Or perhaps His plan and intentions simply supercede your childishly simple viewpoint on the universe. Hell, the parenting skills of the average person on the street gives the lie to this nonsense, let alone the plans of God Almighty.
My kids suffer at the hands of other people sometimes. Sometimes they deserve it, and sometimes it's completely pointless. And often, I could prevent it and choose not to. Why? Well, it's not because I don't care or don't love them, nor is it because I'm too weak to stop it.
Why don't you think about it and see if you can come up with the answer?
Well, I'm sure that God will immediately sit down and rethink His ultimate plans for humanity based upon the fact that they don't come up to your personal standards.
That's the only other option if one starts from the flawed premise that you are the Oracle of All Possible Wisdom, handing down the Ultimate Truth of how the universe really works.
Otherwise, there's the third option that you just don't know what you're talking about.
O.k. Cecilie, you tell me... Western 'Civilization' is, if not the most brutal organization in the history of humanity, certainly the greediest.
Well, at least you pay lip service to the fact that we are CERTAINLY not the most brutal, or even close. I sincerely doubt you actually BELIEVE this, but I'm grateful that you're willing to pretend.
Greediest? Really? Based on what? The fact that we're the only civilization where people want power, material comforts and luxuries . . . no, wait, THAT can't be it, since those very traits are the reason most brutal regimes ARE brutal. The fact that we spend more time, money, and effort on helping less fortunate nations and societies than any other . . . Well, THAT certainly can't be it. So I have to assume your classification of Western Civ as the "greediest" is based simply on the fact that we've been more successful in acquiring wealth and luxury than anyone else. To which I say, so what? We're supposed to apologize for success?
Wow, this is just chockful of bullshit, puerile assumptions. I don't even know for sure where to start.
Are you suggesting that ONLY Western Civ, given that same knowledge, would have subsequently developed the way it did? That somehow, people in the West are essentially different in human nature from all other humans, and therefore, other people would have remained poor and downtrodden under the same circumstances, which you seem to somehow feel is morally superior to prosperity? Are you suggesting that all other people on Earth are inherently peaceful and altruistic, and that only Western Civ contains evil people who will turn anything to their own selfish ends? If so, on what do you base that assumption?
If, on the other hand, you know something about human nature and realize that the results stem more from human nature and the effect that the receipt of this knowledge and purpose had upon it, the question then becomes, why SHOULDN'T God have given His Commission to Western Civilization? Unless you can prove that some entire culture out there is made up of inherently morally superior people, it doesn't matter.
Maybe the problem here isn't that God made a grievous error in choosing the people of Western Civ. Maybe the problem here is YOU assuming that God sees Western Civ through YOUR spoiled, myopic viewpoint.
Yes, I'm quite sure that you're very sincere in your childish hatred and excoriation of Western Civilization as the source of all evil since its inception. "Planetary suffering at our hands"? Instead of coming in here and chastizing God via the message board for not appreciating the wisdom of your viewpoint, perhaps you should examine your viewpoint and then chastize whoever taught you this highly expurgated and childish rendition of history.
You just did: You aren't the smartest guy on the board. "I can only think of three reasons why the world doesn't agree with my incredible knowledge of how it should be: God is less moral than I am, God is less nice than I am, or God is weak and dumber than I am". Or maybe the reason is just that you're trying to impose your hopelessly shortsighted and Earthbound human perceptions - further flawed by an embarrassingly bad education in history - onto a universe and a God more vast than you could even begin to comprehend.
My only conclusion, for myself and no one else, is that we, as a species, are on our own and equally responsible for our history and our future as well as our present in the flesh.
Well, you're getting closer. We ARE responsible for ourselves and what happens. Anything else would make us nothing more than puppets on a stage, and what would be the point of that? Doesn't mean there's no God. Just means that if He wants us to be anything more than mindless toys, He has to allow us free will to work out our own lives, individually and collectively.
Spiritually, we can only speculate in the privacy of our own minds, sharing ideas and hoping that our neighbors will give us the same respect that we give them. Are we, as a species, ready for that kind of freedom?
-Joe
I love how you babble a bunch of nonsense for your whole post about how you don't understand why God doesn't treat us like a little girl playing with Barbie dolls, and then pop out with the concept of free will at the end like it's some profound new revelaton you, personally, have just brought to the world. This has only been standard Christian teaching for centuries. Why the hell didn't you just study up and spare us all the maundering?
