Why does God allow bad things to happen?

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techstepgenr8tion
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17 Aug 2005, 11:41 pm

tallgirl wrote:

I believe that G-d is ever loving and compassionate. We must take responsibility for our own thoughts and actions. Everything is cause and effect. If one beats another, the offender will receive a beating sometime later. That isn't between the offender and G-d, that is between the offender and his own self.

Our actions in this dimension, trigger reactions in G-d's dimension although G-d is beyond any dimension. G-d's energy is filtered through ten vessels and those vessels include judgment, mercy, beauty/harmony, etc. If one wants good things, one must be good. G-d is here to teach us lessons and return us to Him. He gave us free will because it is better when someone chooses to love you, rather than creating them or forcing them to love you and that is what we are here to do.

Bad things happen, but your reaction to those events is what really counts.

This is what I believe.
Tallgirl.

That's the way I'd prefer to think of it, but at the same time I can see Squandered's point that you don't see too many guys who look like prison inmates in white collared shirts and ties (and even then, its an upperclass-thug look) just like you see lots of real skinny, weak, bambi-cute people who weren't meant to be anything but nice otherwise they're nervous systems would just about collapse on em. Neitze struggled like mad with being a 98 pound weakling who respected power so much and it really showed in his philosophies where his life had him pinned.

I think that genetic personality is also another reason why NTs can feel perfectly ok judgging someone just on the way they look - usually its pretty close to the truth and I'd have to guess that they're hating us for things they see which may very well be true about us. I'd really like to think there is some higher something, if not god at least a buddhist reality where everyone takes a turn being a different kind of person just for the learning experience. Then again that's just what I'd like to think...

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ouinon
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30 Jan 2008, 4:31 pm

SquanderedPotential wrote:

think of it this way. you build a washing machine, it washes clothes, you tell it it doesn't have to wash clothes because it's free to do whatever it wants...however, it wants to wash clothes because it's a damn washing machine. therefore it has no free will because it was made to wash clothes and that's all it knows or wants to do.

Actually that is what the situation is like for all other animals apart from humans. They are vehicules for the perpetuation of genes.
We are almost only that.
But at some point in the last 50,000-80,000 years our brains evolved to a point where we are free to disobey instincts. We are no longer pure breeding machines. There is something else going on.

To get gnostic christian mysterious about it our bodies sacrificed themselves to allow something new to happen, to allow us to experience /know "god", or achieve some strange new perspective on life.
Don't have to think body did it deliberately; it was sacrificed though.

And we are free, to reproduce or not, to eat healthily or not, to care about our species or not, to put more energy into saving another species than our own, to imagine ways for our species to spread out through the universe, or to kill us all off here.

This is a huge, immense, difference; we do not have to follow our instincts. It really was the gift of freedom.

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31 Jan 2008, 5:24 pm

Because he doesn't exist it's as simple as that...

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31 Jan 2008, 7:43 pm

Jesus asked, What father among you, having a child who asks for bread, gives him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, gives him a serpent? And he went on to say that if you, being evil, know how to give your children good things how much more does God know how to give good things to those who ask.

Well, the way I see it, there are a whole lot of people who come into the world asking for nothing but bread and getting nothing but stones. The pain I see expressed on these various forums is an eloquent testament to that. And there just ain't no answers.

I don't know how many readers here are familiar with the book of Job, but it contains a very shocking statement. After Job goes through all his trials and finally gets to confront God (in the form of a tornado--how appropriate!) God turns on Job's "friends" who have been steadily defending God in all the trite phrases we have all come to know all too well, and says in effect that He (God) is very angry at them for not telling the truth about Him the way Job has. And what is the truth about God that Job has been saying? That He is in fact unfair, that He plays favorites, that He indeed rewards evil and punishes good.

Think about it . . .

techstepgenr8tion
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31 Jan 2008, 7:54 pm

ClosetAspy wrote:

I don't know how many readers here are familiar with the book of Job, but it contains a very shocking statement. After Job goes through all his trials and finally gets to confront God (in the form of a tornado--how appropriate!) God turns on Job's "friends" who have been steadily defending God in all the trite phrases we have all come to know all too well, and says in effect that He (God) is very angry at them for not telling the truth about Him the way Job has. And what is the truth about God that Job has been saying? That He is in fact unfair, that He plays favorites, that He indeed rewards evil and punishes good.

Think about it . . .

