The-Hogs.net - Washington Football Discussion, Redskins to Commanders Era

From Rev. Drew McIntyre, a Methodist minister someplace in North Carolina

Something about the suffering of children strikes at the core of faith in a benevolent deity. Dostoevsky saw this in his infamous chapter in Brothers Karamazov in which Jesus is put on trial by the Grand Inquisitor; more recently, the moral conscience of the world has been aroused by the sight of a dead Syrian child washed up ashore after seeking refuge. There are few tragedies that demand a reverent silence more than the death of a child. But the question still lingers heavy. Christians rightly celebrate Jesus’ command in Matthew 19:14 to “let the little children come to me,” but how do we explain Christ’s mercy if we are faced with burying one of those beloved children?

When the famed preacher William Sloane Coffin eulogized his son, something no parent should ever face, he went head-on against assertions from well-meaning friends that God had a hand in Alex’s death:

“The one thing that should never be said when someone dies is ‘It is the will of God.’ Never do we know enough to say that. My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the will of God that Alex die … God's heart was the first of all our hearts to break.”

As Coffin’s experience attests, when a tragedy happens, Christians are often quick to interrupt the silence of grief with the tried and trite. How many funerals have you been to where you hear something like the following:

• “God wanted another flower for his garden.”
• “God has a plan.”
• “God needed another angel in heaven.”

When two or more strongly held beliefs conflict with one another, the result is known as cognitive dissonance. All of the above expressions are attempts — as problematic as they are — to understand death, tragedy and evil. They are attempts to relieve the cognitive dissonance people of faith experience in times of tragedy.

When faced with the question of theodicy (“the justice of God”), Christians typically address the resulting cognitive dissonance in one of the following ways:
• Compromising God’s power; God must not be omnipotent, at least in the ways we thought.
• Compromising God’s knowledge; God must not be omniscient, at least in the usual sense.
• Compromising God’s love; maybe God isn’t all-loving in the way that we thought.
• Compromising the innocence of the sufferers. Every time a major disaster happens, some famous Christian (usually a televangelist) makes headlines claiming that what happened was God’s judgment.

As you may already be anticipating, there’s a problem with these responses. For Christians who are committed to the God revealed in Jesus Christ and in the Scriptures that testify to him, none of these are workable options.

“Nowhere,” wrote David Bentley Hart, “does the New Testament rationalize evil or accord it necessity or treat it as part of the necessary fabric of God’s world. All that Christian Scripture asserts is that evil cannot defeat God’s purposes or thwart the coming of his kingdom.” Some Christian leaders are a bit sly in addressing this. Tim Keller takes a more open-ended tack, drawing on Alvin Plantinga to suggest that just because we do not know or cannot imagine what God’s purpose is, it does not follow that there isn’t a purpose. While technically correct, it is pastorally unhelpful and theologically monstrous. Could there ever be a good reason that God let your child die? While I believe, as Adam Hamilton has helpfully named, that God can and does bring good out of evil (such as the Joseph story), God is never the author of evil.

This is where I believe a challenge ought to be made to the Calvinism undergirding so much of our reflections on suffering. As an Arminian, I am not burdened by a need to see God’s hand in all that happens. I am free to say, with Coffin, that God’s heart was the first to break when his son was drowning. (I know that image doesn’t hold up to systematic theologizing, but then, neither do the Psalms). Moreover, God cares. God hears our lament, our cries of agony, fear and abandonment (remember here Jesus’ own cry of dereliction drawn from Psalm 22). Jesus wept for his friend Lazarus, and weeps for us when we bury our children.

Unfortunately, Christians have largely lost the capacity to lament. Instead of being honest with God, we either white-knuckle it, and pretend everything is okay, or we rationalize it. But lament is a much more biblical, and a much healthier, way to address raw realities and heart-wrenching questions than saccharine platitudes. The questions remain. This is probably the strongest arrow in the quiver of Christianity’s atheist critics. I find it easy to dismiss the histrionics of someone like Richard Dawkins, who long ago crossed the line from science to fundamentalism and from atheist to anti-theist. But the theodicy question challenges us as does nothing else. It’s a question that any mature person of faith has to acknowledge at some point.

