Ask a Catholic

[Jenny A]

Jenny-

I have already answered this question in the post to which others have objected. Would any one of us fail to stop a rape or a person from getting hit by a bus? No, of course not. We prevent evil or injury whenever we can - sometimes in heroic fashion. (As an aside, perhaps you have not considered that the existence of evil gives us a chance to choose to be heroic or self-sacrificing or to grow in our willingness to serve others.)

It does indeed, but surely we could save drowning victims, stop our friends for driving drunk, and offer to take in the groceries.  

However, our circumstances are very different from God's because we are not omnipotent and omniscient as He is. We are not in a position to know that the woman next door is being abused every night or that the child we see at the bus stop is going to school hungry. God can and does see everything, and He is in a position to do something about it.

And when we do know, we do something about it is we can.  If there is a god, he always knows but does nothing.

But how would He do so? Would God simply remove the desire to rape the old woman living alone from the mind of the man who sees her leaving her garden door open? Then where is free will? It is eliminated. Would God allow the man to have the desire but not allow him to take one step in the direction of the house thereby allowing him to freely choose to rape but not allowing him to actually commit the rape? Is this really free will? This strikes me being somewhat akin to taking a child to a candy store and telling her that she can look but not touch. How would any of us feel about living life in that type of straight-jacket? How much resentment would that engender toward God who placed us in such confinement?

As long as he stuck to the biggies like rape, and murder, I doubt it would engender any resentment towards god except for those very few who actually want to rape and murder.  As it is society imposes rather severe penalties for those crimes.  Do you feel the state has unnecessarily impinged on your free will by outlawing such behavior?  Actions have consequences, god is in a position to make those consequences immediate and he would never punish an innocent man.  Smiting might be in order.  

Finally, suppose God chose to protect the old woman by simply locking the door for her when she forgot or by sending a snarling dog who took up a post on her steps to dissuade the man from coming closer. These come closer to the types of approach that God would take, IMO.

Ah yes, just so no one would know it was god.

In my previous post, I said that once God got Himself into the business of preventing one sort of evil or injury, it would be hard to find where to draw the line beyond which He would not be obligated to act since He has the ability to prevent ALL suffering.

Well if you are god and you insist on creating suffering the first place, and you are all godlike, surely you could come up with a plan.  The current plan appears to be allow lots of suffering some created by free will some by nature.  Once every 2000 years or so, heal a few people.  Once in a great while and only in the distant past smite someone for masturbating. If we judge god by the fruits of his plan, he's not a good god.

Rather than be angry at this evil god, I ask myself is there any evidence of a god with a plan at all.  There is not.

The real impact of this, of course, would not be on God but on us, and we might soon find ourselves quite sickened by the Turkish Delight we would gobble down so eagerly at first.

If the scenario reads death for masturbation or impure thoughts it might indeed.