If God loves us unconditionally, why does he kill us instead of curing us?

[ding]

So no happy ending for you.

Sure when I pick up my paycheck.

But them they deduct all the happy meals you've eaten during the week.

Masonry McDonald’s is such a happy place

Probably because Freemasons don’t allow irreligious jackanapes.

Who cares what the Freemason's do with their time.

Apparently they do.

 

[Moonglow]

Sure when I pick up my paycheck.

But them they deduct all the happy meals you've eaten during the week.

Masonry McDonald’s is such a happy place

Probably because Freemasons don’t allow irreligious jackanapes.

Who cares what the Freemason's do with their time.

Apparently they do.

Good for them it's their club..

 

[Likkmee]

Pictures are easier

 

[MedfordMan]

John 1:3
All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made.

My personal guess is that God gave us existence and that we start that existence on Earth. Earth is governed by the laws of physics and the laws of nature, which God himself created. I wouldn't say that God "created" cancer. I'd say that God has allowed that and other ailments to exist as a part of natural law.

The age-old question is "Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people"? My best guess is that we are here to learn the pros and cons of being good and bad. Ultimately, when we are with God, we will understand these things far more clearly.

Not what John 1:3 says. Of course you are free to twist it to fit what you want it to say. That is what is usually done.

So you believe there can be no creator unless everything is perfect?

I'm saying that if there were a perfect creator, everything would be perfect.

The creation was perfect before Adam & Eve sinned.

Actually, I misspoke.

The creation has a single flaw when Adam and Eve sinned.

Lucifer had already disobeyed God and had been cast down into the earth, so there was temptation.

However, the fall of mankind is not Lucifer's fault.

God gave Adam and Eve the power to resist temptation, but Eve and then Adam gave into it.

First because Eve wasn't satisfied and Lucifer was simply telling Eve to do what she already wanted to do.

Second because Adam didn't trust that God could fix things and Adam selfishly feared losing his wife than his relationship with God.

 

[MedfordMan]

God invented cancer.

Actually God didn't create cancer.

Cancer was a consequence of the fall of man, which was brought into the world by the sinful acts of mankind.

John 1:3
All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made.

Cancer is simply cells not acting in the way they were designed.

God created and designed cells.

Without cells to mutate we wouldn't have cancer.

The fall of man allowed sin into the world, which has had negative consequences to the perfection of God's creation.

Some of the negative consequences of sin coming into the world are the cell mutations that cause cancer.

God allows sin to occur, because as a loving God he must give men the option of choosing their own selfish will over God's perfect will.

So the creation and the cells in it were made by God and without God there would be no cells to mutate.

It wasn't God's intention for there to be cancer, but the sin of mankind caused negative changes that resulted in negative effects like cancer to arise. God allowed man to sin.

God allows cancer to exist, because to force mankind to do HIS perfect will would not be loving, but to allow sin without consequence wouldn't be just.

I believe in a strict interpretation of the Bible, but even the Bible has context.

Quoting a single verse often leads to erroneous conclusions because the historical context and the additional revelation provided by surrounding verses is missing.

Above all, scripture must be read in a manner which is consistent with the nature of God, as expressed through the person of Jesus Christ.

If this was supposed to be a gotcha moment you're going to have to work a little harder.

So a 5 year old with cancer deserves it because they are so sinful. Yep, that sounds like a loving god to me.

The problem is that the effects of sin don't just affect the person who sinned.

Right now mankind is drowning in a toxic sea of the effects of sin and childhood cancer is one of the unfortunate results.

God didn't cause cancer and HE doesn't cause the toxic environment in which it breeds.

If you want to blame someone for cancer blame me (and you) and everyone else who sins. We (mankind) caused cancer to enter the world by contributing to the toxic environment in which it breeds.

 

[james bond]

So a 5 year old with cancer deserves it because they are so sinful. Yep, that sounds like a loving god to me.

Because of a loving God, they went to a better place.

After suffering a terribly painful death that left their parents with a lifetime of grief they will never be free of. Yeah god.

Because of a loving God, they can get over it.

 

[Hollie]

So a 5 year old with cancer deserves it because they are so sinful. Yep, that sounds like a loving god to me.

Because of a loving God, they went to a better place.

After suffering a terribly painful death that left their parents with a lifetime of grief they will never be free of. Yeah god.

Because of a loving God, they can get over it.

