If you believe that God is omniscient and created the universe, then you believe that God created every detail of the universe, including childhood leukemia. Christians promote and demote God according to their rhetorical needs; one day, he's "he who is" and the next he's barely a Greek hero.
I think it depends a lot on one's view of free will. To speak of Christians as a monolith is just as wrong as to speak of atheists as one. Some have a high Christology and others a low one. Some believe God planned and controls every detail of the universe and their lives, others don't.
It's actually worse than that. If you believe in an O/O God, you have to accept that you were then created knowing full well every single thing you will ever do, every thought, every feeling was instilled in you at the moment of creation. Whence then comes free will? You cannot have a creator....
who is omniscient & free will. They are incompatible. If you take it further and follow the path of god-centric determinism, the whole thing becomes an exercise in recursive nihilism. And if one accepts "Revelations" at face value and God knows he is going to "win". ffs, do something useful.
Many believe in a Creator who does not micromanage every aspect of existence. E.g. a God who created cells, DNA, and gamma rays does not intend to punish with cancer those afflicted, but cancer may result from the interplay of these things in the world as it was created. Set it up, let it play out.
and this creator is worthy of worship why?
Um, some might say because he created the world that gave rise to our existence? Not unreasonable to say thanks.
i don’t think toddlers with cancer do need to say thanks, actually, nor the scores of adult humans who’ve never known anything but pain and suffering in their lives
Silly strawman. Never said anyone *needs* to say thanks. But I'm not going to condemn those who decide they want to.
"not unreasonable to say thanks" were your exact words, nothing straw about them. i do think it unreasonable.
These guys will endlessly dodge answering that same set of like 5 questions that is inherently incompatible w/their claim of an omniscient, omnipotent, and benevolent God. The rhetorical dodges crack me up, they usually wind up being the passive-aggressive version of "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU".
Right. “God reached out to me.” OK, why hasn’t he done the same for me? If he reached out to you, then he’s an interventionist, yet doesn’t seem to answer prayers and allowed Hitler, childhood cancer, etc.
They have no explanation for any of that or just say God works in mysterious ways. They want to believe in heaven because they want to believe in eternal life despite that there is no such thing. Dont forget God needs money so you have to give at church. Couldn't you just read the book?
You are vastly outmatched here. Admit your situation. There would be more dignity in it.
what an interesting way to say you can’t refute
David Hume, among others, wrestled with this long before you did
I'm aware, and it's odd that you'd appeal to an atheist to make whatever point you have in mind.
What point *is* he trying to make there? Yes, other people have asked these questions. They're good questions.
To wit: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy
Have you *read* this book? Leibniz has an argument about how Hell contributes to the bestness of this best of all possible worlds *if everyone ever born on Earth* is intended to burn in it eternally. It's *sickening*.
Whatever God you feel as so everpresent is *everpresent*: present in cancer. But the God who has nothing to do with the cancer would need to level up to be Hercules or Perseus. Take your pick.
When those kids with cancer die, do you think that believers think they go to hell? That god doesn’t save them? I don’t understand this argument. Do you really argue God created childhood cancer to watch kids suffer and die and he laughs?
How should I know? God works His wonders *in mysterious ways*. If torturing children to death is for the best, well, maybe torturing them for eternity is for the best. How could one begin to guess?
Do you think you should know what you think we think if you’re going to argue that we think it? Like come on, at least try a little here. “Torturing children to death.” So you don’t get the concept of heaven and that those kids aren’t suffering in heaven, like the rest of us here on earth…
But on what grounds do you conclude that they *aren't* being tortured eternally? Why be confident that *eternal* torture is bad, if you've agreed that torturing someone to death is (mysteriously) good? Couldn't eternal torture be mysteriously good?
Or do you know God's intentions, but only outside of this world?
Happy to have this debate, but don’t put words in my mouth. Where did I say children suffering are good? Otherwise, we believe in life after death and that heaven is better than life on earth. So if someone believes that, how can you not comprehend when anyone dies they’re in a better place?
Your belief that life is better in heaven isn't a free pass to ignore the misery here on earth. Sometimes I think you "faithful" ignore that.
Well, you believe that God creates only good things (I suppose), and you believe that God created the cancer (because the cancer exists and God creates all that is); if you refrain from spelling out the implication, you're still implying it.
Why would you think that the children go to a *better* place after God tortures them to death? Once you've agreed that it was good for God to create them and give them cancer and kill them, can you really insist that you know God's plan well enough to know that it doesn't involve Hell for everyone?
Again, you think this is all we have, so you can’t comprehend a better place.
Do you believe that there is anything bad in the world? Why would "but there's a big nice world that you go to when you die" be relevant to whether there's anything bad in the world?
Why would an omniscient and omnipotent God be answerable to your decision of what is right and wrong misses the point. Do I wish God would explain? Yes! But God doesn't answer to me because I'm not capable as a person to direct God in a holy and just way
This is the same argument Christians always use that we are just incapable of understanding God when really there is no valid explanation for the existence.