Even insisting that God did not cause the death of a child will not be fully satisfying, for we are still left to ponder why a God who does work miracles did not work one for my child. As Nicholas Wolterstorff confessed when grieving his young son who died in a climbing accident:

I cannot fit it all together by saying, "[God] did it," but neither can I do so by saying, "There was nothing he could do about it." I cannot fit it together at all. I can only, with Job, endure. I do not know why God did not prevent Eric's death. To live without the answer is precarious.

Precarious, but honest.

What we do know about evil and suffering is that they are not God’s intention, and their days are numbered. God does not desire the death of anyone – even the wicked (Ezekiel 18:33) – much less an innocent child. The Christian story is not about a God who is indifferent to suffering, because we worship a God who suffered on the cross. Our God is not indifferent to rejection and betrayal because he was rejected and betrayed. Our God is not indifferent to sin, evil and death because the Word became flesh and faced all of them, defeating them by subjecting himself to the worst they could muster. Their power was broken on Easter morning, and one day Christ will return, heaven will come to earth, making all things new, wiping away every tear, and death itself will be trampled. Death is the last enemy to be destroyed, as 1 Corinthians 15:26 reminds us.

We live in the meantime, when the thief can still break in and steal our children. But death’s days are numbered. Until we rejoice in that final victory to come, let us not make peace with our enemy on any terms.

welch wrote:I don't think anyone can prove the existence or non-existence of God.

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:

welch wrote:I don't think anyone can prove the existence or non-existence of God.

Why would anyone have to prove the nonexistence of a god? The burden of proof is on (s)he who asserts the claim.

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:The intellectual dishonesty of the god argument is in that it always begins with the conclusion and works backwards.

Conclusion: God exists, therefore ...

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:The arguments are always ones otherwise rational people would not accept as proof for anything else. Those arguments are then justified by a claim the rules don't apply to god.

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:When an atheist is asked under what circumstances (s)he would acknowledge the existence of a god the answer is invariably the same: Empirical proof.

When a theist is asked under what circumstance (s)he would deny the existence of a god the answer is invariably the same: (S)he wouldn't.

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:Most arguments fail one or more logical fallacies but the god arguments of Abrahamic, Isaic, and Jacobian religions fail all of them.

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:The argument can't begin with the conclusion.

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:The excerpt you posted very closely expresses what I once believed as a Christian.

Then I began to question why I believed it.

I had and still have questions no one can answer.

Deadskins wrote:First, I think you need to define what you mean when you say, "God." You talk about evil being done in the name of nonexistent gods, but if anything is being done in their name, then for those doing the evil acts, those gods must necessarily exist, don't they? And if there is "evil," then don't you also have to have "good?" How do you make this moral distinction? You also state, as if it were a fact, that there is no empirical evidence of God, but I think that is also false. Just because you don't know of any, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Do you know of any empirical evidence that God does not exist? I'm assuming that you believe in evolution (as do I). But there are many holes in the fossil record, and there is no known empirical evidence that justifies the leap from single-celled organisms to the vast biodiversity that exists today. There is no known empirical evidence to support the creation of life itself. There are just theories. And yet, I'd be willing to bet that you still believe (on faith alone) that mankind did evolve from some single-celled organism, and that you do, in fact, exist.

Just so that I can understand the parameters of where your beliefs lie, will you please answer a few questions?
1) Absent God, where did everything come from?
2) Do people have a soul/spirit energy that continues after death?
2a) If so, where did it come from before birth, and where does it go after death? And do other life forms share this quality of having a soul/spirit?
2b) If not, what happens when you die?
3) Was there a man named Jesus who lived roughly 2000 years ago? (I 'm not asking if he was the son of God, just was he a real person, or is he fictitious?)
4) Same question about Moses? (again, not asking if he received the 10 Commandments from God, or parted the Red Sea, just did he exist?)
5) Same question about Abraham?
6) Do you believe in extra-terrestrial life? If so, is there (now or ever before) sentient ET life? If so, has sentient ET life ever visited the Earth?