The answer to why I think is pretty simple, he doesn't want us to be weak. If I took one thing out of reading some of the links posted here on Kaballah that I agree with, what we go through is thrown at us by him and its there to galvanize us; kind of like taking unrefined steel and pounding out the flaws. Life in fact really is about pain and coping, and seeing it from that stand point is about the only way I think many people can at least find some peace in what's going on around them from within themselves. The only thing it makes me feel is that there's just no point in prayer - if our actions and reactions really sum it up and if we make the right choices when our worlds come crashing down and we come out of it stronger; hard for me to imagine why he'd need us constantly talking to him about it.

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01 Feb 2008, 11:38 am

Involving any ethics in ontological discussions is very problematic,since ethical or moral subjects like 'good','bad','evil','just' are prone to purely relative subjective interpretations.This is my personal opinion.

Nevertheless,a theist could turn an ethical argument against existence of God as an argument for his existence.

Question:Why does God allow bad things to happen?
Answer:Because he is good.

Goodness can only be goodness only towards something that is opposite of it.
Good can only be good only towards evil,and vice versa.

In same manner as great can be great only towards something small.

Now,if God is good,then he can be only good towards something that is evil.
If God wanted to consider 'himself' as good,and if he cherish good more then evil,then he must create evil because only towards evil God can be good.

Therefore existence of evil is necessary if God is good.

Existence of evil is good,since only towards it good can be good.
However existence of good is also good to evil,since only towards it evil can be evil.

Now if God is good,and if he cherish good more then evil he must create world in which evil is dominant.
Since rarer things are more precious,therefore good must be rare in God's creation.

If there is 'inflation of good' in creation,then good would not be valuable.
Therefore evil is more dominant in the world,since God obviously does not value evil very much.

Now if God wanted to be evil,he again must created good in order to be evil.However this dichotomy between good and evil is itself good for both.But evil God could never crate good solution for both solutions,since he is evil.Therefore evil God would never create good,and therefore he would not exist as evil God.

From that follows that God,creator, must be good.

If good God would stop evil to happen,he would done injustice to evil,and then he would be evil,since injustice is evil.Thats not possible,since he is good.

Evil things,therefore must happen to good people,while good things must happen to evil people,since good attracts evil,and evil attracts good.
This law itself is good,since its just.

P.S

I personally do not support adding particular ethic properties to God.
My example only shows how 'argument from evil' can be turned into its opposite.

This is not example of supporting God of the Bible,but more into defending claim that God is good(in general),by using argument from evil.

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03 Feb 2008, 7:03 pm

Why does God allow bad things to happen?

Hes letting us learn the results of our actions and wiether we made the right choice when we rejected his rulership, and came under the rulership of Satan.

He does promise to look after us again though when the Kingdom Jesus thought us to pray for comes, (Let thy Kingdom come, Let thy will be done on Earth as it is upon Heaven), I guess you said it so ofet in school that you never bother thinking what it means, Gods Kingdom isnt here yet, else we wouldnt need to pray for it to come, and his will certanly isnt being done when you see all the suffering.

When God does look after us again, it will be like this :- Rev 21

“Look! The tent of God is with mankind, and he will reside with them, and they will be his peoples. And God himself will be with them. 4 And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.”

Anubis
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03 Feb 2008, 7:12 pm

Perhaps God is more of a force. If he/it exists, it would seem that we have to find it within ourselves.

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03 Feb 2008, 7:27 pm

We people cause most of the bad things in the world by ignoring what's going on around us. We build in tornado, earthquake and flood zones. We kill around 1,000 species of life per year. We destroy the ozone layer. We pollute the air, water and soil. We discover nuclear power and spend more effort on building bombs than on building safe power plants. We invent artillery and use it to enslave populations instead of defending them. We use psychological research more for selling than teaching.

Don't you think we deserve the fruits of our labors? Do children denied the consequences of their bad actions learn better? Don't blame God. He doesn't deserve blame. The real question is: When in the hell are we as a species going to GROW UP?

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04 Feb 2008, 5:20 pm

Aspie1 wrote:

There is no God, period. If you still think there is, let me ask you this.

Why would God let his own Temple get destroyed? Twice! First, by the Babylonians, then by the Romans. Read the following biblical summaries to prove that God doesn't exist.

Israelites worked hard to get that building, to dedicate it to God. They quarried stones of all kinds from all over Judea; they cut the cedars of Lebanon; they hauled all that material all the way to Jerusalem. Given the technology the Israelites had, you can imagine how much effort that took. The resulting First Temple looked amazingly splendid. (Refer to I Kings and II Kings for a description.) In 534 B.C., God turned around and let the Babylonians invade Israel, resulting in the complete leveling of the Temple.

