Is God good?

But ringo didn't say anything about immediate punishment. How about immediate intervention? If a man's about to rape and murder a child, then fine, let God be merciful and not strike him dead. But how about stopping the rape and murder?As it is, God's mercy seems to work out like this:* God sits idly by and watches the rape and murder.
* God sends the child off to burn in Hell for ever for not being "saved".
* God waits 'til the man (having committed a dozen other equally horrific atrocities) dies of natural causes, and then sends him to Hell too.

No. No, we don't. Well, if God exists, and is omnipotent, it's him too. It shows rather greater respect for the rapist and murderer than for his victim using her last breath to beg God to intervene.But also it is strangely at odds with the picture of God given in the Bible. When forty children made fun of Elijah for being bald, God sent bears to kill them. Those children didn't ask God to intervene, nor did he "leave them to the devil's cruel power", he sent magic bears to eat them for being cheeky. But he suffers much worse horrors to take place than kids calling names, y'know, stuff like genocide, murder, rape, torture ... maybe involving actual sticks and stones and the breaking of bones ... and look, no killer bears. Not even an irritable badger.

It would help me to consider that I might be wrong if you would give me a hint of a shred of an argument why I might be, instead of, y'know, just yelling at me that I am.You could start by pointing out what was wrong with the post you're ostensibly replying to.

But it's not knowledge, it's opinion. You know, like a Muslim's opinion that the Koran is God's word. 'Cos it is. If God's omnipotent, he can intervene in anything. He chooses not to. You may think that that's a good idea, but good or bad it is (supposing he exists) what he does. Despite being allegedly unalterably opposed to sin, he lets it "play out", as you say. Unless the sin involves children being cheeky to a bald guy, then he kills them. Well, that's what you're doing, isn't it? In the end, you do all your thinking with your own brain. But don't you see that you could say that about anyone or anything? You could be worshiping the absolute quintessence of evil and have faith that despite all appearances it's really good. That's not a moral judgement, those are just facts.Fact 1: God does not intervene in many horror. He didn't smite Stalin or Pol Pot, for example, to name two people who died natural deaths after committing massive genocides.Fact 2: The Bible portrays him as being perfectly willing to intervene in certain cases. Blammo, a pestilence, ka-zap, people drop dead, hey presto, a global flood, abracadabra, ten plagues, shazam, magic bears. In the latter case, to kill children as a punishment for impoliteness. So any theological argument that says that the God of the Bible would take a non-interventionist stance in general has got to be wrong. According to the Bible, he'll use his powers to intervene in the most trivial of human affairs when he feels like it.There are two possible conclusions. One is that most of the time he doesn't feel like it, and sits back and lets things happen that a good human being would give his very life to prevent --- and which God could prevent just by wishing it. The other is that there is no God and the Bible's a load of old cobblers.Those are facts. If presentation of these facts suggests some sort of moral judgement to you, then while that may be my intention, it is not my doing. It's yours.

There is a difference between assuming something for the sake of argument and knowing is to be true.You can hardly expect everyone participating on this thread to become a Christian fundamentalist for the duration. Ah well, we can sort this whole rape and murder thing out once for all, then. You, after all, are a dyed-in-the-wool believer. Challenge God to do justly. See how that turns out. Then when we've established the principle, we can move on to war and such.Why did no-one ever think of this before?---As for the rather silly apologetics you produce concerning Elijah and the bears, I would just point out for now that it's entirely contrary to what you said to ringo.The "taunt", your apologists write, "had to be dealt with decisively [and] met with swift and certain consequences".And yet you explain to ringo that because God is merciful, he will be neither decisive nor swift when it comes to atrocities even more horrific than name-calling.

I'm not sure what you mean by "rightness" here. From context, it appears to be something that prevents a good and just being from behaving in a good and just manner. In which case, I am at a loss to know why you call it "rightness". No-one, even according to your own theology, since I'm a non-believer. You say: "God is not interesting in our BEGGING. He is interested in our BELIEVING." I could certainly beg, but I can't believe.Fortunately, you believe. You've got enough belief for both of us. "Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."So you can set the world to rights. And then when you've done that, I'll start believing too.

