Simple... it's not that God allows evil, it's that God allows choice. Evil was a choice WE made. Just as evil was a choice Lucifer made. Free Will, remember?
There's no choice in a universe orchestrated with puppet strings and preordained fates.
@Brovo
My belief is that God knows EVERYTHING that we can and possibly will do, and He has many plans for those many outcomes, so that in any case, the outcome has come to further God's plan, even if the action wasn't what God wanted. Hitler didn't HAVE to be the horrid dictator he became, he could have easily been an artist. Humans are very unpredictable, as I believe you know. You can never truly what he, or even the human in question, will do, given the circumstances.
This is predicated on the assumption that an omniscient God who created time, will not know what the future is like. This also requires that God create a thing (time) that he himself cannot mold, change, or know. In essence, the old theological quandary: Can God create a boulder so heavy, that even He cannot move it?
Also, I believe you aren't giving enough credit to Adam and Eve. The Bible only details what is important to the grand narrative of said book, not all the little details around it. We don't know how far society progressed in Eden, and as for the question of clothes, why did they need clothes. They didn't have shame in themselves, and the world was not corrupted then, so there was no worry about.
You're right, I cannot give credit where I know nothing. Remember, I'm examining this from the perspective of a character study--therefore, I'm taking the canonical text at its face value first and foremost. What I
know of Adam and Eve is that they didn't appear to change in any significant or meaningful way until they were tempted by the serpent of the garden. Nothing which the Biblical account from the book of Genesis felt like mentioning, anyway. Therefore, I judge by what is there. If we include supposition in the character study, then anything goes.
What Adam & Eve did within the time frame of hundreds of years is difficult to ascertain, but I believe the closest to canonical literature there is on the subject can be found in
The Life of Adam and Eve, an ancient Jewish story exploring the fall of man. It never made it into the Biblical Canon, but this is probably as close as we'll get to in depth character studies of the first man & woman.
However, I don't have proof of any of this. My faith led me to this conclusion of what makes most sense to me.
Aye, suppositions. Interesting to explore as "what ifs", but not to be used as anything more than one's own beliefs.
I believe science also isn't the definitive tool to solve all problems, and it can be just as different as religion is. Facts can be perceived in many different ways, some incorrect, or labelled something different. Look at the difference between Greek Alchemy and Modern Science. I imagine Modern Science will be 200 years later like how Greek Alchemy is today. Interesting, but ultimately wrong.
Oooh, Science. Now this is a thing I know well.
Science is different from faith in one key aspect: Science makes no claims of spirituality or the unknowable. Science's one, definition purpose, is the exploration and understanding of our physical, knowable universe. Science as we know it also didn't really manifest until the Scientific Method, in the era of the Renaissance. Greek sciences were built upon prefaces of faith, they committed a logical fallacy which scientists are now aware doesn't function when examining the physical world: They made a theory and sought to prescribe evidence to it, rather than seeking evidence and building a theory from it. (Ex: The theory of the four "elements" of fire, water, earth, and air.)
What this means is, essentially...
- Science will never claim to know anything to an absolute. We have "the best running theory at present" and nothing more. Even ironclad theories like those of Gravity & Evolution could be wrong, ergo why they continue to be tested, and evidence continues to be sought after in these fields. A scientific fact is the closest we have to physical truth, but we're imperfect beings: We rarely have a view of the entire puzzle.
- Science & Faith are compatible, because they tackle different areas, so long as faith is mutable to the discoveries of science. (Ergo why the Catholic Church has some vested interest in the sciences, like Catholic Observatories for studying the stars.)
So essentially: Yes, two hundred years from now, there will be plenty we thought we knew that we later discover we didn't know at all. There are, however, some very long lasting theories that will likely continue on into the future, even if they turn out to be partially incorrect. (Ex: The theory of evolution has stood up to 150 years of scientific scrutiny, and the theory of gravity has stood up to it even longer. Albeit both have undergone changes as we've better understood the processes behind them, and we're still not done exploring them.)
I very much enjoy debating these sort of issues, and hopefully I don't annoy you too much, and this continues on. Debate definitely opens up many avenues otherwise not walked upon. I await your reply eagerly, great ferret.
Nature was corrupted when Humanity sinned, and the world became a much harder place to live in. As for those misfortunes, it's just life running its course, and in the end, beauty comes of it. I do not see misfortune as evil, nature does what it wants, no matter who's in the way.
We are not punished by our parent's sin. We commit our own sin, and it hurts others in the process. That is why sin is evil, it hurts others because of one's choices. By your mother being a whore, she got a disease, and by virtue of being in your mother, you have a chance of getting it. It's not the child's fault, it's the mother's, and she gets to have the guilt of knowing what her actions caused.
