As someone else commented, God can see through all space and time, and He does have a bigger plan than any of us can see or understand. “His ways are higher than our ways, His thoughts higher than our thoughts.” (Isaiah)

As for the commenter who said he believed this for awhile, but then grew weary of having to make excuses for God…you don’t have to make excuses for Him. After all, He is God. We are mere humans. He owes no explanation to anyone. He is who gave you life, and He can allow it to be taken away – or take it away Himself – however you want to look at it.

He has given us a chance at eternal life through making the biggest sacrifice of all – sending HIS OWN child to die so that we could escape eternity in hell. I don’t know of any humans, including myself, who would be willing to kill their own child in order to save a world full of undeserving sinners. Only an all-knowing, all-loving God could do something that extravagantly unselfish. As I said before, He is God – we are not.

You can choose to believe in Him or not to – that’s the free will He has given you.
I choose to believe in God. If I’m understanding your blog correctly, you don’t.
If I’m wrong, then I have nothing to lose. If you’re wrong, you have everything to lose.
I pray that you’ll choose to believe in Him. He exists, and He loves you.

Using tragedy to somehow justify God or trying to make sense of a tragic occurrence — as if it can be legitimized — seems so inane to me. Tragedy is exactly what it is, tragic… and there’s no justification that can make it “okay.” Part of facing life with eyes wide open is accepting that both good and bad happens, and that it’s not really about “making sense” of it but determining how we will respond to it.

If God exists anywhere, it’s in the choices we make in regards to how we face death… and life.

I remember recognizing love in how the parent Chapmans responded to their son who inadvertently hit and killed his sister. So many conflicting emotions there, but they carried their own grief while trying to spare him the guilt he likely would inflict on himself for his mistake.

Such actions do not prove or disprove the existence of God… but they do reveal the existence of love in a world far too easily torn by hate and bitterness.

As far was wanting or not wanting to believe, I really do not have a desire either way.

And saying that you believe because you want to believe, therefore your belief is rational is a major fallacy. The world all around us can be observed and the truth discovered from it, and the truth is that the world doesn’t look designed. At all. And if there were an all-powerful being who cared about us, it would look designed.

We are different, you and I. Bottom line is, I believe because I want to believe. You do not believe because you do not want to believe. Don’t throw your tired, old arguments at me and tell me that they prove anything because they don’t prove anymore than my own arguments. Descartes and Kant were both intelligent, rational men and neither one of them could prove the existence or nonexistence of God through reason. Your arguments are nowhere near as good as theirs were.

*shrug* Again, no offense meant.

Oh yes, one more thing. To the one who said there was much evidence for an accidental universe to lead to what we have now, I’d like to see some specific examples of that evidence. Like, cite some studies or something.

What it actually requires is belief, not suspension of disbelief, but I figured suspension of disbelief might get close enough. Perhaps it was unreasonable to ask that you visit or revisit the place that Christians come from when they deal with tragedy, but it was what I attempted. If you can’t or don’t care to, that’s completely fair and I understand. I only wrote it so that if anyone was really really interested in making an attempt at understanding the thought process, they could at least give it a shot.

I believe humanity is capable of simply staggering achievements. We have so much potential it actually brings tears to my eyes. It’s also pretty much wasted on us.

The joyful, hopeful Christianity you hear about doesn’t come from our view of the universe. Some would say it doesn’t come from anyone but God. I’m of the opinion that I can lead a joyful and happy life principally because I have hope in redemption both for me and for this potentially beautiful wreck of a world.

@ your analogy–

There’s this parable about a son and a father (which I’m sure you know). The son rejects the father and goes away. Spends his dad’s money, destroys his entire life. Son finally crawls back in rags and his father…

a) Ignores him
b) Sends him away destitute
c) Welcomes him back with open arms and throws a ridiculously huge party

If you know the answer, let me ask you a question. How is any of the above passively or otherwise malevolent?

Your entire argument at number 63, as you yourself point out, requires suspension of disbelief. That is, in order to swallow the gnat, we must first swallow the camel.

But in this I feel you’re coming at convincing us the wrong way. We spat the camel out some time ago, most of us.

Q: How many legs does a dog have if you call its tail a leg?

A: Four. Calling its tail a leg doesn’t make it one.

“God allows these things because humanity has gone off on its own and relected God.”

–So your kid blows his top and screams “I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HAAAATE YOU!” He storms off into a rainy night, slamming the door so hard that it rebounds open.

Then you hear the gunshots.

Do you turn and go out into the pouring rain to make sure the kid’s all right? Or do you close the door saying “Well, he rejected me. He deserves whatever’s coming to him.”? Maybe you just stand there with the door open: “He’ll come inside when he gets hungry”?

If you look outside and he’s sitting on the curb bleeding from a chest wound, do you call the ambulance, go check it out, or gently close the door?

If he says “Dad, help me,” do you nevertheless turn your back because he’s got to learn his lesson about rejectijng you?

