Why do babies die of cancer? Assume omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God. Be thorough, try to preemptively address possible counterarguments to your answer.
Correct explanation for empty tomb is that people either were lying or misremembering. People are known to do that all the time.
The location of the tomb was well known to three different groups.
One -- Jesus' followers: It was Joseph of Arimathea's tomb. Joseph and Nicodemus prepared his body for burial. In addition to moving the body, they had forty pounds of spices. (The amount of physical effort involved probably made their destination more memorable) And some women saw him placed in the tomb (Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee). That women are listed as witnesses is notable because in that culture, the testimony of women was not acceptable. This was messy reality, not a clean fiction.
Two -- The Jewish religious leaders did not want Jesus' followers to stage his resurrection. So they asked the Romans to guard the tomb. "The chief priests and the Pharisees gathered together with Pilate, [63] and said, “Sir, we remember that when He was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I am to rise again.’ [64] Therefore, give orders for the grave to be made secure until the third day, otherwise His disciples may come and steal Him away and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last deception will be worse than the first.” [65] Pilate said to them, “You have a guard; go, make it as secure as you know how.” [66] And they went and made the grave secure, and along with the guard they set a seal on the stone."
Three -- The Romans knew where the tomb was because they guarded it. Roman guards knew any security failure could be penalized by death ordered by their superior officer. The Romans were also the ones approached by Joseph of Arimathea so there's a second reason they'd know where Jesus' body was. They set a seal on the stone as well, and the penalty for violating the seal was death.
The Jews and the Romans were motivated to keep the status quo. But Christianity and copies of his followers' writings sprang up like wildfire within the lifetime of eyewitness. The Romans could not squash the new movement. One thing would have helped: if they could just produce the rotting corpse from the correct tomb. But they couldn't. Neither could the Jews ask the Romans to do so (it being forbidden in Jewish custom to touch a corpse). Because the tomb's location and emptiness was well-known.
Besides, his eleven remaining disciples and other close followers said they interacted with the risen Jesus for a period of 40 days (including being served fish by his hands, touching him, his appearing to over 500 people, and many other convincing proofs). And these eyewitness refused to recant on pain of torture and horrible death (or exile in the case of John).
This is very unlike their former manner, which was cowardly. (Another hallmark of a reliable record -- it didn't protect the disciples from appearing as stupid as they were, fighting over who'd be the greatest or misunderstanding Jesus at times)
Such a change in courage is consistent with seeing that their leader really was God the Son come back to life, in the flesh.
It's not consistent with the idea they mis-remembered or lied deliberately at the cost of their own lives.
It's perfectly consistent with misremembering or lying or making stuff up for dramatic purpose or creating hoaxes. And we even have many modern examples of this. Thousands of people "independently" provide at least as accurate and at least as consistent descriptions of UFO encounters. You can only imagine how bad it was in a world where stuff got written down only after decades or centuries after it supposedly happened. And written down by very limited number of people because almost no one could read or write. You could have made up pretty much anything in that environments if you had an advantage of being able to write. And people did.
(A) Where one person tries to change the other person's mind
(B) Where one person explains how a rational person can hold a position ... This is different from showing how the position is the only one a rational person can hold
Let's agree not to attempt (A)
Are you willing to try (B)?
The root of this thread was someone else saying "I honestly don’t understand how anyone who has been proximate to childbirth can believe in intelligent design"
I explained how: It's one Consequence imposed by the Governor. He would have been completely justified if he imposed the Punishment immediately instead. The root question didn't ask about goodness or mercy, only intelligent design.
The question (yours) now is: can a rational person reconcile the claim that God is good with the reality that a baby could die of cancer.
And on this particular branch of the discussion we're comparing explanations for Jesus' empty tomb.
It's entirely rational to consult Simon Greenleaf who was one of the foremost experts in judicial evaluation of evidence (he wrote a classic textbook on it used in many law schools).
There are rules about judging documents as evidence in the court of law: where were the documents found, in what manner, in what condition, how do they compare with other known examples.
There are guidelines for comparing copies, tracing and evaluating differences, and dating documents.
And there is Jewish and Roman history.
It is rational to accept the evidence as indicating that things were as I described in GP. Which is that Jesus' disciples maintained they interacted with the risen Christ _to their deaths_ and this happened _during_ the eyewitness generation. And the written documents are very numerous (thousands) and many are legitimately dated within the same generation.
It is rational to think this explanation is more credible than a hoax or deliberate deception. We're free to weigh things differently, but I'm just showing it is quite a rational option. The hoax approach is opposed by the evidence.
I'm sure some will object that it's irrational to believe in miracles. But:
One-- that is not in the spirit of the supposition "Assume omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God." (I chatted with a co-worker once who simply could not suppose for the sake of conversation even though he was a software engineer and should have easily been able to pretend Jesus had what we computer folks call write permissions or root privileges. Actually I don't think his difficulty was intellectual so much as emotional.)
Two-- I have personal experience: a complete stranger performed a miracle on my leg. Before he did, I was shown a bone defect on an X-ray by someone else. Then, without knowing this, the stranger told me about the defect, and then he fixed me. I was sitting on the floor straight legged and actually felt my leg moving against the floor as the fix took place. Then I got another X-ray from Kaiser Permanente and it showed the defect was gone, even though I specifically told them what to look for (meaning they took exactly the correct X-ray to show it).
> The question (yours) now is: can a rational person reconcile the claim that God is good with the reality that a baby could die of cancer.
Not 'could', they do die of cancer and no human intervention can prevent it at our current tech level.