Also, irrelevant of religion, all things are not born equal and this includes humans. This is why kindness is a virtue in every major world religion and outside of it: If we don't care about each other, nobody will.
Do ferrets ever discuss theology? Do any of God's creatures (other than us) ever worry about "religion"...?
Do androids dream of electric sheep?
In all honesty though, speaking of ferrets specifically (because I'm obsessed with the little kleptomaniac carpet sharks), they probably don't. They exhibit social pack tendencies, but there's no indication of any higher awareness beyond the desire for social contact and self-survival. The closest they get is probably wondering how it is that humans can summon food for them from nowhere. We're
wizards to them.
Can't remember where in the Bible, but I remember something about putting to death any animal that killed a human being... so, sinful as every man, woman and child is, God does indeed care. He knows when a sparrow falls. And he gave us a means to regain a relationship with Him, so our sin... our evil... would not keep us apart. I think that is enough. Everything pares down to love, however you translate.
God is the one who created the fallibility and suffering in the first place. This is like breaking someone's knees and telling them that you love them enough to pay for their hospital bill, but only if they worship you: You still broke their knees and threatened them with eternal torture, and now you're only willing to heal them if they swear to love you forever. This sounds more like an insecure mob boss than a loving parent.
Then again though, this makes sense in the context of a character study: The old testament God is a far more vengeful and violent character than the new testament God. In the new testament, Satan manifests as a fully fleshed out antagonist to God, whereas in the old testament, Satan's appearances are few and far between, and God is normally the one inflicting suffering. The old testament God, in fact, has a lot in common with Zeus. Which makes sense, because the writers of the time likely had a lot of influences from the Greco-Roman pantheon, which at the time, would have been the predominate religion. You can see it in the wording of certain passages, such as in the old testament's Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt put no other Gods before me." Note the wording: He didn't state "there are no other gods", he stated "there are no other gods
before me." :ferret;
I believe that God didn't want evil in the world until mankind tainted it by disobeying him. After they had tainted it with evil, God/the Gods just banished mankind away.
Unfortunate then that God created the evil in man in the first place, then punished his creatures for doing exactly as programmed.
I would write more, but I don't know how to put it into words. In short, I believe that there is a God/Gods and that evil was made by mankind. Also, I believe that they make the universe with the help of science.
I admit, I'm not sure what you mean by this. Do you mean that mankind makes the universe with science?
Woah,woah, woah.
Stop right fucking there. I told myself I would not join in on this, but "and in the end, beauty comes of it"?! How dare you call it beauty. Children who suffer from Epidermolysis bullosa cry in pain as the upper layer of their skin detaches and blisters and cannot even be embraced by those around them, either euthanised to be spared from pain or to die a painfull death is beauty?
The paralysed boy, pampered by his parents as if he were mentally retarded watching the world go by him as he is trapped inside his own body, who ends up in a special needs home to be treated as if he were a doll by non-caring nurses as soon as his parents die is beauty? The teenage mother, abandoned by the husband she loved for a newer model cannot work for she is burdened by taking care of her mentally handicapped child, taking away her chance for new love, is beauty?
Everytime I fucking wake up in the middle of the night with infernal spasms, caused by my chronic muscle disease, I am fucking beautiful?!
And what about that child who gets aids from the mother? It's not about where the fault lies, but about where the punishment is.
Woah, woah, woah, calm. I'm fairly sure the man wasn't stating that he wants you to suffer or anything malevolent like that. Peace.
I agree that God's punishments don't make sense in a modern context. If he loves everyone individually, then universal punishments that carry through generations are irrational. It's a carryover from older times, where the value of an individual was inexorably tied to the status of their family. Times of nobility and slavery.
Indeed... and I was using it as a "conversation starter" for my comment. Two for one!
Woo ferrets!
If a Child does something they know they shouldn't, do you punish the child?
Depends on the severity of the punishment. If your answer to a child curiously sticking his hand in a cookie jar against your wishes is to torture him for the rest of eternity, most people would consider that abusive beyond any sort of coherent reasoning. One can even see attempts to reverse some of the more harsh elements of the old testament in the new testament, with Jesus teaching people to be loving and kind ("love thy neighbour"), to be charitable ("it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God" Matthew 19:24), and to be forgiving. Forgiveness became a core part of the Biblical mythos, right down to dinner prayers ("forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us"), Catholic confessionals, et cetera. The character of God was softened specifically because the old testament God of the Jews was too harsh for most people to worship.
If a pregnant mother takes an addictive drug, then the child is born addicted. We aren't "punished" with evil, but rather, we have evil because it's an inherited trait.
Evil being an inherited trait, programmed into man by an all loving God... This is a discrepancy. Then again, as referenced above, the all loving parts really got hammered in moreso later than earlier.
Two big posts. This topic is interesting to me.