That will do for now. We can discuss the topic further when you've answered those.

Countertrey wrote:This thread is a bad idea... having said that, I will note that, on God's existence, I am agnostic.

HOWEVER... as the originator of the thread, B&G, I think the burden of proof is on you.
The question, "Is there God" is pretty much universally on the minds of most of adult humanity... with the possible exception of those whom have closed their minds completely to the possibility. I do feel sad for those folk.

Have you never asked "Why everything? Why anything?" Have you never pondered the existence of a thought, photons a grain of sand, a paramecium, the Atlantic, Mars, the Milky Way, the Universe, of YOU... and asked "why?"? Do you never entertain the possibility that all was initiated by some calculated construct?

Countertrey wrote:Is empathy an important component of humanity?
Would it be possible to appreciate empathy if there were no pain?

Is mercy an important component of humanity?
Would it be possible to appreciate mercy if there were no vengeance?

Is love an important component of humanity?
Would it be possible to appreciate love if there were no hate?

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:

Countertrey wrote:Is empathy an important component of humanity?
Would it be possible to appreciate empathy if there were no pain?

Is mercy an important component of humanity?
Would it be possible to appreciate mercy if there were no vengeance?

Is love an important component of humanity?
Would it be possible to appreciate love if there were no hate?

These are subjective concepts. ISIS believes they are expressing empathy, mercy, love, and by following the Qur'an to the letter. Or at least the parts they choose to follow to the letter. Christians believe they are doing the same by following the bible to the letter. Or at least the parts they choose to follow to the letter. There are parts of both books that are anything but empathetic, merciful, and loving, and those parts are typically discussing the actions of the god supposedly being worshiped.

It's possible to know and understand and feel emotion without religion. It's also entirely possible to be cold and emotionless and "god-fearing."

Are you suggesting we cannot know morality without religion? Morality is also entirely subjective. The religious right has been trying to push theirs upon the rest of society since time immemorial. It was one of the chief grievances of the colonists, having to pay tax to the Anglican Church Of England whether or not one elected to belong to that church. Some might consider that immoral. Most of the framers of the nation's founding documents were deists, not theists meaning they believed in the existence of God, on purely rational grounds, without any reliance on revealed religion, religious authority, or holy text. When people quote the Framers in regard to religion it is usually out of context in that the quote(s) are typically used in reference to the Christian god. I think we might agree, based upon what history teaches, that our founders had morality aplenty without requirement of a "holy book" or a "jealous god."

Countertrey wrote:Bottom line... the leadership of ISIS does not give a *sh$t* about morality, nor any of the attributes I cited.

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:

Countertrey wrote:Bottom line... the leadership of ISIS does not give a *sh$t* about morality, nor any of the attributes I cited.

I'm not disagreeing with this. In fact, I consider the "No true Muslim" argument to be on par with the "No True Scotman" fallacy. No true Muslim would ever do such things, right?

I think people can know what is morally right without there being some threat of consequences for doing what is morally bankrupt. That doesn't mean there aren't people who are morally bankrupt. In fact, most of the people I can think of with no morals whatsoever claim to be religious. That may have something to do with the fact that the overwhelming majority of the world's population is religious but, to be fair, correlation does not equal causation so I wouldn't want anyone to misconstrue my statement. Religion in and of itself is not a cause for moral bankruptcy but it is a fine excuse for it. If something is "god's will" it's a lot easier to get people to kowtow than if it's the king's will or the government's will.

You mentioned gang culture, which is undoubtedly immoral by most standards but, interestingly, virtually every gang member in prison finds Jesus. Or claims to have found Jesus.