Nothing says "a loving god" like that blueprint for the cancer cell.

 

[james bond]

So a 5 year old with cancer deserves it because they are so sinful. Yep, that sounds like a loving god to me.

Because of a loving God, they went to a better place.

After suffering a terribly painful death that left their parents with a lifetime of grief they will never be free of. Yeah god.

Because of a loving God, they can get over it.

Nothing says "a loving god" like that blueprint for the cancer cell.

I wouldn't call the "god of the world," i.e. Satan, loving. Is cancer a fungus and difficult to eradicate?

 

[EGR one]

So a 5 year old with cancer deserves it because they are so sinful. Yep, that sounds like a loving god to me.

Because of a loving God, they went to a better place.

After suffering a terribly painful death that left their parents with a lifetime of grief they will never be free of. Yeah god.

Because of a loving God, they can get over it.

Nothing says "a loving god" like that blueprint for the cancer cell.

To our knowledge, God has never killed, injured, maimed or diseased a single soul. We are our soul, we are not the clay bodies that our souls are imprisoned in. We can assume that God has little interest in the clay bodies.

The Bible says that those that live by the sword, will die by the sword. Yet, we know that many who have lived by the sword have not died by the sword in this lifetime. That indicates that those who live by the sword must be returned to die by the sword. Abortion may be that remedy.

 

[BULLDOG]

So a 5 year old with cancer deserves it because they are so sinful. Yep, that sounds like a loving god to me.

Because of a loving God, they went to a better place.

After suffering a terribly painful death that left their parents with a lifetime of grief they will never be free of. Yeah god.

Because of a loving God, they can get over it.

They can get over a terribly painful death? How does that work?

 

[MedfordMan]

So a 5 year old with cancer deserves it because they are so sinful. Yep, that sounds like a loving god to me.

Because of a loving God, they went to a better place.

After suffering a terribly painful death that left their parents with a lifetime of grief they will never be free of. Yeah god.

Because of a loving God, they can get over it.

Nothing says "a loving god" like that blueprint for the cancer cell.

What's the alternative no cells?

 

[hobelim]

The Bible says that those that live by the sword, will die by the sword. Yet, we know that many who have lived by the sword have not died by the sword in this lifetime. That indicates that those who live by the sword must be returned to die by the sword. Abortion may be that remedy.

The Bible says,

"Take from my hand this cup of fiery wine and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. When they have drunk it they will vomit and go mad; such is the sword that I am sending among them."

BTW the entire quote is.

"He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity; he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword."

Some unfortunate souls die for an entire lifetime living by the sword.



Bottoms up!

 

[K9Buck]

Nothing says "a loving god" like that blueprint for the cancer cell.

Which is how you know there is no such thing as "God", correct?

 

[gtopa1]

If God loves us unconditionally, why does he kill us instead of curing us?

Jesus, Yahweh to some, said he came to serve us and not to have us serve him. That is what I describe as unconditional love.

Yahweh, on the other hand, seems to put a condition of us serving him on his love. If we do not love Yahweh, off to hell we go.

I call that a condition to his love, which is negated when he tortures us in hell, then kills us in hell’s second death.

This appears to be a huge contradiction in the Christian ideology.

Is Yahweh’s love unconditional to you, or is our having to love him back and serve him a condition?

Am I bound for hell because I cannot love or serve a genocidal demiurge like Jesus or Yahweh?

Is Jesus showing unconditional love for us when he kills us instead of curing us?



Regards
DL

Food for THOUGHT!!

St Thomas begins with a question “whether evil is something” and responds that it is not, but rather that it is a privation. As is often the case he proceeds by dividing out the nature of that which is under analysis. There are two types of privation: privation of perfection of existence (such as death or blindness) and privation as reduction of perfections (such as illness or ophthalmia) – these two relate to each other, in that the latter privations place a person on the road to the former.

Considering whether evil exists in the good St Thomas makes a critical step which, in my opinion, is central to understanding God’s rôle in evil; by this he solves a significant problem which his predecessors faced. He begins by noting that good and evil are opposites, and thus the latter cannot exist in the former (just as cold cannot exist in hot); however, evil is there in good which is potential – potency is not the opposite of perfection or privation, and thus can be alongside them.