That's the only reason I'm still in this thread. Because I have a slim hope of seeing attempt at an answer. So far all I got is attempts at misdirection, which is super common.
> Before he did, I was shown a bone defect on an X-ray by someone else.
And you are sure this was real because X-rays never contain any artifacts that could be mistaken for a defect and radiologists are always 100% accurate.
> I was sitting on the floor straight legged and actually felt my leg moving against the floor as the fix took place.
Are you familiar with dowsing rods? Brain is perfectly capable of creating sensations of motions that are not real. Especially when it's put in impressionable state by yourself or a skillfull fraud or both.
> Then I got another X-ray from Kaiser Permanente and it showed the defect was gone, even though I specifically told them what to look for (meaning they took exactly the correct X-ray to show it).
If you weren't "fixed" the result of the second test would be exactly the same as it was. It was just a simple case of more precise and targetted measurement revealing the error in the initial one. Yet you chose to remember it as firsthand evidence of existence of miracles.
There's really no reason for me to to reiterate what atheists said online for last two decades. Just go online and look what they have to say about miracles, faith healers and such.
- I refer to the evidence of something in the past (Jesus' empty tomb, the change in my leg)
- Instead of stepping closer to learn more about the evidence, you keep as far away from it as you already are and imagine things about the evidence
- From that distance, you think your evaluation is reasonable and mine isn't.
What you say about my X-rays arises not from any familiarity with them whatsoever, but starting from your conclusion and stepping backwards to what must be the cause.
If instead you learned more about my X-rays, you'd hear from me how the chiropractor showed the sideways bending of my spine (how many degrees to the left here, and back to the right there) by adding lines between corresponding vertebrae points and showing the angle deviation from vertical.
And then he showed me the cause which was the top of one femur was higher than the other, because one leg was longer than the other, the X-ray being captured in the standing position, barefoot with heels firmly planted etc. On the X-ray, he drew a line across the top of the femurs and showed the angle that deviated from horizontal.
And then he said it's like I've been stepping in a pothole my entire life and my spine has compensated by bending sideways. The difference is big enough to affect my spine but small enough that other people never noticed. And since it happened gradually as I grew, I never noticed either. But you'd also hear from me he wasn't hedging like there was any doubt about the X-ray's interpretation.
(The chiropractor lost my business because I could just put a little shim in one shoe and my spine wouldn't have to compensate anymore, and in fact this was his suggestion. No, he didn't try to sell me a shim. Yes, if a different interpretation of the X-ray were possible that'd allow him to keep my business, he would have said so.)
But the stranger noticed entirely independently and weeks later. I wonder if you suppose this was at some big tent revival where someone advertised a healer was in town.
No, if you had asked, if you had stepped closer to the evidence instead of keeping your distance and reasoning backwards from your chosen conclusion after imagining whatever you did, you would learn this was an ordinary boring Sunday at a boring church where I never saw or expected anything like this to happen, and he (truly a random dude that no one announced) singled me out, did his unexpected deed, and left. No one knew him, no one paid him, he didn't gain anything from it. He approached me unbidden, I didn't seek him out for a healing nor did I expect to ever see one much less experience one.
What is the reasonable explanation how this happened in separate places instead of the chiropractor and this stranger knowing each other and trying to gain from this?
You mentioned susceptibility. I wonder if you suppose I might be the gullible type who goes to big tent revivals. But if you stepped closer and asked, you'd learn I have two degrees from MIT and have spent more than two decades dealing with computers where the only thing that counts are facts. My friends from MIT who are believers are not susceptible either. Given a choice between one church that is known for good Bible studies vs another that has people speaking in tongues etc we would all prefer to go to the former.
I opened my eyes during the experience so I not only felt it, I saw it. The follow-up X-ray was the exact same setup body position. It's what the doctor ordered after I described the chiropractor's conclusion about my legs. Perhaps you are reasoning from an anti supernatural presupposition -- that anything supernatural is immediately dismissed. But as I said before, it's easy and reasonable to accept that IF God exists, then he can resurrect just as easily as you dragging a file back out of your trash.
The same goes for Jesus' tomb. If you would step closer and look at the evidence, you would see that the hoax theory is weak. My goal is not to convince you to change your mind because that's a type (A) conversation. My goal is to show you that resurrection is a reasonable explanation. Or rather, my challenge to you was to come up with a reasonable explanation of the empty tomb given the evidence. But now I realize it'd only feel like a difficult challenge if you're familiar with the evidence, which you are not. You could be, if you came closer to it and looked.
One fellow who looked at the evidence was a member of President Nixon's Watergate scandal. He experienced from the inside how hard it was to keep a conspiracy going. He saw what it's like to crack under the pressure. There's no way he could believe Jesus' disciples could carry to their painful deaths the supposed secret of a staged resurrection. This person was Chuck Colson.
Another is Lee Strobel who wanted to disprove Christianity. But the key is he came closer to the evidence with his skills as a professional investigative journalist to really attempt a direct undeniable smack down on it. He wanted to know it in exacting detail to totally refute it in a hit piece. But the evidence is so strong that he became a believer.
If you or anyone else is interested, here are some resources
Evidence That Demands a Verdict vols 1&2, Josh McDowell
Included in volume 1:
- think the Bible is no different from any other book? See chapters 1 and 4
- how can you trust the Bible when it wasn't officially accepted by the church until 350 years after the crucifixion? See chapter 3
- how do we know what we have today from the Bible authors was not changed from the originals? See chapter 4
- how can you believe in Jesus when all we know about him comes from biased Christian writers? See chapter 5
- *how can Christians say Jesus rose bodily from the grave? There are lots of possible explanations ... see chapter 10*
- are the gospels a reliable record? See chapters 16 through 27
Case for Christ, Lee Strobel
If you are willing to step closer to the evidence and take an honest look, these are available.
