sthitapragya wrote:The point I wanted you to address was that every sin is first punished by society and then by God,while causing children to die slow horrible deaths for sins others committed. So first, there is just an inordinate amount of punishment for things as minor as overeating where society does not punish you but God does and it does effect children.
Again, you're thinking merely of the present moment and present appearances, how things may seem to us from our limited perspective. But there's no reason to suppose that a genuinely "supreme" Being cannot make up for ANY injustice or balance any scale in eternity.
That He does not seem to use to do so right now, that He does not satisfy our personal sense of how we might arrange things if we were God, does not go one step in the direction of showing us He cannot.
The Bible claims He will "wipe every tear from their eyes." If He created them in the first place, how would we imagine He could not do this? How would we imagine that the Being who created every kind of joy that exists could not possibly make any kind of suffering worthwhile?
And that suffering can be worthwhile is not a novel observation with me. Victor Frankl discovered it in Auschwitz, for example. And every person who laid his or her life on the line for a cause knows it. And every mother that gave birth to a baby knows it.
And every woman who murdered her child knows that sometimes there's a way that seems to "avoid" suffering that actually leads to much more of it.
Secondly, either God wants the children to die slow horrible deaths or he does not. If he does not, then he still either chooses not to do anything about it or cannot do anything about it. If He cannot do anything about it, He is not all that powerful and that would mean that he is not God. So that leaves us with the fact that he chooses not to do anything about it. And you need to remember that this is not an academic discussion. Children really do die slow and horrible deaths for sins others committed.The children themselves are completely innocent. And God still chooses not to do anything to ease their suffering. You seem to be okay with both the above. And I find that disturbing because you are against abortion by humans but are okay with a God consistently letting children suffer and die for sins others committed. You justify it by saying they will be compensated in the next life. But why should they be compensated? Why should they suffer horribly when they are innocent just to get compensation in the next life?
As I say, in eternity, we don't know what God does. We only have his promises on that: and so we have to decide what we really think of the character of God, don't we?
I believe He can keep His promises, and because I believe Him loving, I believe He will. I believe that because He is just, nothing will be forgotten or lost.
You may believe none of that. Okay. But for your argument to work, you need to show that I'm wrong. For really, the argument you adduce above has a missing clause: you need also to add something like,
"God can have no morally sufficient reason for allowing any evil at this time." Because if there is a "morally sufficient reason" for allowing pain or suffering, it's not wrong.
Think, for example, of a woman who takes her child to be vaccinated: the child will be "hurt," and she knows it...but a loving mother does what's right for her child, even when it hurts. Or think of the trainer who pushes an athlete in training, who causes agony in his trainee's muscles, because he knows that will create strength and vigour. Or think of the triathlete who keeps running when she is overwhelmed with thirst, because she has before her the joy of the finish line. Or think of the mother giving birth, who when she has completed her labour is drowning in joy that her beloved child has now entered the world...such things are very ordinary in life, I think you can see.
When a
sufficient reason exists, pain can be a good thing, a preliminary to joy. So for your argument to stick, you would need to show that God
cannot possibly have any such reason...that He could not, say, be building our characters, giving us freedom, working for a higher good, allowing temporary discomfort for an overwhelming eternal good -- all the things that Theists sometimes say about God. You'd need to show they were simply not right.
How would you do that?