‘The good’ is, surprisingly enough, split into two senses: the absolute good, and particular good (e.g., a good man or a good eye). In the former, evil does not exist; the absolute good has the greatest possible extension (broader even than being) and thus does not admit of scope for privation. The particular good, however, does admit of privation, because it admits of potentiality.

Potential has itself the form of a good; matter is in itself potency (cf. Aristotle’s prime matter which is potency alone) and thus is good. Man, therefore, is good simply by being; it does not follow from this that he is a good man. A good man has a set of perfections proper to him (the virtues); similarly a good eye has a set of perfections proper to it. The fulfilment of these proper perfections is the particular good. They exist first in a man (or an eye, or an anything) in potential, which potential is to be actualised. Now he gives us three ways of speaking of the good: a thing’s perfection (sharp vision), the thing having proper perfections (a sharp eye), and a thing in potency to perfection. Evil is the privation of due perfection, that is the prevention of the potential’s actualisation. Thus evil is in good insofar as potency is called good. When good is seen as the combination of the subject and its perfections, then good is diminished by evil, and thus is not in it. Where good is pure act, and has no potency, then there is no scope for evil – this applies primarily to God.

The separation here into potency and actuality is of vital importance. One of the problems in the thought of pseudo-Denys’ account of evil as a privation was that there is an apparent necessity behind the privation. His neo-Platonic account of being, with privation represented by departure from a central point, can be seen as meaning that God created beings and forced this privation upon them – the difference between this and a position that God created evil is not entirely clear.

St Thomas proceeds to consider whether good is the cause of evil. He states “In the manner in which evil can have a cause, that cause is the good. But evil cannot have an essential cause.” An essential cause needs to be intended, and evil is never intended only accidental – his chosen example being an adulterer who does not choose the evil of adultery because it is evil but rather because there are sensual pleasures involved (or so we are led to believe), the adulterer pursues these pleasures, which are goods. How, then, does evil come about – again the division into potentiality and actuality is critical; it inheres where a proper perfection should be. Importantly it does not do so by nature, because the natural lack of a perfection is not evil (for example a stone’s being unable to see).

Evil still needs an accidental cause, however, and that cause has to be good. Good causes evil in two ways: where good is deficient, and where good is accidental. His example here appears at first to be hopelessly outdated in its physics – fire is not essentially destructive of water, however it does essentially seek to the production of its own form in matter, and this in turn, accidentally necessitates the destruction of water. We need not, I think, embrace the physics of four elements if rather than fire we consider heat as a form of energy – it seeks to propagate itself (higher energy), it does not seek to transform liquids into gases though this is an effect of higher energy levels in them. Having had the good sense to stop studying physics after receiving an A level I am more than willing to be corrected if this doesn’t follow. In the moral sphere, however, I think that the principle of accidental effects is well established – he notes that relative goods are pursued, and these are often conjoined with evil (as in the case of sensual pleasures being conjoined with adultery).

This move into the moral sphere presents us with the action of the will; this is capable of causing evil accidentally (as mentioned a few moments ago), but also of causing evil through a deficiency. The good involves things which are to be ruled being ruled; when the will produces choices without considering appropriate rules it is causing sin through a defect. It seems that these two are not without potential overlap; the adulterer is seeking a relative good conjoined to evil, and is also allowing an inordinate attraction to sensual pleasure to guide him (a deficiency of the will).

...........................................................

This brings us to a position where, I suggest, St Thomas has established that evil does not exist, but rather is a privation of existence. Through the separation of actuality and potentiality it is possible that evil is with us not having been caused by God (despite his being the creator of all that is); however, this does still leave the alternative formulation of the problem of evil which is ‘why does a benevolent God allow it?’ This is different to asking how he could have created it. One might ask why God in creating allowed for this potentiality into which evil could, as it were, sneak. An answer, which St Thomas gives, can be found in the Summa article I mentioned at the beginning – he cites St Augustine, and agrees with him that God’s benevolence meets with his omnipotence, and that he could only allow evil because he can bring further good out of it. “This is part of the infinite goodness of God that he should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.” This strikes me as entirely true; however, it also strikes me as working backwards from God’s existence – the argument presupposes God, thus in an apologetic debate I doubt that it would convince many waverers. Perhaps what this illustrates is that in the realm of philosophy we can answer the problem of evil only in terms of showing that it is not incompatible with God; but this will leave us scratching our heads wondering why he would even allow it, until we allow a more Theological account to answer.

