The Problem of Evil...

[PaintMyHouse]

God is the decider of all things, PMH. Satan can do nothing without God's permission first. This judge is a wicked man and while he may think he backed down because of human reason - he backed down because God decided it was time for this woman to be released. God is in full control. Not man. God. The reason you do not believe that is because you do not believe in God.

God lets Satan ruin peoples lives, send them to an eternity in Hell? What other evil, beside that of Satan, does your God allow to happen? Deformed babies? Children who die of cancer? Animals left to suffer for days before dying after being burned in a forest fire? Do tell us of this God of yours who is in full control of both good and evil? We are very interested.

And tell us, have you ever heard of the sticky theological issue known as the Problem Of Evil? I'll help: Problem of evil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Mr. H.]

Aborted babies?

That is your forte, why don't you continue your lecture. Professor Pantyhoe?

 

[Tank]

And homosexuality

 

[Mr. H.]

Republicans defeat evil. Democrats propagate evil.

 

[Two Thumbs]

Ever hear the saying; 'W/o rain you will not love the light.' ?

not that I'm a follower of religion, I'm just using a simple phrase, you won't get it, but I don't expect you to.

 

[Book of Jeremiah]

God is the decider of all things, PMH. Satan can do nothing without God's permission first. This judge is a wicked man and while he may think he backed down because of human reason - he backed down because God decided it was time for this woman to be released. God is in full control. Not man. God. The reason you do not believe that is because you do not believe in God.

God lets Satan ruin peoples lives, send them to an eternity in Hell? What other evil, beside that of Satan, does your God allow to happen? Deformed babies? Children who die of cancer? Animals left to suffer for days before dying after being burned in a forest fire? Do tell us of this God of yours who is in full control of both good and evil? We are very interested.

And tell us, have you ever heard of the sticky theological issue known as the Problem Of Evil? I'll help: Problem of evil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

PMH, God has given man a free will. He has given us His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem us from the curse of sin and death, what more could you possibly ask from Him? When Jesus Christ said at the cross, It is finished........ He meant, It is finished!

To put this in terms that you would understand - consider this analogy - You are a King with a vast fortune and you have made out a will for your children that everything you own is left to them. You leave all the information with your executor and tell him that when your children show up for the reading of the will he is to distribute to them their banking accounts, and information about their authority in your kingdom. Then one day after a long life you leave this earth.

One of your children decided to skip his education and he cannot read. He is rebellious and when your executor calls him he does not show up. Repeated calls and he does not show up. The executor sends him all the information of his inheritance in a package and your son does not open it but tosses it to the side. He never looks at it and in the end he dies in poverty having lived a wild, lawless life.

When he dies he finds out he was the heir to receive all that he needed and yet he lived in bitterness thinking his father forgot him! Whose fault was it?

Another story (not exact wording / facts - I'm going by memory) and this one is true.....

There was a poor man who journeyed on an ocean liner across the ocean. He brought crackers and water with him for the trip because he did not have the money for food. He stayed in his room most of the time as he could not afford the lavish food he saw all the guests eating on the ship. When they landed someone asked him why he had not joined the others. He said, oh I could only afford the ticket. The people responded, Everything was included with the ticket. The food was free.

There are many who have believed on Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior but they do not know all that has been given to them. The intimate friendship they can now have with God, the authority and power to crush the power of Satan with, the answers to prayer, the open heaven, the joy, the peace, the liberty of living without fear, the many, many blessings of knowing Christ, healing, deliverance, its' all there, PMH. I pray you won't be like the boy or the man on his journey who only finds out what he had or could have had if he had only opened His Fathers Letter and obeyed what His Father asked him to do. The Bible is God's letter, His Message to mankind.

Many have not opened it. You see the results and they are devastating. Again. Who is to blame? You cannot blame God. You see? You are going to have to take responsibility for your own rebellion at some point. God does love you but what can He do when you refuse to have faith in Him? Without faith a man can receive nothing from God, PMH.