Israelites grieved over the destriction. But they remained faithful in God. They quarried more stone, cut more trees, and hauled the material to Jerusalem. The rebuilt the Second Temple. It was far less splendid than the First, but it was still The Temple. Jesus taught his early followers inside it, after having cast out the vendors. In 70 A.D., the Romans invaded Israel. They leveled Jerusalem to the ground, and destroyed the Second Temple. (Refer to Jeremiah for an account of the destruction.) This temple was never rebuilt. Only one part of it remains, called the Wailing Wall.

After giving you the background, here's a mathemical proof by contradiction. My question to you is this. Why would God allow the destruction of HIS OWN TEMPLE!!? I can expect God not giving a damn about people, but that was his own temple (or temples), for crying out loud. In a way, he would be destroying himself and the people dedicating themselves to him. And if God is as all-knowing as people think he is, he wouldn't destroy himself. This is a contradiction. Conclusion? God doesn't exist.
Q.E.D. (a mathematical abbreviation of "this is what we proved")

Actually it was destroyed three times.

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05 Feb 2008, 12:12 am

SquanderedPotential wrote:

you can't choose if you're gonna be a good person or a bad one. bad people are bad because they were born that way. good people were born good. it's all biological, and yeah, it's mother nature who's the dictator because god is just a BS bedtime story for poor scared little adults who can't sleep at night.

Not quite... Our morality is largely determined by early childhood encounters and periodically influenced by life experiences.

If you were to separate identical twins at birth and place them in radically different environments, I think it quite possible that one could end up "good" and the other "bad". (Bearing in mind also that "good" and "bad" are social values that are often not as absolute as we would like them to be.)

You are correct in that much of our moral sensibility is determined so early in life that it *is* outside the realm of conscious choice on our parts.

Nambo
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05 Feb 2008, 1:10 pm

Aspie1 wrote:

Aspie 1, dont wish to appear rude, but maybe you should read the whole Bible before using part of it to "prove" God doesnt exist,

You will find the Hebrews where far from faithfull to God, the old testament is full of Prophets warning the Jews that if they didnt stop thier worship to Baal, Molech, Tamus etc etc, he would put them into captivity to Babylon, destroy the temple and at a later time scatter them to the nations, (now theres a proof God does exist, the way Jews where scattered to the nations).

They had desicrated the Temple by worshipping Satan in it, God wouldnt use a temple that had been so defiled, why even idols of gold wherent allowed to be melted down and used again, they had to be destroyed completely.

As for the second time the temple was destroyed, you might remember Jesus being condemned for saying he could knock down the temple and rebuild it in 3 days?
Well he did rebuild the temple by being resurrected after 3 days because Jesus was the temple! along with the 144,000 saints.

Thats the whole idea of the Jews, a fleshly nation with a temple made of stone to prefigure the Spiritual nation with the New Jerusalem in Heaven opened up to all mankind through the King and High Priest Jesus Christ.

If you have a Bible, or find one online, have a read of Revelation where you will see the description of the New Jerusalem that comes down from Heaven.

The old temples pale under comparison.

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06 Feb 2008, 7:34 pm

A bad topic

God does not allow bad things to happen. We do.

Read Harold Kushner's book about why bad things happen to good people.

Also, good things happen to bad people.

Life is not fair. It ain't easy, but we are the ones who can change this.

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tom56
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12 Feb 2008, 12:08 am

who says "he" exists? and why is "he" in the image of mankind??? see these are the questions I don't understand. Bad s**t happens but the world moves on- we adapt, we change, or we die...why don't we just blame our cursed selves (we were thrown out of eden right?? :S), rather than saying god lets this stuff happen. We make choices as well, and perhaps don't realize that our one choice, action, changes someone else's life (or our own) in some way- every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It's just a connection of webs and energies going back and forth that make the world move and bring both the positive and negative. whether one can accept that is the real question.

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12 Feb 2008, 12:30 am

He created the universe, and now he just needs some downtime.

[/obscure comic-book reference]

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12 Feb 2008, 12:40 am

If we assume human beings have free will, and ultimately they are morally responsible to going to heaven or hell, and we assume the (somewhat nonsensical) payoff is +infinity and -infinity for each, any good or evil that happens in this life is essentially meaningless. God not only is not compelled to act, in not doing so he is not actually allowing (significant) evil to happen.

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