What sort of moral, just, loving being is capable of that sort of (in)action? You seem to be following Dante: Credo in Dio crudel–”I believe in a cruel god.”

Which is all very well, but returns us to the idea that god is at the very least passivley malevolent.

“Human nature is so much worse than you think it is. Other people are possibly the worst thing that could ever happen to you. People are hateful, vengeful, spiteful, and morally bankrupt.”

–I hope this is not that “joyful, hopeful Christian worldview” I keep hearing about!

I believe that most people are decent and just within certain boundaries, often cultural in nature. Venial and petty to be sure, but capable of dazzling greatness at moments.

Why would God care if people reject him? Why would an infinite, perfect being care? Or want? Or need?

Or is god finite and/or imperfect?

Demanding love from beings who could never understand you seems kinda dumb.

Theology just sounds like making excuses for clinging to a concept that people would be better off without.

And I think you made the atheists’ arguments for us with
“Also, I really am not convinced the universe is merciful. The universe is a cold, thoughtless jumble of infinitely cruel matter that seems designed to make life for humanity very difficult.”

The Universe. That’s all there is. It is not good, it is not evil. It simply is. It was not “designed” for human life.

I hope I addressed most of your points. Sorry for not explaining before, but these posts are somewhat exhausting to write properly. And like I said, you won’t like the theological answer.

Also, for time and content restraints, scientists or teachers will very often restrict their answers to a given format. There are things that are simply very complicated. Furthermore, this is not my blog, I am not a theologian, and this blog is not directly about theology. I do think I was within my rights to beg off a full explanation. What I just posted is immensely simplified. All I intended was to inform you that there are in fact theological explanations for almost every objection I have ever seen raised against Christianity or the existence of God.

@ wazza

I hope I explained why God would allow drought. You might not agree that this is a merciful thing to do, which is fair enough I suppose, but it’s the answer I can give you.

Also, I really am not convinced the universe is merciful. The universe is a cold, thoughtless jumble of infinitely cruel matter that seems designed to make life for humanity very difficult.

The other theological explanation for drought, which hasn’t been mentioned, IIRC, is that it is part of the big lead up to the end times. The ‘birth pains’ from Revelations. I find that explanation less satisfying than the one I went into here, but they’re both true.

So here’s an idea. And if this doesn’t work, there isn’t much more that’s going to be worth pursuing. Imagine for a moment that there is an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God of the universe. He exists. And you know it.

Okay, so if you can hold that in your mind, I can explain to you the thought processes that go into justifying his lack of involvement with the world. If you can’t, then the explanation I make is going to sound like gibberish, drivel, or some horrible combination of everything you ever hated about religious people. Really. It will. I will sound stupid.

But if you could just bite your tongue and pretend your very hardest, I might be able to explain, and you might learn something that can help you understand those crazy religious people. Here goes nothing…

God allows bad things to happen for a very specific reason. Bad things happen to people because people rejected God. God allows the innocent to die. It’s true. He allows famine, drought, disease, death, war, murder, tragic accidents, hate, rape, traffic, suicide, depression, anarchy, all the worlds ills. Literally all of them. God directly allows them to happen. He does not (usually) actively cause these things to happen, but he does stand by and watch them.

Why? I’ll give you the answer, but you have to keep on holding on to the idea that God does actually exist, that he is actually all-powerful, and that he is good.

God allows these things to happen because humanity has gone off on its own and rejected God. Yup, you’ve heard all this before. The world gone wrong is our fault. But really, God would like us to not suck. He would like us to live up to our potential. And the only way for that to happen is for humanity to hit rock bottom. This is like every prodigal son analogy you’ve ever heard of. God will take lives and make them whole again, but no one will let him if they think that things are pretty much okay.

Okay, you can stop pretending you believe in God now.

You need to realize that the earth is a horrible place. Horrible, unforgivable things happen to people here.
Human nature is so much worse than you think it is. Other people are possibly the worst thing that could ever happen to you. People are hateful, vengeful, spiteful, and morally bankrupt. And you know what? God isn’t helping matters by allowing things like climate change, catastrophic weather patterns, atrocities in war, atrocities outside of war, disease, and children dying of disease.

What he is doing, is trying to get across to us just how bad things really are. Because if we don’t accept that things are hopelessly fouled up, we will not admit that we should have listened to God, that we should have lived the way he said.

So there you go. This is why bad things happen to ‘good’ people. So that we realize, finally, how awful we are and how much we need God.

If never ceases to amaze me how so many people can believe in this type of god when the evidence is so positively against it. What makes it even worse is the explanations that people put forward to try and convince themselves that’s true.

random fluctuations in the weather patterns cause droughts, and people get hurt because the universe doesn’t care.

But if there is a god, and he’s truly merciful and loving, he won’t let people die in a drought he could stop without any recourse to changing the way people behave, right?

God could make the world better without curtailing our free will. The fact that the world isn’t better is a pretty good argument against god.