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:

Deadskins wrote:First, I think you need to define what you mean when you say, "God." You talk about evil being done in the name of nonexistent gods, but if anything is being done in their name, then for those doing the evil acts, those gods must necessarily exist, don't they? And if there is "evil," then don't you also have to have "good?" How do you make this moral distinction? You also state, as if it were a fact, that there is no empirical evidence of God, but I think that is also false. Just because you don't know of any, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Do you know of any empirical evidence that God does not exist? I'm assuming that you believe in evolution (as do I). But there are many holes in the fossil record, and there is no known empirical evidence that justifies the leap from single-celled organisms to the vast biodiversity that exists today. There is no known empirical evidence to support the creation of life itself. There are just theories. And yet, I'd be willing to bet that you still believe (on faith alone) that mankind did evolve from some single-celled organism, and that you do, in fact, exist.

Just so that I can understand the parameters of where your beliefs lie, will you please answer a few questions?
1) Absent God, where did everything come from?
2) Do people have a soul/spirit energy that continues after death?
2a) If so, where did it come from before birth, and where does it go after death? And do other life forms share this quality of having a soul/spirit?
2b) If not, what happens when you die?
3) Was there a man named Jesus who lived roughly 2000 years ago? (I 'm not asking if he was the son of God, just was he a real person, or is he fictitious?)
4) Same question about Moses? (again, not asking if he received the 10 Commandments from God, or parted the Red Sea, just did he exist?)
5) Same question about Abraham?
6) Do you believe in extra-terrestrial life? If so, is there (now or ever before) sentient ET life? If so, has sentient ET life ever visited the Earth?

That will do for now. We can discuss the topic further when you've answered those.

God. An omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being that controls the universe.

1) Why do we have to pretend we know from where things came? The answer is "I don't know and I'm perfectly fine with not knowing."

2) Not to my knowledge.

3) There were many men named Jesus and titled "Christ" 2,000 years ago. Secular historians disagree on the existence of the Jesus of the bible.

4) Nothing in historical record can verify the existence of Moses.

5) Nothing in historical record can verify the existence of Abraham.

6) No.

Deadskins wrote:1) No one said you had to know where everything came from. But absent knowing, you can rule out the possibility of there being a creator? At the same time, you condemn theists for "not knowing and being perfectly fine not knowing" the answers to your questions about why God allows what you consider evil actions, and still believing in God. Can you see the disconnect there?
2) So what happens when you die? What happens to the life energy? Science tells us that energy is not created or destroyed, it only changes form. How do you account for the incredible similarities in the accounts of those who have had near-death, or temporary death, experiences?
3) I worded this question to specifically avoid the "many men named Jesus" response, but I don't understand the "titled Christ" part. It doesn't appear you understand the meaning of the word "Christ." I don't think there are any, credible, historians that dispute the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. Whether or not he was of divine origin is obviously up for debate.
4) That depends on your definition of "historical record." Whether you like it or not, religious texts such as the Torah, the Bible, and the Koran (Quran/Qur'an) are, in part, historical records.
5) See #4
6) Really? Over the billions of years, in all the billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars, not one other planet or moon contained some form of life? Earth stands alone in the history of the universe in that respect, and you say you don't believe in God?

TexasCowboy wrote:Genesis 1:1 In the beginning the earth was formless and void - so if God did not
exist then how is it the earth was formed???

TexasCowboy wrote:None of it exists God formed the universe, made man in his own image..gave them the
knowledge of things beyond this world, so if he does not exist according to you then you
really have no answer for how everything got here the way it did

TexasCowboy wrote:Because nothing exists if intelligent
design didn't first have a hand in it's
construction. The world today not
create itself and so nothing lives or
exists if according to you there is no
no God

TexasCowboy wrote:We're based on a design that did not create or design itself

Burgundy&GoldForever wrote:Using the books of the bible as proof of Jesus existence is circular logic. Jesus existed because god, who is Jesus, wrote the bible, and the bible is the word of god. Circular logic.