I've considered it. I'm not. What you have is opinion and not knowledge. I'm still open to the possibility that it happens to be a correct opinion, but that wouldn't make it knowledge. Is the faith of the Muslim and the Hindu and the Sikh also evidence of things not seen?Faith isn't evidence for things. It's just faith. No.Please point out what is wrong with it.(1) An omnipotent being can do whatever he wants.
(2) If an omnipotent being doesn't do something, it's not because he can't, but because he won't. Does that mean you don't think that what he does is good? That you are neutral or agnostic on this subject? I don't see why. I am physically unable to do certain things, such as grow wings. I am psychologically constituted so as to be in effect unable to do certain things, such as eat a dogshit sandwich. I am unwilling to do certain things, which I won't dwell on, out of fear of arrest and punishment, or of social censure. None of this makes me an automaton. If God made a rapist physically unable to rape, or psychologically unable to rape, or literally put the fear of God into him to make him unwilling to rape, would the ex-rapist thereby be an automaton without free will?And again, I would point out that your Bible does in fact repeatedly portray God as intervening. The deity of the Old Testament, and to some extent of the New, does not sit about saying: "Well, if I send plagues against Egypt to persuade Pharaoh, if I smite the armies of Sennacherib, if I make Nebuchadnezzar eat grass like an ox, if I kill Ananias and Sapphira, then what happens to free will?" It's obviously not something that worries him in principle, is it? If there was a God, there'd be nothing I'd like better for myself than for him to actually communicate his approval and disapproval, and to prevent me from doing anything wicked. It sounds like a great idea to me. No. Your brain led you to Christianity. I very much doubt it was your liver or your kidneys.The fact that the conclusion you came to is conventional and second-hand doesn't mean that you didn't come to it. You did. No, my point is that anything could be defended in this way. I've made the point on another thread, so I'll just quote myself. I am merely remarking that God does not work in that way. Making fun of a bald guy, shazam, magic bears. The killing fields of Cambodia? Bupkis.

I'm not sure what you mean by "a final moral perfection". Personally I don't think I have ever witnessed moral perfection, so I don't see why one needs to account for it. The popularity of Jersey Shore.

A Muslim might say, and think, the same thing about Islam. That would be his opinion; this is yours. Just as converts to Islam credit Allah for their conversion.Now, perhaps as you claim your religion is different by being true; but there is no epistemological difference between the mental sensations that led you to join your sect of Christianity and the mental sensations that lead other people to invest their faith in other sects of other religions. You possess faith and opinion; you do not possess knowledge.---But we seem to have wandered beyond the scope of this thread.

What's the word "now" doing in there? So far as I know, Christianity has always been a minority belief.

Ah yes, Calvinism. Let's hear it from the horse's mouth --- from Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion.* "I confess, indeed, that all the descendants of Adam fell by the Divine will into that miserable condition in which they are now involved, and this is what I asserted from the beginning, that we must always return at last to the determination of God's will alone, the cause of which is hidden in himself." (3.23)* "I inquire again, how it came to pass that the fall of Adam should involve so many nations with their infant children in eternal death, but because such was the will of God." (3.23)* "God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and the ruin of his posterity in him, but also arranged all by the determination of his own will." (3.23)* "Every action and motion of every creature is so governed by the hidden counsel of God, that nothing can come to pass, but what was ordained by him." (1.16)* "Men do nothing save at the secret instigation of God, and do not discuss and deliberate on any thing but what he has previously decreed with himself and brings to pass by his secret direction." (1.18)* "God bends all the reprobate, and even Satan himself, at his will." (1.18)* "Satan himself performs his part, just as he is impelled, and succeeds only in so far as he is permitted." (1.18)* "These things, which men do perversely, are of God, and are ruled by his secret providence." (1.18)* "The wills of men are so governed by the will of God, that they are carried on straight to the mark which he has fore-ordained." (1.16)* "All the wicked did nothing but what the hand and counsel of God had decreed." (1.18)* "Thieves, murderers, and other malefactors are God's instruments, which he uses to execute what he hath decreed in himself." (1.17)* "Nothing is more absurd than to think anything at all is done but by the ordination of God." (1.16)This might be a good time to return to the topic of this thread.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You agree with Calvin, then, that God is the mastermind behind every crime, the Fuehrer behind every genocide, the secret spirit that engorges the penis of every rapist, the hidden hand that throttles each murder victim, and the voice of the serpent in the garden? --- that none of these things would happen without him positively willing and decreeing that they should occur?When I suggested that you could use your apologetic methods to defend the worship of the absolute quintessence of evil, I meant it merely a reflection on the absurdity of your arguments. I did not realize that you were actually doing so.This explains a lot of things about you.

I should also like to ask how you square this with your previous apologetics. When I suggest that God might prevent crimes, you say: But when Calvin asserts that we only commit crimes because God positively wills and ordains that we should do so, you just say, oh, yes, God is sovereign. No worries about "free will" and us being "automatons" there. That's all fine. It's only if he stops us from committing sins rather than making us do so that your tender concern for our free will manifests itself.

Those are all real quotations, I checked.

And Calvin says that they wouldn't have committed this violence except that God expressly willed and ordained it. (See my quotations, supra.) And Calvin says that the inheritance of sin is not in nature, and therefore requires God to do a miracle in order for this to happen at all.