Okay, but if we really are just bags of meat in a universe of random chance, why is childhood cancer bad? Why is anything bad? An argument based on a feeling of injustice with no explanation for the existence of that feeling leaves you in the same spot
Disclosure: I haven't read this thread yet. I absolutely loved the depiction of God Anne Rice came up with: a being who doesn't actually know where it came from or what it is and is fairly aloof about the world as the world was just a means to figuring out its own questions.
So Deism with extra steps
Kinda but not entirely. This god is a very real individual with emotions and personality quirks rather than a distant undefined overseer. It's just that it doesn't really care much about what happens to humans. It's a fascinating read. (Memnoch the Devil)
Except for in many Christian Traditions, the universe has been fundamentally broken and doesn’t operate in the way God intended it to operate ever since humans rebelled and broke it.
Man created God. God didn't create man. The Bible was written by men to control the people with the promise of heaven which they can't describe what it is btw.
Tell me you’ve never read the Bible without telling me you’ve never read the Bible.
I am pretty sure that is what you are telling me.
To anyone out there who thinks the Bible was written by rich and powerful men who wanted to control the masses, please. For the love of God, go read the Sermon on the Mount. It’s in the gospel of Matthew. Its chapters 5, 6, and 7.
I also did not say the people were rich and powerful. You did. You ask me to read something that can't even be verified.
If they weren’t rich and powerful they didn’t do a very good job of controlling people then huh?
It is embarrassing that you can't see that if you lived somewhere else you wouldn'teven be a Christian. You would be another religion. How do you know Muslims are wrong and Christians are right. Please listen to Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris and you will learn .
Well, I mean, if you had read the Bible you’d know that heaven isn’t even the end goal of the Bible anyway. But you don’t seem to know that, hence my comment.
If you lived in India then you wouldn't even be a Christian. Then only reason you are is because that is what your parents told you to believe. You don't think for yourself .
Possibly. Though if I followed anything even remotely like the path I did in my life there’s a decent chance I would be a Christian no matter where I was born. When I grew up I left Christianity for a time and tried other religions. And no religion too, although that’s just boring.
I am actually not really trying to convert you to thinking like I do. I think you should continue to think as you want. If believing that brings you comfort then that is great. I wish I believed it but it is just not true.
Why do you wish you believed it? That never made sense to me. If you want to believe something, believe it. We are talking about matters outside of space and time. You can’t prove or disprove any of it. If you wanna believe it, believe it. If you really don’t, then don’t. Do what you want.
I will tell you another thing that people want to believe is soulmates. There is no such thing but people want to believe that this is the only person and they somehow found them and it is magical. Amazing again how that person just happens to live nearby usually.
It is not real. That is why I don't believe. I don't believe in Santa Claus but I have played pretend with my kids. I don't bring it up to most people because I don't want to change their view actually and I don't want them worrying about me because I don't believe it.
Still wound up back at Christianity after learning about Francis of Assisi and reading the Bible for more depth and less rote answers. Found Jesus, or rather he found me.
Can I ask you doesn't it bother you that so many Christians so easily rejected Jesus and decided to vote for Donald Trump. He was a test and most Christians failed that test. Why? Trump told them something they liked more than what Jesus said.
Yeah. It does bother me. But there are great resources available that explain what led to a lot of it. “Jesus and John Wayne” by DuMez is a great book. So is “The Power and the Glory” by Tim Alberta. Christianity is very diverse. There are a lot of branches of it, contrary to what…
Again I am happy for you that you feel that. I know that believing in God whether it is real or not can bring people peace in their life so they think their life has meaning.
That's gnosticism. God created Adam knowing exactly what Adam was going to do. *All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds*. Not just the bits that we can understand and appreciate. *All*. Original Sin, being part of the plan, is good.
No it’s not. Gnosticism teaches that the material world is inherently bad. Christianity teaches that the material world is inherently good, but broken, and redeemable.
This is what bad Christian apologists do, and one day they will have to answer to God for turning people away from Him Meanwhile, Christians have come up with answers to the question that don't insult either God or human intelligence, and will continue to do so.
I have not heard any Christian "answers to that question" that aren't either evasion or painfully convoluted post facto justifications. They've had literally millennia to come up w/something.
I'm not saying that anyone is required to find the explanations satisfactory. I'm just pointing out that they exist.
No Christian apologist has ever done anything better. The problem isn't with people's personalities or intentions. The problem is that if God exists, then morality doesn't, so people who believe that God exists have to twist themselves into knots.
Or that the existence of disease isn't deliberate cruelty on the part of God, because in the end there is an end to suffering. Or that we have to accept the explanation that we might not be capable of understanding the answer. Or any of the other explanations.
Yeah the pediatric ward at my cancer hospital employer killed my faith in any god. Organized Christianity in 2025 makes me actively gag