You must decide in your heart that you desire to believe Him above all else. If the world is falling apart about you - you must fix your heart to believe God and not what you see, what you hear, what you feel, you must believe God's Word and Stand on it. That is going to require practice so you should begin right now. The just shall live by faith. We are to walk by faith, not by sight.

Read your bible. It will feed your faith and starve your doubt.

 

[Bonzi]

God lets Satan ruin peoples lives, send them to an eternity in Hell? What other evil, beside that of Satan, does your God allow to happen? Deformed babies? Children who die of cancer? Animals left to suffer for days before dying after being burned in a forest fire? Do tell us of this God of yours who is in full control of both good and evil? We are very interested.

Your concept of love and God's are different. His ways and reasons are perfect. We don't know better than God, so, if someone has to endure hardship for his Glory, its is good and perfect. He (God) matters more.

Evil is absence of good. Adam and Eve chose to go their own way, so, we have to deal with sin and decay in this world, both of ourselves and of this Earth.

Everything you mentioned is because of original sin. God created us with free will and we chose wrongly. Our way vs. His way and being obedient to Him. Not because he wants to control us (He could do that if he wanted to) but because He wants and knows what is BEST for us.

But we are like spoiled teenagers, always thinking we know better.....

 

[midcan5]

"It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak." Eric Hoffer

Mankind does not need god to be evil, they do quite well without finger pointing to the sky or the ground. The interesting question is why this evil is so evident and yet so mysterious. See quotes below. A few other links discussing topic in usmb below. Evil is everywhere it is why hell or satan is a required concept. Surely some higher meaning must be attached. Didn't Hilter claim he was doing god's work.

View: Philip Zimbardo: The psychology of evil | TED Talk | TED.com

Read: http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Evil-Ordinary-Genocide-Killing/dp/0195189493/?tag=usmb-20

"We first kill people with our minds, before we kill them with weapons. Whatever the conflict, the enemy is always the destroyer. We're on God's side; they're barbaric. We're good, they're evil. War gives us a feeling of moral clarity that we lack at other times." Sam Keen

What would Hitler have done about ISIS? | Page 9 | US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum

Are some people simply born evil?? | US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum
Are some people simply born evil?? | US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum
Are some people simply born evil?? | US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum
Are some people simply born evil?? | US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum

"Ask yourself what it is today that contributes most to human misery and suffering. In the first Dark Ages, the answer was easy: disease, hunger, and natural disasters. Today we have modern medicine, grow more than enough food to feed the planet (though we still have famine, largely for political reasons), and understand the causes of earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes well enough that it is possible to ameliorate their effects on us through advanced warning.

In modern times, however, the list of ills that we face seems quite different. The tyranny that we face today is largely a result of human cruelty and indifference in the way that we treat one another: women cannot walk the streets alone at night for fear of sexual assault; inner-City children cannot use public parks for fear of death from a stray bullet; child prostitution is rampant in Southeast Asia; modern slavery exists in the Sudan and Mauritania; Congo's civil War so far has resulted in 3 million deaths in five years, including beheadings and other atrocities; systematic rape was used as a form of terrorism during wartime in Bosnia and has since been emulated in Congo and the Sudan; genocide in Rwanda resulted in 800,000 deaths during three months in 1994; Sudan's civil war has caused 2 million deaths and created 4.5 million refugees; 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust; countless Korean "comfort women" were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers during World War II; during the "Rape of Nanking," soldiers held contests to see how many people they could kill in an hour; school and workplace shootings have become commonplace; prison rape is routine; serial killings are on the rise; and on a crisp September morning a few years ago, the world witnessed a new form of human horror when the World Trade Center in New York City was demolished by terrorists.