If you remain unwilling, then this branch of the conversation dies here. The record will show you maintaining the hoax/misremembering explanation as reasonable _only_ from a position of unawareness of the evidence. And I would then move to the other branch that you're waiting for. This wasn't a delay tactic. Perhaps I don't have as much free time as you, or my posts take longer to compose than yours -- they contain more as you can all see.
If somebody describes a convoluted closed physical system and concludes that energy is not conserved I don't really need to delve into details to know they made some mistake somewhere.
> What you say about my X-rays arises not from any familiarity with them whatsoever, but starting from your conclusion and stepping backwards to what must be the cause.
What I say arises from my familiarity what X-Ray (and even a medical test in general) is. It's perfectly sufficient to explain your particular experience.
Again, no need to delve into details especially since bottom line is "faith healing exists".
> The difference is big enough to affect my spine but small enough that other people never noticed
This is quite common. Not many people are perfectly symmetrical.
> But you'd also hear from me he wasn't hedging like there was any doubt about the X-ray's interpretation.
People can say what they think very confidentiality regardless of whether they are right or wrong. Being wrong feels exactly the same as being right. At least until you find out you were wrong.
> But the stranger noticed entirely independently and weeks later
Having one slightly shorter leg is unnoticeable for people who don't look for it. But if somebody looks it's not invisible. You can see one shoulder a little bit lower, or pelvis tilted or maybe you can see it in the way person moves. I imagine it's easily spotted by a manipulator that already looks at you like a piece of exploitable meat rather than a person and has extensive experience with people complainig abou health issues.
> he (truly a random dude that no one announced) singled me out, did his unexpected deed, and left. No one knew him, no one paid him, he didn't gain anything from it.
I know this kind of people. Met some. They imagine they can be helpful and they try to help according to their beliefs without intent to exploit. What they earn this way is feeling of utility and being special. Usually they do very little harm. Never any good.
> You mentioned susceptibility. I wonder if you suppose I might be the gullible type who goes to big tent revivals.
You voluntarily went to a church for the purpose other than sightseeing. Not all tents are made of cloth.
> But if you stepped closer and asked, you'd learn I have two degrees from MIT and have spent more than two decades dealing with computers where the only thing that counts are facts.
I absolutely believe you. I have no doubt you have a special brain. Away from the median. This is a hint. Special brains are usually special in many ways at the same time. For example mine is firmly in top 1 pecentile of IQ but also schizoid, ADHD and HSP and possibly away from the median in some other subtle way that may not even have names yet. Your's are high iq and highly able to sustain focus, but also gullible towards mystique. I've already met an intelligent person similar to you. She was capable of doing fairly advanced computer stuff but couldn't reject obviously fake ideas like some woman being true reincarnation of Anne Frank. It's as if she had high intelligence but totally broken bullshit filter that even in average people enables them to reject irrational things quickly. High intelligence might make this process harder because you tend to overthink and decide you can't reject something until you find a specific, well motivated reason for rejection. To sum up, great sequential thinkinig while nearly completely lacking heuristics that can save you from wasting your effort on thinking about useless and fake stuff. If you want to delve into something I'd highly recommend topics of neurodivergence to better understand yourself, better employ your strengths and better mitigate your weaknesses.
> My friends from MIT who are believers are not susceptible either.
Birds of feather flock together. But somehow I feel like you are the strongest believer among them and some of them don't really agree with you about the reality of some things you sincerely believe in.
> Given a choice between one church that is known for good Bible studies vs another that has people speaking in tongues etc we would all prefer to go to the former.
That's commendable.
> I opened my eyes during the experience so I not only felt it, I saw it.
You do have muscles. Muscles do sometimes twitch. And even if they didn't, vision isn't 100% accurate, sometimes you think you've seen motion, esp in your periferial view, but there wasn't any. Noticing motion is primal survival skill. Those systems are evolutionary tuned to be a bit overactive rather than miss important signal.
> It's what the doctor ordered after I described the chiropractor's conclusion about my legs.
And the doctors conclusion was that chiropractor was full of it. Which is often the case because chiropractors are not doctors. They have bo actual medical knowledge. US is very particular place that awards them any credibility. In most other first world countries chiropractors are on the level of something like acupuncture and homeopathy, slightly higher than energy healing, because they actually do some action on your body.
> But now I realize it'd only feel like a difficult challenge if you're familiar with the evidence, which you are not. You could be, if you came closer to it and looked.
I think you can abandon the thread of the tomb because evidence for and against it lies far outside of anything I might concievably be interested in the short decades I have left on this rock. The only thing that's even remotely interesting to me is your intense interest in it. The psychological effect it has on you. And why you'd rather seek evidence to confirm it rather than disprove it. After all that's the rational way, when you have an amazing idea you should seek why it might be false, not why it might be true. Instead you try to offload this job to other people who sought to disprove it but failed. Why don't you seek people who sought to disprove it and believe they succeeded? Read what ateists have to say about the tomb. Many of them, especially from US, had religious upbringing, sometimes even had some religious functions and were intensly interested in their religion but that interest and effort lead them ultimately to accidentally disproving it beyond their reasonable doubt despite the pain and struggle they felt as believers in this process. They talked about it openly on the internet.
> And I would then move to the other branch that you're waiting for.
Thank you.
> This wasn't a delay tactic.
