From: bskendig@netcom.com (Brian Kendig)
Subject: Re: 1/3/92   God's Promise in Hebrews 9: 12
Organization: Starfleet Headquarters: San Francisco
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 02:43:39 GMT

mlee@post.RoyalRoads.ca (Malcolm Lee) writes:
>
>God is not to blame for all the evils of this world.  Man was given dominion over
>the Earth, to use and abuse and we saw fit.  This is called free will.  And by
>the same power of that free will, we can choose to follow God's ways or not.  
>Simple as that.  We cannot take credit for the good things that we do because it
>is God who gave us our talents with which to use and abuse.  He gives us the
>capability to do good works.  Again, it is by our free will that we choose how to
>use our talents.

Let's say you write a long and complicated computer program, and set
it to do its thing.  It succeeds amazingly, and you claim all the
praise for having written it.  But then it crashes and eats a lot of
data.  Can you blame this crash on the program, saying that you gave
it everything it needed to work properly so you're free from blame?

Similarly, God creates human beings and sets the to do their thing.
They do all sorts of wonderful things, and God claims all the praise
for having created them.  But then some of them start causing needless
suffering among others, and generally doing nasty things.  Can God
blame this on humans, saying that he gave us everything we needed to
do wonderful things so he's free from blame?

No matter whether the computer program or the computer programmer is
at fault, there still exists the problem of the crash.  The mere fact
that it crashed indicates that the program doesn't have the ability to
always do what you judge is proper behavior, even though the computer
was just executing instructions sequentially, just as it normally
does.  Therefore it's up to the programmer to intervene and make
things work the way he wants them to work.  If he doesn't, then he's
obviously to blame for the crash.

No matter whether God or humans are at fault, there still exists the
problem of suffering.  The mere fact that there is suffering in the
world indicates that we humans don't have the ability to always do
what God judges is proper behavior, even though we just live our lives
in a manner that seems to be okay often enough.  Therefore it's up to
God to intervene and make things work the way he wants them to work.
If he doesn't, then he's obviously to blame for the suffering.

My point is that there's a lot of suffering in the world, and the very
fact that God hasn't come down to end it clearly indicates that he
CAN'T or he WON'T.  If he CAN'T, then why should we put all our faith
in him to solve the world's problems?  If he WON'T, then why should we
worship him at all?

>    And why bring God into the picture, well, he's the one who drew the picture
>in the first place.

Yes, but he died, didn't you hear?  He died shortly after he created
the universe.  That's the only way to explain his absence throughout
history.

-- 
_/_/_/  Brian Kendig                             Je ne suis fait comme aucun
/_/_/  bskendig@netcom.com                de ceux que j'ai vus; j'ose croire
_/_/                            n'etre fait comme aucun de ceux qui existent.
  /  Nolite te bastardes     Si je ne vaux pas mieux, au moins je suis autre.
 /    carborundorum.                                             -- Rousseau
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc