They see gender pay gap as a problem but ...

[Immanuel Can]

Jesus Christ said it's the entirety of the Mosaic Law.

That is commentary on Mosaic law. It is never used in jurisprudential rulings.

Who cares about "jurisprudential rulings"? Historically, far too many of those, in all societies, have been wrong. So I can't see what the agreement or follies of ordinary men have to do with what God commands.

Human law is inevitably a human effort to produce justice. As such, it's always flawed, partial and faltering. There is no such thing as perfect human jurisprudence.

If God commands men to "love their neighbours," which He does, and they don't do it, but instead subvert that with their "jurisprudence," does that mean the jurisprudence of men is the serious thing?

I can't see your argument here.

[godelian]

Who cares about "jurisprudential rulings"?

That is what proves that a scripture is treated as law. If nobody treats it as law, then it isn't.

Human law is inevitably a human effort to produce justice.

Mosaic and Islamic law are not human law. They are divine law.

If God commands men to "love their neighbours,"

Show me how you can use that as an argument in divine law to settle a jurisprudential question.
You will find that this argument is never used at all.
It is merely misinterpreted in order to fuel Christian delulu.

[bahman]

Think about it. Imagine that human beings are part good, part bad, and with free will. What kind of a place is the kind of place where these actors can make voluntary choices? If every misdeed is immediately attended by bad effects, and every good deed immediately attended by reward, can they really choose what they want to do? Or if the environment in which they try to live is shielded from all bad effects -- a weapon turns to dust in their hands, and cruel word spoken into the air fall to the ground unheard, say -- can they actualize any moral freedom or choice?

No. Not that. Don't try to anticipate, or you're sure to miss the point. Just answer my previous question, if you're interested.

What we do out of violation has to do with disasters, diseases, and the like.

Sorry...what is "out of violation," and what has it "to do" with all that? I don't understand your comment or 'answer,' whichever it was supposed to be.

What does what we do by violation have to do with disasters, diseases, and the like?

[Immanuel Can]

Who cares about "jurisprudential rulings"?

That is what proves that a scripture is treated as law. If nobody treats it as law, then it isn't.

If God says something, and people reject it, it's still Law. It just becomes the Law by which they are going to be judged. "Jurisprudence" will have no effect on that, I would say.

Human law is inevitably a human effort to produce justice.

Mosaic and Islamic law are not human law. They are divine law.

Then they are Law whether or not any "jurists" are willing to admit it.

[Immanuel Can]

What we do out of violation has to do with disasters, diseases, and the like.

Sorry...what is "out of violation," and what has it "to do" with all that? I don't understand your comment or 'answer,' whichever it was supposed to be.

What does what we do by violation have to do with disasters, diseases, and the like?

I was explaining that. But you didn't really answer my question: what kind of a world do volitionally free people need to be living in? You need to decide, before I can say more.

[bahman]

Sorry...what is "out of violation," and what has it "to do" with all that? I don't understand your comment or 'answer,' whichever it was supposed to be.

What does what we do by violation have to do with disasters, diseases, and the like?

I was explaining that. But you didn't really answer my question: what kind of a world do volitionally free people need to be living in? You need to decide, before I can say more.

A place where there is no disasters, diseases, disability, and the like.

[Immanuel Can]

What does what we do by violation have to do with disasters, diseases, and the like?

I was explaining that. But you didn't really answer my question: what kind of a world do volitionally free people need to be living in? You need to decide, before I can say more.

A place where there is no disasters, diseases, disability, and the like.

But what about murders, rapes, slaves, thefts, slanders, predations, wars, self-caused diseases -- like lung cancer from smoking, crack cocaine, pornography, prostitution, lies...? Would it be okay to have no natural disasters, but have all these? Or would you see a problem with that?

[bahman]

I was explaining that. But you didn't really answer my question: what kind of a world do volitionally free people need to be living in? You need to decide, before I can say more.

A place where there is no disasters, diseases, disability, and the like.

But what about murders, rapes, slaves, thefts, slanders, predations, wars, self-caused diseases -- like lung cancer from smoking, crack cocaine, pornography, prostitution, lies...? Would it be okay to have no natural disasters, but have all these? Or would you see a problem with that?

I said that before we are not all-wise. We make mistakes and learn from our mistakes. My concern here is not our actions which could be right or wrong though. My concern is natural evil like a kid who is born with a disability, cancer, and the like. What is his or her fault?

[Immanuel Can]

A place where there is no disasters, diseases, disability, and the like.

But what about murders, rapes, slaves, thefts, slanders, predations, wars, self-caused diseases -- like lung cancer from smoking, crack cocaine, pornography, prostitution, lies...? Would it be okay to have no natural disasters, but have all these? Or would you see a problem with that?

I said that before we are not all-wise. We make mistakes and learn from our mistakes. My concern here is not our actions which could be right or wrong though. My concern is natural evil like a kid who is born with a disability, cancer, and the like. What is his or her fault?

Wait. Okay, so you're only concerned with the bad things that seem to happen naturally, like floods, or hurricanes, or whatnot? A world with human-caused evil would not be similarly problematic to you?

That seems a little odd, if you don't mind me saying...most people complain about both, I think. But I can speak to the matter either way; so you wish to exclude all disasters that are the result of human choice or action, then?

I just need to be sure I have your point right, before we move forward.

[bahman]

But what about murders, rapes, slaves, thefts, slanders, predations, wars, self-caused diseases -- like lung cancer from smoking, crack cocaine, pornography, prostitution, lies...? Would it be okay to have no natural disasters, but have all these? Or would you see a problem with that?

I said that before we are not all-wise. We make mistakes and learn from our mistakes. My concern here is not our actions which could be right or wrong though. My concern is natural evil like a kid who is born with a disability, cancer, and the like. What is his or her fault?

Wait. Okay, so you're only concerned with the bad things that seem to happen naturally, like floods, or hurricanes, or whatnot? A world with human-caused evil would not be similarly problematic to you?

That seems a little odd, if you don't mind me saying...most people complain about both, I think. But I can speak to the matter either way; so you wish to exclude all disasters that are the result of human choice or action, then?

I just need to be sure I have your point right, before we move forward.

I consider our wrong actions as a problem! I am however wondering about natural evil.

[Immanuel Can]

I said that before we are not all-wise. We make mistakes and learn from our mistakes. My concern here is not our actions which could be right or wrong though. My concern is natural evil like a kid who is born with a disability, cancer, and the like. What is his or her fault?

Wait. Okay, so you're only concerned with the bad things that seem to happen naturally, like floods, or hurricanes, or whatnot? A world with human-caused evil would not be similarly problematic to you?

That seems a little odd, if you don't mind me saying...most people complain about both, I think. But I can speak to the matter either way; so you wish to exclude all disasters that are the result of human choice or action, then?

I just need to be sure I have your point right, before we move forward.

I consider our wrong actions as a problem! I am however wondering about natural evil.

Well, one problem is that it's often hard to make a clear separation between them. Not always, perhaps; but often.

For example, I stood on a mountainside in Honduras, some years ago. A great streak of green and brown ran down the valley to my right. It was a place where 9,000 people lost their lives, after a hurricane swept though a ghetto. On the left, other parts of the hill had the houses of wealthier people on them and there was no such devastation.

It might be simple to say, "Why did God allow the hurricane?" But wait. There were more complicated reasons why those people died. Hurricanes are expectable every now and then in Honduras; but in ghettos, the people strip the land of vegetation. The landslide was a result of things coming together: a hurricane, but also loose soil, and the soil was loose because the people were poor and densely backed, and they were poor and densely packed because of the corruption of the political operatives and the elite exploiters in Honduras.

So who killed the people? Did God? Or did the people kill themselves, by camping on an unstable hillside? Or did their exploiters kill them, by leaving them poor, unaware and vulnerable, on a hillside in a major city? How do we add up all the things that made that disaster possible?

Another, simpler example. People go to sea on a small ship. A storm arises, and the boat sinks, and the people die. Who's at fault: God, for allowing a storm, or the boaters, for going to sea in an unworthy ship, or for not checking the weather forecast, or for going to sea at all?

Or the man who tries crack or cocaine for the first time, unaware he has a heart condition. He dies. Did cocaine kill him, or his own drug-use kill him, or the heart condition, which is the only thing that might plausibly be considered a natural "evil"?

You see the kinds of problems we get into. It's not always easy to say who caused what. And today, our climate "experts" in the green movement tell us that human beings can be responsible for environmental irregularities all over the planet. So who's to blame? Well, those people mostly don't seem to believe in God at all, anyway; but they're quite convinced, it seems, that even the largest-scale disasters have to be put down to human bad judgment.

So I will, if you want, exclude all things that potentially have a human component. But I should tell you in advance that that is going to narrow the field considerably. In a great variety of cases, human decisions have at least some significant role in how things turn out.

So if you want a clear case of God allowing something He should not, and man remaining totally innocent in the matter, perhaps you'd better suggest what it would be, so I can respond to what you actually think the "natural evil" or "bad thing that should not be allowed" is.

[bahman]

Wait. Okay, so you're only concerned with the bad things that seem to happen naturally, like floods, or hurricanes, or whatnot? A world with human-caused evil would not be similarly problematic to you?

That seems a little odd, if you don't mind me saying...most people complain about both, I think. But I can speak to the matter either way; so you wish to exclude all disasters that are the result of human choice or action, then?

I just need to be sure I have your point right, before we move forward.

I consider our wrong actions as a problem! I am however wondering about natural evil.

Well, one problem is that it's often hard to make a clear separation between them. Not always, perhaps; but often.

For example, I stood on a mountainside in Honduras, some years ago. A great streak of green and brown ran down the valley to my right. It was a place where 9,000 people lost their lives, after a hurricane swept though a ghetto. On the left, other parts of the hill had the houses of wealthier people on them and there was no such devastation.

It might be simple to say, "Why did God allow the hurricane?" But wait. There were more complicated reasons why those people died. Hurricanes are expectable every now and then in Honduras; but in ghettos, the people strip the land of vegetation. The landslide was a result of things coming together: a hurricane, but also loose soil, and the soil was loose because the people were poor and densely backed, and they were poor and densely packed because of the corruption of the political operatives and the elite exploiters in Honduras.

So who killed the people? Did God? Or did the people kill themselves, by camping on an unstable hillside? Or did their exploiters kill them, by leaving them poor, unaware and vulnerable, on a hillside in a major city? How do we add up all the things that made that disaster possible?

Another, simpler example. People go to sea on a small ship. A storm arises, and the boat sinks, and the people die. Who's at fault: God, for allowing a storm, or the boaters, for going to sea in an unworthy ship, or for not checking the weather forecast, or for going to sea at all?

Or the man who tries crack or cocaine for the first time, unaware he has a heart condition. He dies. Did cocaine kill him, or his own drug-use kill him, or the heart condition, which is the only thing that might plausibly be considered a natural "evil"?

You see the kinds of problems we get into. It's not always easy to say who caused what. And today, our climate "experts" in the green movement tell us that human beings can be responsible for environmental irregularities all over the planet. So who's to blame? Well, those people mostly don't seem to believe in God at all, anyway; but they're quite convinced, it seems, that even the largest-scale disasters have to be put down to human bad judgment.

So I will, if you want, exclude all things that potentially have a human component. But I should tell you in advance that that is going to narrow the field considerably. In a great variety of cases, human decisions have at least some significant role in how things turn out.

So if you want a clear case of God allowing something He should not, and man remaining totally innocent in the matter, perhaps you'd better suggest what it would be, so I can respond to what you actually think the "natural evil" or "bad thing that should not be allowed" is.

How about a kind who is born with a disability, cancer, and the like?

[Immanuel Can]

How about a kind who is born with a disability, cancer, and the like?

A "kid," maybe you mean? Well, again...you can't be sure that wasn't human-caused. Perhaps bad lifestyle, like smoking, or other carcinogens ingested by the mother played a role...perhaps toxins dumped into the environment had a role...

That's the difficulty of separating out "human evils" from "natural evils." It's really hard to know, in many cases. For sure, some distinction is necessary; but if you decide to eliminate human evils from consideration, it puts a pretty heavy burden on the speaker to show that whatever he picks is truly devoid of human contribution.

And not much is.

Let me propose that it would be very difficult even to conceive of world where this is the case. Say, human beings are able to rob, shoot, steal, pillage and murder at will, but the general environment is completely benign, and allows for no evil effects, other than what humans directly do. It's tough to imagine; but the bigger problem is probably that God would still have the ability to stop human evil, but would be choosing not to...how could we then say, "Well, so long as God keeps us from excessive rainfall or sudden sinkholes, there's no question we need to ask anymore about God's dealings"? I don't think too many people would adopt that position.

[bahman]

How about a kind who is born with a disability, cancer, and the like?

A "kid," maybe you mean? Well, again...you can't be sure that wasn't human-caused. Perhaps bad lifestyle, like smoking, or other carcinogens ingested by the mother played a role...perhaps toxins dumped into the environment had a role...

Ahan, I see!

That's the difficulty of separating out "human evils" from "natural evils." It's really hard to know, in many cases. For sure, some distinction is necessary; but if you decide to eliminate human evils from consideration, it puts a pretty heavy burden on the speaker to show that whatever he picks is truly devoid of human contribution.

I think there is a clear line between human evils and natural evil unless you are Buddhist and believe in Karma! Are you a Buddhist?

[Immanuel Can]

How about a kind who is born with a disability, cancer, and the like?

A "kid," maybe you mean? Well, again...you can't be sure that wasn't human-caused. Perhaps bad lifestyle, like smoking, or other carcinogens ingested by the mother played a role...perhaps toxins dumped into the environment had a role...

Ahan, I see!

That's the difficulty of separating out "human evils" from "natural evils." It's really hard to know, in many cases. For sure, some distinction is necessary; but if you decide to eliminate human evils from consideration, it puts a pretty heavy burden on the speaker to show that whatever he picks is truly devoid of human contribution.

I think there is a clear line between human evils and natural evil unless you are Buddhist and believe in Karma! Are you a Buddhist?

I'm not, but I can't see how a Buddhist would be in a better position, regarding that.