I believe you didn't apply any conscious tactics. Your mind just gravitates toward this subject.
> Perhaps I don't have as much free time as you, or my posts take longer to compose than yours -- they contain more as you can all see.
That's very likely. Don't worry. I won't miss your answer whenever it comes. Thank you for this conversation.
The right arm was shorter because she broke it as a child and it healed in a way that interfered with proper growth.
After the prayer the arms were the same length. So no need for x-ray arguments or any concern about any single person being susceptible or gullible since this was a group of 4 individuals.
They knew the "patient" beforehand, and they continued to interact over the next several weeks. She was from Taiwan. Her chosen English nickname was Diane. And this occurred in London.
The anti supernatural supposition is not a moving of the goalposts. It is actually the removal of goalposts. You can't score a field goal if the goalposts are denied entirely.
I'm sorry, but reality doesn't owe you a win in a game you made up.
> The anti supernatural supposition is not a moving of the goalposts. It is actually the removal of goalposts.
I'm sorry, but I'm not in this business. But if you can find a person that can demonstrate a miracle you can take them to James Randi foundation, demonstrate a miracle, recieve 1 mln dollars and split it between yourselves. Maybe it's not a lot of money but providing humanity with the first actual evidence of supernatural in history is reward in itself. You can try score your goals there.
> After the prayer the arms were the same length. So no need for x-ray arguments or any concern about any single person being susceptible or gullible since this was a group of 4 individuals.
I am sorry, but you haven't spoken to 4 people, you spoke to 1 who could (and probably did) make up the other 3 as well as the event itself.
Sometimes you meet honest person that participated in the event staged by dishonest, but I don't suspect it's the case this time since the person you spoken to claims he knew the woman beforehand, unless it was just for a short period that was part of the setup.
You have to pay more attention to your input channels.
You have the same symptoms as the person I knew. Tendency to seriously underestimate propensity of people to lie, cheat and believe in lies. It's as if you can't imagine why a person would lie or cheat you assume that what they say is accurate description of their accurate perceptions.
If you are really about truth seeking there's a ton of materials about how the faith healers do what they do. Maybe you'll see some examples of what you experienced or heard about, for example here:
https://youtu.be/vxR5-2LginE?si=ZF4mbFlfWVsDpaRZ
Please watch the whole thing and read top comments under the video. I know it's gonna be hard but please do try.
Again, I felt my leg moving against my pants while seated _fully_ on the ground and the guy only had his hands lightly touching my shins. I felt the legs moving against the pants against the floor where he couldn't have affected it.
The video's 4 methods show you have to hold both feet/ankles in order to pull off the trick.
Are you an athiest - and believe that existence is limited only to energy and matter?
Do you watch a lot of magic shows? It can give you perspective of how easy brain is to fool.
> Are you an athiest - and believe that existence is limited only to energy and matter?
I'm as atheistic as they come. I don't believe anything that scientific consensus built on settled peer reviewed research doesn't force me to believe. Personal anecdotes, even my own, have almost no influence on my working model of the world because I know, both from research and repeated experience how terrible human memeory and perception is, how easy it is to make a mistake, to misinterpret something, to fool yourself, to be wrong, to be fooled. I also hate philosophers, including religious ones of course, because I believe they asking useless, hopeless questions and then think up some fragile reasoning about it which is usually a mixture of obvious and wrong. Nature of existence is one of such useless questions.
_Every_ trick in the video relied on the mark sitting in a chair with the illusionist holding their legs _off_ the ground for manipulation.
I was seated completely on the ground, wearing jeans. The only person touching me was the guy and only on my right shin and only with fingers held straight.
Imagine this happened to you, and please explain how he would be able to trick you into feeling your leg move against the jeans which are held in place against the ground, for several seconds, while you are examining the sensation carefully and watching your leg grow longer.
I don't think you can come up with a trick recipe for that.
Anyways my faith existed before this and would exist if it never happened.
> Nature of existence is one of such useless questions.
Or because it doesn't matter to you what existence really is?
I want to know whether you think matter and energy cover all of existence. Or is there anything outside that Venn diagram.
It's as if somebody knew no Nigerian princes are sending emails to shower you with money, but your experience is real because the message arrived on WhatsApp and was uncannily personal and honest.
> Imagine this happened to you, and please explain how he would be able to trick you into feeling your leg move against the jeans which are held in place against the ground, for several seconds, while you are examining the sensation carefully and watching your leg grow longer.
My brain is perfectly capable of tricking me into feeling that an insect crawls on my skin, especially in the area that is abundant with insects, like on a forest walk. But when I reach to check there's no insect there. How's that not a miracle of vanishing insects?
You were in context where your brain expected faith healing, miracles and elation. So that's what your brain delivered. The lead role in every scam is played by the victim.
How can you trust your own perceptions so much? Doesn't even your own religion warn you about this? Why instead of trusting your God and only your God you trust some random dude? Just because he self-appointedly associates himself with your God?
> I don't think you can come up with a trick recipe for that.
I can't because I never was a proper "magic" nerd. Maybe visit some tents. You'll see that creativity of people when it comes to tricks is not far from endless.
Alternatively contact people who debunk that kind of stuff. They might offer some ideas.
> Anyways my faith existed before this and would exist if it never happened.
I absolutely believe that because I think deepness of your faith comes from peculiarities of your brain's anatomy and biology. Regardless of when and where you'd been born your brain would adopt local supernatural narrative because it wouldn't be able to reject it. What's more I think it's physically impossible for you to become atheist. There's simply too little time of your life left (unless somehow medicine makes a great progress when it comes to senescence) to try to develop that part of your brain if that's even possible. Similarly I probably wouldn't be able to train myself out of ADHD or schizoid personality, or lower my intelligence, or lower my atheism (without damaging my brain wholesale of course).
