Apparently the topic "is God cruel" is solely dependent upon a Christian fundamentalist or para-fundamentalist god. If the Bible is seen as parable instead of textbook, as strongly implied by the New Testament, then the defense of the critically-unexamined god loses necessity. The Bible itself may be a way in which God seperates the dogmatic, self-righteous, false-prophet, serving fundamentalist from the truly righteous, be they Christian, Bhuddist, Taoist, or Athiest, etc. based upon deeds instead of lies (knowing or otherwise).
There are many reasons to believe in God, none of which are within the perview of science. It is doing evil in this world which makes one deserving of hell, the existence of which, in the traditional sense, is as doubtful as the Santa Claus-like male false god of over-simplified fundamentalism.
No one who would presume salvation could within any moral framework criticize the work of a scientist such as Norman Blaloc in using the principles of heredity and evolution to create agricultural useful plants that have saved 2 billion lives in the last 40 years. If your god is against saving the lives of billions of people it is time to find a new God.
To me the cruelist thing a god could do is to give people a curious mind (which inherently leads to science) and then punish them for using it to help humanity.
This message has been edited by anglagard, 04-04-2006 02:23 AM
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