There is also something of a lacuna in the lack of a consideration of natural suffering; it is fairly clear that free will can be the cause of moral evil, but the step from my sinning through making bad choices to innocent children dying from diseases or earthquakes is still not entirely covered. The answer given in the Summa does have the potential to cover this as well – allowing for a greater good to emerge, but that’s at the level of divine permission, I think, and does not explain the cause.

The Problem of Evil in St Thomas Aquinas | St. Mary's College Oscott

Already addressed...about eight hundred years ago.

Greg

 

[james bond]

So a 5 year old with cancer deserves it because they are so sinful. Yep, that sounds like a loving god to me.

Because of a loving God, they went to a better place.

After suffering a terribly painful death that left their parents with a lifetime of grief they will never be free of. Yeah god.

Because of a loving God, they can get over it.

They can get over a terribly painful death? How does that work?

All things are possible through Jesus. Believe first. Have faith.

 

[tyroneweaver]

If God loves us unconditionally, why does he kill us instead of curing us?

Jesus, Yahweh to some, said he came to serve us and not to have us serve him. That is what I describe as unconditional love.

Yahweh, on the other hand, seems to put a condition of us serving him on his love. If we do not love Yahweh, off to hell we go.

I call that a condition to his love, which is negated when he tortures us in hell, then kills us in hell’s second death.

This appears to be a huge contradiction in the Christian ideology.

Is Yahweh’s love unconditional to you, or is our having to love him back and serve him a condition?

Am I bound for hell because I cannot love or serve a genocidal demiurge like Jesus or Yahweh?

Is Jesus showing unconditional love for us when he kills us instead of curing us?



Regards
DL

I was conceived of a adulterous relationship. Yet I had the ability to accept the Gospel on Jesus's terms.
Why can't you?

 

[ding]

So a 5 year old with cancer deserves it because they are so sinful. Yep, that sounds like a loving god to me.

Because of a loving God, they went to a better place.

After suffering a terribly painful death that left their parents with a lifetime of grief they will never be free of. Yeah god.

Because of a loving God, they can get over it.

Nothing says "a loving god" like that blueprint for the cancer cell.

It seems to me that you are only looking at the bad and ignoring the good. If your logic is that since bad exists there can be no God wouldn’t you also argue that since good exists there must be a God. And since both bad and good exists shouldn’t you do a proper accounting to determine which one was the dominant feature of existence?

 

[james bond]

It seems to me that you are only looking at the bad and ignoring the good. If your logic is that since bad exists there can be no God wouldn’t you also argue that since good exists there must be a God. And since both bad and good exists shouldn’t you do a proper accounting to determine which one was the dominant feature of existence?

This isn't one avenue I haven't considered of Hollie. She could be a bad person. I thought she was looney tunes. She has trouble distinguishing similar, but different groups. Has trouble understanding the Bible. May not have read it or read only parts of it and then interpreted to make God the bad being. Doesn't acknowledge Satan nor admit that she could be influenced by him.

 

[Likkmee]

John 1:3
All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made.

My personal guess is that God gave us existence and that we start that existence on Earth. Earth is governed by the laws of physics and the laws of nature, which God himself created. I wouldn't say that God "created" cancer. I'd say that God has allowed that and other ailments to exist as a part of natural law.

The age-old question is "Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people"? My best guess is that we are here to learn the pros and cons of being good and bad. Ultimately, when we are with God, we will understand these things far more clearly.

Not what John 1:3 says. Of course you are free to twist it to fit what you want it to say. That is what is usually done.

So you believe there can be no creator unless everything is perfect?

I'm saying that if there were a perfect creator, everything would be perfect.

It is. Where he hangs out. He sent all the assholes to this shithole which is soon to be turned into a fireball and the new projects wont have assholes to interfere any more.
In 1000 years El asshat will be cut loose " for a little while". Why ? Dunno. After that the ****** is gone forever.

 

[BULLDOG]

So a 5 year old with cancer deserves it because they are so sinful. Yep, that sounds like a loving god to me.

Because of a loving God, they went to a better place.

After suffering a terribly painful death that left their parents with a lifetime of grief they will never be free of. Yeah god.

Because of a loving God, they can get over it.

They can get over a terribly painful death? How does that work?

All things are possible through Jesus. Believe first. Have faith.

[/QUOTE]