> > Nature of existence is one of such useless questions. > Is that because science cannot answer such questions?
Can't answer then yet. Mostly because of that. Also because any imaginable answer has no utility because our tech level is that low. It's as if caveman trying to rub two sticks together somehow got answer to Fermat's last theorem.
There were many questions in the past that science couldn't answer that the religion or philosophy provided "answers" for. Then our tech level rose and science firmly settled them. Every question that we ever managed to properly answer turned out to be technical.
Science is hinting at the nature of existence. So far it duly notes that there's no indication that our existence is anything else than just being, with no particular reason, intent or purpose. It's not an answer, just a hint for now, but based on the only mechanism for acquiring actual knowledge that human race found out so far.
> I want to know whether you think matter and energy cover all of existence.
Obviously. Especially if we narrow down our interests to the part of existence that's conceivably accessible to us in any way in, let's say, next billion years.
> Or is there anything outside that Venn diagram.
Fun fact, the part outside is also the part of Venn diagram. It just contains no objects of interest.
Defense submitted evidence which the prosecution refuses to consider closely because of the universal negative (unproven) claim.
Prosecution submitted evidence (youtube video) which the defense examined (demonstrating better involvement in the case than the prosecution) and found to be irrelevant: _all_ tricks required holding the mark's ankles/feet off the ground and required dexterity. Stranger's fingers were straight and I was on the ground.
It's as if Stranger was charged with murder using a blade and Prosecution submitted examples involving only firearms! What!
Prosecution refers to the prevalence of many other tricksters. But the defense points out simply the guilt of others implies nothing about the guilt or innocence of the Stranger.
Prosecution argues the mind can trick itself into feeling sensations that are easily checked and verified as imagined. But I ___did___ check by sight and touch over several seconds (not to mention X-ray).
So prosecution's argument contradicts itself --giving himself the benefit of the doubt when dispelling the sensation of an imaginary bug on his skin, but ___denying___ the same benefit to the defense without reason. This argument is tossed out of court with prejudice.
Prosecution refuses to put in the work of building a theory of the case: ___what___ is the recipe for tricking someone who is wearing jeans, seated fully on the ground, using only your fingers fully extended (no pinching of fabric, moving the mark's body in any way disallowed) ... Followed by an X-ray that shows the result (and proceeded by an X-ray that shows the contrary)?
Prosecution has high IQ but wants the defense to do his job. What? Try to figure out a recipe. Or __you__ go do the prosecution's research and see if they can explain it. You said watching the video would be hard but I did it. Now it's your turn.
By the way, if nothing exists outside matter and energy then you are deeply at odds with reality: your reactions to any violation of human dignity are all just chemicals bouncing around. There's no such real thing as human dignity either. Squashing a tomato or a human -- it's just a rearrangement of matter and energy.
- a good, compassionate, merciful, omnipotent, and omniscient God
- the reality that innocent babies suffer and die
The purpose is not to convince anyone to become a believer.
I maintain that anyone who remains an objector to the actual thesis (that these two realities can be reconciled) is really merely refusing to suppose for the sake of conversation and to hold the all thoughts described below _simultaneously_ and with enough weight for each
If you find any tenet irrelevant or begs for your immediate objection, you are misreading this post, and on the verge of discounting a piece, and objecting to some other worldview, not the one I'm espousing
I didn't spend any time making this palatable so don't foist this on a grieving parent as-is
Also one might read this post and feel that God is severe or unappealing. But there are plenty of positives to delight about God, and some of them are described in the links below
The Peace Which Christ Gives His True Followers https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2.iv.xiii.html
Safety, Fulness, and Sweet Refreshment in Christ https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/sermons/files/safety.html
God has always existed, eternally in three persons
Nothing and no one existed before God nor is above God. He is the sole true sovereign
The rest of existence came into being from nothing because he created it and holds it in existence. He "upholds all things by the word of His power." Heb. 1:3 as if the strong and weak nuclear forces came from him continually and intentionally
Let the rest of existence be howsoever vast, it is as the light dust of the balance and as perfectly nothing in comparison to the Creator
It is correct to value God over all else. The godly person prefers God over everything he has had, over everything he currently has, over anything he has the prospect of having in this world and in the next, real or imagined https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2/works2.v.html
God was free to create whatever kind of universe he wanted, and also was completely free to have decided instead not to create at all, ever
He knows all things, including all things to come. It's like how you can know everything that happens in a novel that you've _already_ finished
Not only is he complete in knowledge, he is also perfect and unsurpassed in wisdom, moral beauty, love, and every virtue
Some virtues like love only make sense in the context of a relationship. God has existed from all eternity past in relationship within the trinity
Some virtues like mercy and grace can only be exercised when not deserved. Forgiveness can only be exercised after a wrong. This did not force God's hand in creation in any way -- he was completely free to possess a virtue and yet leave it unexpressed forever
But he decided to create the kind of universe where sentient beings such as angels and humans can decide to prefer God's wisdom or their own. Humans can, ... in our limited knowledge, .... moving only forward in time from one line of the novel to the next, ... only seeing what's next to us in the tall grass like a mouse, ... without knowing all that has taken place or all that will take place, ... with our few meager mortal brain cells that need regular sleep, ... continuing in our existence only by his say-so, yes we can choose to prefer our wisdom to God. It is the height of hubris, yet we all without exception do so naturally. We prefer the light dust of the balance, pegged at the top of the scale's range of motion, over the stupendous gold brick that is God Only Wise, Ancient of Days.
