If you were god for a day, what would you do with this power? Maybe you would cure cancer? Invoke your power to create world peace? Create enough resources for all so that people don't die of starvation and malnutrition? Create a world where we can all live without killing it through polluting fossil fuels? Maybe you would show yourself to everyone so that we could all believe and all could be saved? Or, better yet, abolish hell altogether? These are just some of the potential things that you could do with this power.
So, the question is: why hasn't god done any of these things?
9 comments:
If you were god for a day, what would you do with this power?
Probably not very much. Humans continually screw everything up, so if I were suddenly God, I wouldn't have the slightest inclination to do anything more than what he already does.
Maybe you would cure cancer? Invoke your power to create world peace?
World peace is impossible, so long as human will remains in the world.
Create enough resources for all so that people don't die of starvation and malnutrition?
And what does that entail, sir? Making hamburgers fall out of the sky? The issue is not lack of resources: it's our inaction and corruption of governments. There's more than enough food to go around: notice that there are well over two hundred McDonalds restaurants in New York City alone.
Create a world where we can all live without killing it through polluting fossil fuels?
People lived without polluting it through fossil fuels for literally hundreds of thousands of years. It's not the world that's to blame for it: it's our technology. Please stop shifting the blame from where it belongs.
Maybe you would show yourself to everyone so that we could all believe and all could be saved?
Well, what would the point of that be? What in the world is in it for God? If I were God, I would want people to voluntarily come to believe in me.
Or, better yet, abolish hell altogether?
You mean stop punishing sin? You are really content with the idea that God being all right with people doing terrible things?
These are just some of the potential things that you could do with this power.
So, the question is: why hasn't god done any of these things?
Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because he wants to instill in us important things like a sense of moral responsibility and accountability to our fellow men.
But the question is meaningless as it stands. It's an emotional appeal, not a rational argument.
"Probably not very much. Humans continually screw everything up, so if I were suddenly God, I wouldn't have the slightest inclination to do anything more than what he already does."
If humans screw everything up, it is because god made us this way. But, it's nice to know that you are so concerned with making the world a better place.
"World peace is impossible, so long as human will remains in the world."
Nothing about cancer in your reply? Why not? And, why is world peace impossible for an omnipotent being? Again, our flaws are there because of god, so why can god not fix them or at least start to remedy that which he created?
"And what does that entail, sir? Making hamburgers fall out of the sky? The issue is not lack of resources: it's our inaction and corruption of governments. There's more than enough food to go around: notice that there are well over two hundred McDonalds restaurants in New York City alone."
Tell that to the starving children in other parts of the world. I'm glad that you can be so glib about people suffering and starving and how you can shirk any possibility of actually helping these people by simply stating that they could be fed. The fact is, they aren't being fed, and if you had the power to help them, you wouldn't. How sad.
"People lived without polluting it through fossil fuels for literally hundreds of thousands of years. It's not the world that's to blame for it: it's our technology. Please stop shifting the blame from where it belongs."
And with that technology has come many advances that you seem content to do without? Of course not.
"Well, what would the point of that be? What in the world is in it for God? If I were God, I would want people to voluntarily come to believe in me."
The point would be that people would believe and be saved. I keep hearing about how god wants us all to be saved and all that, but he won't show himself to us. He wants to have a relationship with us, but he hides from us. The only conclusion is that god doesn't really want this. And, why should god want voluntary belief more than love, respect, and a relationship with us?
"You mean stop punishing sin? You are really content with the idea that God being all right with people doing terrible things?"
Whatever sins we commit are god's fault for various reasons as I've already pointed out in a few posts. We have no choice but to sin, so god is punishing us for things we have no control over. god could have set up a system where we would not choose to sin, or at least to commits sins on other human beings, but he did not do this. Hell is a place of no redemption for sins, it is a place where torture is the norm, and it lasts for eternity. Our sins are finite by definition, so infinite torture (or any torture for that matter) is infinitely unjust punishment. It kinda throws out the idea that god is either just or loving/benevolent.
"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps because he wants to instill in us important things like a sense of moral responsibility and accountability to our fellow men."
Yes, I'm sure that the child that dies at age 2 of malnutrition after suffering her whole life has learned a valuable lesson, hasn't she? There are other ways to teach lessons than making us suffer. Further, what lessons are taught in hell?
"But the question is meaningless as it stands. It's an emotional appeal, not a rational argument."
Actually, it's only partly emotional. It's also a rational argument in that we can see the problem of evil in this way. The evil around us could easily be solved by god, and yet god does not do anything. This contradicts the tenets that god is omni-benevolent and just.
I also showed that you are a sociopath.
What would be the point in God just fixing everything all at once? And this actually shows that God is just because we, as humans, have made the world like this. You can believe in adam and eve or not but you still can't deny the fact that it is people killing other people everyday and people who with hold food from others for their own gluttony and greed. I say open your mind and your eyes to the truth of your statement
"What would be the point in God just fixing everything all at once?"
If you had the power to, wouldn't you?
"And this actually shows that God is just because we, as humans, have made the world like this."
Blaming the victim. god created us like this, knowing full well this would happen, but he gets off scot-free, why is that? Yet, we internalize all the blame on ourselves for that which god has responsibility.
"I say open your mind and your eyes to the truth of your statement"
And I say stop giving god a free pass. Open your mind and your eyes to the fact that if this god exists, he is not a morally good being. He has the power to help us and the moral responsibility since he created us. He also embarked on this universe knowing all that would happen and having the power to alter those events with no problem, yet he did not do any of this.
Love this question:
Succinctly: start over. Wipe everything out and start over.
And you would make something better I presume, right?
Yup! No humans this time.
Wallis,
If you believe you can make it better, then you prove my point. Thank you for walking right into that one and thank you for proving my point for me.
Replace all the heads of governments with atheists.
Make it legally compulsory to eat pork.
Empty the coffers of religious groups and use the $ to fund education, health-care and humanistic needs.
Outlaw religion.
Free Victoria's secret lingerie for the poor, oppressed but undeniably lovely Arab women.
Have a copy of The God Delusion in every hotel room.
Put the Pope and his child-buggering priests on trial, find them guilty, and sentence them to hard labor camps in Communist China.
Screen Fitna in schools, as a part of moral education.
Promote freedom of speech and ditch the stupid political correctness bullshit.
Christopher Hitchens for President!
Post a Comment