darwin's theory of Evolution. Now you want to say that it is not on topic. You'd be better off just to admit that "Yea, Hitler did think it was a good thing for the Jews to be exterminated and the Germans to dominate all other races."Having honestly admitted that, then you could go on to challenge me how the Conquest of Canaan was any different. That's the way I would argue if I were in the position of seriously questioning the goodness of God. I am not sure that this sentence could be backed up with examples. You are welcomed to try.Here is what you have to do:Quote passages that SAY "God is good."Quote passages that SAY "God is an evil murderous tyrant."Now you cannot quote passages which record what God did and then add YOUR INTERPRETATION that the passages shows He was and evil tyrant. At least that is not what you claim above.You claim the Bible SAYS that He is an evil murderous tyrant.WHERE?Do not quote Genesis chapter 19 about Sodom and Gamorrah and then say "You SEE? He is an evil murderous tyrant." To back up you assertion QUOTE me where the Bible says that of God.Probably the ONLY place you could find such an accusation against God is in quoting either Satan or the enemies of God. Do some work. See what you can find.Otherwise, You're being sloppy, subjective, biased and misrepresenting the Bible. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Don't be disingenuous. No-one has denied that.