We don't want to answer to God. We don't want to live life his way. We have ideas and plans and standards of living that we think are better than his.
A penalty must fit the crime. Justice requires the penalty to be proportional to the crime.
The exact same insult levied against two different individuals can carry different weight, if there is an aggravating factor such as the identity, worth, majesty of one of the offended
God is infinite in worth. Our obligation to him is infinite
But this means our sin ("we know better than God") is infinite (however finite in number and duration yet having an infinite aggravation) and therefore justly deserves an infinite penalty. Since we have nothing to pay with that doesn't already belong to God such a penalty would never be paid in full by us https://ccel.org/e/edwards/sermons/justice.html
God was completely free to set the rules of his creation however he wanted.
Angels seem to be accountable to God purely as individuals.
With us humans however, God had a different rule: that one could represent a group as a surety. Either to represent all of us negatively as Adam did, or represent some of us (door open to all) positively as Jesus did.
Adam's responsibility was to heed the only prohibition God stated at the time with the consequence for disobedience being a fallen world and an infinite penalty hereafter. Such penalty already explained as consistent with justice, so also the fallen world being a lesser consequence is thus also consistent with justice.
Ignorance of the law or its consequences does not fly in court
If Adam and Eve had never eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then they would have never known evil, including suffering. This might have been a way for us to end up in a universe where babies never suffered nor died. But Adam and Eve succumbed to FOMO vs trust in the love and wisdom of God.
But if God had picked any other mere human to be the surety, that person would fail as well. We each prove this is true when we prefer our own wisdom or anything over God
We each earn an infinite penalty without help from Adam. And Adam's consequences are also present everywhere and unavoidable
"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8) as our second surety. Fully human, and simultaneously fully and eternally the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, Jesus lived the righteous life for us and paid the infinite penalty in finite time
You and I have committed offenses, each with infinite weight, and we each owe and infinite penalty to God. We could spend forever in hell and still never pay it off.
The alternative is to acknowledge this guilt and accept Jesus to pay for us
One illustration for this is if a child earned a spanking but the father covered the child's skin with his own hand before spanking his own hand
How was Jesus able to pay for more than one person in finite time? Because he has the full infinite worth of God the Son.
Jesus' death does more to repair God's honor than if all humanity were to burn in hell for eternity.
God did not have to provide this surety. He was completely free and justified to judge Adam and Eve immediately in hell. That would have been another way to have a universe void of suffering and dying infants.
So when an actual Christian parent mourns the loss of an infant child, one help is to consider that God himself in Jesus also died. And to imagine how much harder it would be to continue worshiping some other god who never tasted death personally.
And another help is the hope of reunion with the lost infant in the hereafter 2 Samuel 12:23
Life in heaven for one who died as an infant would put into perspective any imagined life they could have lived on earth -- to think otherwise is to suppose life on earth to be worth more than time with God and thus idolatry. We tend to imagine the good that a dead infant lost out on. But we don't know what their mortal future really would have been like.
And if he shows the mercy of healing an infant and protecting his life to adulthood, that healed person still eventually and surely earns an infinite penalty like everyone else and still needs God's mercy.
Can the wrath of God be reconciled with the mercy of God? See https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2.iv.xii.html
The existence of the dying baby, the continued existence of the questioner, and the existence of the question itself contain within them the very answer to the charge. If God were malevolent, none of them would exist here in this world. This alone is sufficient to defeat the charge. But God goes beyond that by experiencing the death penalty we deserved. He didn't have to, but he did, and is thus the only deity you could come to who would understand your pain from firsthand experience. And not only that, he did this to make a way (to pay) for a reunion between a grieving parent and a lost infant. Adam was involved but we can't blame him because we too would have (and already have) failed, because men naturally are God's enemies: https://ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works2/works2.vi.i.html
In this worldview, any continued objection really boils down to the same original error (Adam's) of thinking one knows better than God, and so one does not want to answer to a sovereign God, and so one suppresses the truth with objections and excuses even though it is plainly evident from what has been made that God is to be thanked and honored. Romans 1:18-23
That's your whole point? That a malevolent entity wouldn't conjure a sentient being to torture them because creating them is too good and would offset any evil he might commit against them?
Man has a female dog, he ensures it has puppies because he wants to torture and kill the puppies.
Oh, what marvelously moral man! Godlike! He gifted the puppies with existance! That's surely infinite good and by comparison any torture and killing he does is only finite and means nothing compared to his infinite goodness.
Malevolence almost requires creation. There's only so much evil you can do before needing to create something new. And if nothing exists, just yourself, literally the first step is to create something you can be evil towards.
I don't even need to mention clearly amoral assumption that good and evil are somehow additive and you may offset evil with good. It represents a stage of development of morality that humanity surpassed on average few hundred years ago at least. Average person in the West today knows that a TV host creating magical childhood for thousands of kids doesn't offset him sexually assaulting even one kid.
The bulk of your writing is trying to argue that God is special, so setting up the world in which babies die of cancer, while having perfectly free choice to set it up so they don't, is good actually, not evil. Would be evil only if someone other than God did it. This is a line of reasoning straight from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Stranger
Sorry, but that argumentation makes you seem like amoral monster so I clasify this attempt as failed.
Out of sheer curiosity about your person ... What are the domains of your MIT degrees?