How can we be so cruel to one another? Why are such things allowed to happen? At times it seems that there is nothing that is so horrible that it has probably not been done by one human being to another at some time on this planet. But the worst thing to realize is that such atrocities continue largely because we tolerate them or because those of us who will not tolerate them do not know where to turn for answers. Can anything be done to stop such modern evils? What are the causal forces behind them?" p1-2 'Dark Ages' by Lee McIntyre

Philip Zimbardo Thinks We All Can Be Evil, see above video too. Movie today?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/magazine/philip-zimbardo-thinks-we-all-can-be-evil.html

 

[onefour1]

One of the big problems with modern Christianity is that they have taken on a false doctrine known as ex nihilo creation which is not taught in the bible but was a product of the post Christ era after the church had fallen into apostasy. The problem is that under this false doctrine, you would expect God to create us as perfect beings. After all, He is all powerful, all knowing, and an all loving God. Surely if he were all knowing he would know how to create man perfect. And if he were all powerful he would have the power to do it. Finally if he were all loving, he would want the best for us and make us perfect like himself. This is the grand flaw of many modern Christian churches and it stems from the mother of apostate churches, the catholic church.

The truth is that man is eternal in nature. A part of man which gives him his cognitive powers has always existed. All thing have existed in a primal state. Its like the principle of the conservation of matter. Except in this case it is the conservation of not just matter but spirit and intelligence as well. God is a creator, he is just not a creator out of nothing. In other words, he is the great organizer of the universe. He Organizes things out of already existing matter and intelligence. Spirit is matter but in a more pure refined way so that it is not discernible by the human eye unless God gives man the power to see it. Since the intelligence of man has always existed, God could not create it perfect. You cannot create that which has always existed. ex nihilo creation perverts this truth and presents a false truth about God. Man in his primal state is known as intelligence. These intelligences, through the power of God, were organized into spirit beings through the process of procreation. Thus we are the spirit children of our Heavenly Father.

It was the desire of both God and man that man should progress to become like God. Since God could not simply create man to be perfect, he had to use a process of progression. In the pre-mortal existence, before we came to this earth, we lived in the presence of God the Father and His first born spirit child Jesus Christ. God knows that in order for us to progress, free will is essential. Nobody tells God what to do. He does all that he does through his own free will. He is a perfected/exalted being. He does all this by his own free will and if we are to become like him, we too will need free will and learn to choose good over evil. In the pre-mortal existence all of us who came to this earth and received a body were valiant and used our free will to choose good over evil. God then prepared an earth where he could further teach us how to progress. He needed us to learn to choose good in and of ourselves. In other words, of our own volition. We could not do that while in his presence since his influence would be there. Kind of like when the parents go out for the night and leave the kids at home. This is the real test to see if they will do good when the parents are not there. He wants to see who will develop into a good being in and of themselves. If you will, it is the old adage, "When the cats away, the mice will play". This would mean that free will would be essential and man would have the opportunity to choose for himself. God knew that some of us would not make it. But that would be our choice and the only way to allow mankind to become like the Father. In the pre-mortal existence, there was one of God's sons, Lucifer, who sought to overthrow God and his kingdom by introducing a plan to save all of God's children. His plan was a plan of force. He would force everyone to do good and make sure nobody chose evil. He wanted all the credit for his plan. God the Father rejected this plan because you cannot progress without making your own choices to be good. If you were to use force, the subjects of that force would not have the free will to choose in and of themselves to be good beings and to develop their character into a godlike character. They would simply be an object of force. Once Lucifer's plan was rejected, he was wroth and started a war in heaven. He tried very hard to get others to go for his plan. He was very successful and drew 1/3 of all the hosts of heaven to his side. Eventually, the Father cast him and his followers out of heaven into this earth. They were to serve as a temptation to us as we came down to this earth to test us if we would choose good over evil even in the face of temptation. But these spirits were never allowed to receive bodies.

The problem of evil is a problem with Christians accepting the false doctrine of ex nihilo creationism. Without it, everything really makes sense. We can only advance in the eternities as far as we are willing to choose. You won't become like God as long as you continue to choose evil. Eventually, we will all die and then be resurrected to never die again. Too much emphasis is placed on whether God allows suffering and death when this is really all part of your test. In the end you will live forever as a resurrected being. But the place you reside will be among those of the same character as your own. God wants us to return to live with him by making the right choices and being a truly good being. For an excellent video series on ex nihilo creation, watch the following:

Problems With Ex Nihilo Video Series