> Some virtues like mercy and grace can only be exercised when not deserved. Forgiveness can only be exercised after a wrong. This did not force God's hand in creation in any way -- he was completely free to possess a virtue and yet leave it unexpressed forever
Damn... That's next level evil. It's like getting a dog and keeping it inside so you can express your mercy by occasionally not beating it up when it pisses on the floors. Even though you could skip that. You could skip having a dog, or give it access to the garden, or even just not beat it to show your mercy every time. And all that just because ... you want to.
> yes we can choose to prefer our wisdom to God.
I'm very glad we did over last two millennia so now we don't need to sit and wait for his mercy in more and more cases.
> We don't want to answer to God. We don't want to live life his way. We have ideas and plans and standards of living that we think are better than his.
> A penalty must fit the crime. Justice requires the penalty to be proportional to the crime.
What are you getting at? What crimes an infant with a brain that barely starts to develop (and will never develop further) already committed against God so that death is a fitting punishment? What ideas, plans and standards of living did the baby already have so that it deserves to die?
> God is infinite in worth. Our obligation to him is infinite
Wait, so God created sentient beings in a way that thay are worth nothing compared to him so that he can torture them freely for any offence and it makes every act of torture an act of mercy because they deserve infinite punishment for any infraction? And he did this because he wanted to? That's peak evil.
> Angels seem to be accountable to God purely as individuals. > With us humans however, God had a different rule: that one could represent a group as a surety.
Oh. There it is. So the babies themselves didn't offend God in any exceptional way, however God decided they still deserve fo die for the offences of others.
Punishing individuals for something someone else did is universally recognized as evil. Humanity outgrew group punishment. Why perfect God haven't?
> Adam's responsibility was to heed the only prohibition God stated at the time with the consequence for disobedience being a fallen world and an infinite penalty hereafter.
And you don't see any problem with the fact that he was created by God to behave exactly like that? If I intentionally design a system that can fail then when the system fails is the failure my fault or system's fault? Setting up someone to fail in a way that deserves infinite punishment is another peak evil.
> If Adam and Eve had never eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then they would have never known evil, including suffering.
But that couldn't happen because the God made them specifically in this way that they were capable of making this offence and given their infinite lifespan they were sure to make this offence eventually. God designed it in the exact way so that it happens. Again it's like getting a dog and keeping it in a house so that it eventually pisses on the floor so you can then beat it senseless as a punishment. How can you be so blind to plain evilness of everything you describe?
> You and I have committed offenses, each with infinite weight, and we each owe and infinite penalty to God. We could spend forever in hell and still never pay it off.
How convenient that Jesus spared himself the experience of rotting in hell forever. Was he really fully human as you postulate if he was spared this experience because he could, unlike us, pay infinite price in finite time? Instead of true human experience he spent a blink of an eye here and went back to status quo of his infinite blissful existence. Doesn't sound very ... benevolent. It reminds me of rich people doing kind of hobo-tourism for some time, when they don't use their wealth for a week or two and live like a poor person then come back to their mansion happy about themselves fondly thinking about their experience and lives of others they touch through their excursion.
> One illustration for this is if a child earned a spanking but the father covered the child's skin with his own hand before spanking his own hand
A child never earns a spanking. It's evil to beat a child. And doing it through your hand is just mental. It shows disturbed, conflicted mind in which evil and good fight constantly and I'd say evil is winning.
> So when an actual Christian parent mourns the loss of an infant child, one help is to consider that God himself in Jesus also died.
Yeah but he didn't stay dead. And permanence of death is kinda big thing about it. So did he really taste death if he can come again whenever he pleases?
> Ignorance of the law or its consequences does not fly in court
But it was a bit more nuanced wasn't it? They were explicitly mislead about the consequences by the lawgiver. Adam and Eve were told they are going to die not that they are going to be expelled to toil and spawn billions of people like them who are all gonna suffer and die and the potentially rot in hell for all eternity. How is setting up a law and lying about consequences of violating it not evil?
> And another help is the hope of reunion with the lost infant in the hereafter
That's no help at all. Their baby was robbed the experience of life on Earth. How exactly that reunion should look like? Is it still infant with undeveloped mind? Is it adult that somehow grew without experiencing life? Without having a childhood or any interaction with its parents? It doesn't make any sense. What's the best case scenario for heavenly reunion with dead infant?
> Life in heaven for one who died as an infant would put into perspective any imagined life they could have lived on earth -- to think otherwise is to suppose life on earth to be worth more than time with God and thus idolatry.
Isn't God everywhere all the time? How is life on Earth worth less than any life in heaven if life on Earth is spent with God as well? Arent both infinitely valuable?
And if life on Earth is so much less valuable why don't we just murder all infants so they can spend more time with God? Wouldn't it be a superbly moral act according to this logic? Selfless even because the murderer would destin themselves to eternity in hell so that the infants could spend more time with God.
> We tend to imagine the good that a dead infant lost out on. But we don't know what their mortal future really would have been like.
Yeah. It could have been tortured by the world that God intentionally created so maybe it's mercy that it dies. Why then once we finally manage to treat previously mortal illness and extend lives we often see that those saved lives arent particularly bad? No worse than others really. It would be quite a coincidence if all children dying before invention of for example insulin would have terrible lives if they were spared, but somehow the children after invention of insulin that were saved by it seem to be leading perfectly average lives. Coincidence or truly wicked design.
> because men naturally are God's enemies
If I were to believe in God I would tend to agree. I just have the complete opposite opinion on who's more evil in this conflict for the reasons you so clearly displayed in your comment and many more.
Your response to a problem I posed looks like throwing stuff at the wall to see if anything sticks. None did of course and I can't blame you because no one (supposedly) can know true mind of God. Thanks for giving it your best shot.
What makes idolatry wrong?
How is God not an idolater?
"Idolatry is the worship of an idol as though it were a deity. In Abrahamic religions (namely Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baháʼí Faith) idolatry connotes the worship of something or someone other than the Abrahamic God as if it were God."
If I was a believer in Abrahamic God, I'd believe idolatry is wrong because, I'd believe there's only one God and no other thing is God, so people worshipping anything else but the God I believe in would be wrong and possibly dangerous because they might mislead others from worshipping the only correct God.
God is not an idolater because he doesn't worship anything (I assume) just demands worshipping himself from his every sentient creation.
I'm curious why are you interested in answers to those questions. What do my answers tell you?
But to get to the twist we should unpack this word Worship because it's a little nebulous. It could mean lots of things but I want to reduce it to its basic essence.
Let's imagine a dirty barefoot ignorant heathen Bob who carves an idol out of wood. It's a small figurine that he names as his brand new god Steve. Bob _claims_ to worship Steve, Bob bows down to Steve at regular intervals and burns incense to Steve, etc etc.
But over time Bob gets into a hobby like golf. And Bob spends all his free time playing golf, practicing golf, reading about golf, visualizing his next golf skill improvements, dreaming about golf.
Dust gathers on Steve's head and shoulders. If Steve were to suddenly animate, would Steve agree that Bob is a true Steve worshiper? No. I think if we simmer this nebulous word worship, we might get a more revealing word like "prioritize".
And maybe if we were to use more words, we might expand that to "hold (in thoughts, feelings, and resulting behavior) as most valuable"
And from Bob's behavior, we can see Bob cares more about golf than he cares about Steve.
Similarly, there are some people who claim to be Christians, but we see from their behavior that some of these people care more about, say, having a reputation as a miracle working faith healer -- or maybe they care more about the money they can rake in while faking miracles, than they care about God.
Even while we may disagree whether God exists, we can agree that such fake faith healers are criminals when money gets involved, right?
Then suppose for a second that God does exist, wouldn't you agree that a God who is supposedly perfect in justice should signify for anyone watching that these people are indeed criminals? Like, something has to be _SAID_ at least.
So in this supposed existence which has a supreme being, I think you can agree everyone's Priority Number One Arrow should point at God. When someone's arrow isn't pointed at God, that's idolatry.
If this makes sense, let me know and I can get to the twist. Or maybe you can figure out the twist before I say it.
I'm sure we'd agree on many matters, at least those that belong squarely to the material realm. That's the good thing about material realm that as people think more and figure out more they gravitate towards unitary understanding of reality. Conversely when people ponder religious subjects they tend to very quickly split into myriad of denominations, each with their own mutually contradictory perfect revealed truths plain to understand, at least according to them.
> Even while we may disagree whether God exists, we can agree that such fake faith healers are criminals when money gets involved, right?
Even on moral matters we might largely agree, as long as we stick to humanistic morality, as distilled in Western culture with roots in biology of being members of a very social species. It's only when a person gets close to religion their morality gets twisted and evil starts to look like good and some good starts to look like evil.
I can fully agree that exploiting guillibility of others (esp vulnerable ones) for your own benefit (whatever it might be, monetary or not) and at their detriment, stealing their money, wasting their time and messing up their model of the world so it's less aligned with reality, is in fact a very evil. And any moral being should easily recognize evilness of it.
> I think you can agree everyone's Priority Number One Arrow should point at God. When someone's arrow isn't pointed at God, that's idolatry.
If in your religion giving someone your top priority is how you properly worship a God and only God deserves this kind of priority than yes, giving top priority to anything else (a hobby, a scam, but also your child, elderly parent or a beloved spouse) might be seen as idolatry from the point of view of your religion. It fits the definition of idolatry I cited. I hope it's not lost on you how evil it is, at least to anyone for anyone who's morality was not twisted by religion, to demand you don't give your loved one a top priority, because of how much harm to individuals and society that demand does bring.
> If this makes sense, let me know and I can get to the twist. Or maybe you can figure out the twist before I say it.
Please do continue. I'm curious where do your thoughts lead. Unfortunately I can't offer any guess.
Steelmanning would not take the evil committed by humans and hang that around God's neck and blame him. Steelmanning would accept that free will means people can do things that God wouldn't himself choose, and when they do evil, they don't represent him.
Steelmanning would accept that if a Supreme Being exists, then that being is indeed supreme -- even though babies are precious, the supreme being has even more worth because he is supreme.
You and I have the same emotional reaction to something that violates our top priorities (humankind esp loved ones for you, God and then humankind esp loved ones for me)
Everyone's got a top priority. If there is a supreme being, the right top priority arrow should point at that being. Including the supreme being's own top priority arrow!
Otherwise God would be an idolater.
Many will find this repugnant. I know. Probably because we are accustomed to thinking on the level of fellow humans, we're all each worth exactly one human, no more no less.
But if you honestly want to know how this other math works, this is it. We're in the middle of a symphony and parts might sound like they need some resolution. And in the end there will be resolution and the whole symphony will show his supremacy in the _end_ because only in the end are all accounts truly settled. Before the end, things will appear incorrect.
Actually the easiest way to reconcile this in your mind is to imagine you're, say, a Van Halen fan at one of their concerts at the height of their popularity. You want them to go absolutely nuts on stage showing off, because they're the best band ever. When they magnify themselves on stage, it's what you paid to see.
Either you honestly want to understand and you'll steelman or you really just wanted to be a critic and you won't. Btw, I replied on the other branch as well