Dodging theodicy: 'On Faith' panel stumbles over Haiti and God

[fr0d0]

The basics:

Eternal: Psalm 90:2; 102:25-27; Isaiah 57:15, Revelations 1:4.
Immutable, unchangeable: James 1:17; Malachi 3:6; Psalm 33:11; Isaiah 46:9-10; Num. 23:19.
Omniscient, all knowing: Psalm 147:5; Ezekiel 11:5; Acts 15:18; Matt. 10:30; I John 3:20.
Omnipotent, all powerful: Matt. 19:26; Jeremiah 32:17,27; Revelations 19:6.
Omnipresent, everywhere present: Psalm 139:7-10; Jeremiah 23:24; Matthew 6:6.
Just, Righteous: Genesis 18:25; Psalm 7:11 (margin); Psalm 96:13; 97:2
Holy: I Samuel 2:2; Psalm 99:9; Habakkuk 1:13; Revelations 15:4; Isaiah 6:1-5.
Truth: Titus 1:2; Numbers 23:19; I Samuel 15:29; John 1:14; 14:6.
Sovereign, Absolute: Psalm 115:3; Daniel 4:35; Ephesians 1:11; Romans 11:36.
Love, Good: I John 4:8, 10; Ephesians 2: 7; John 3:16.

[Zen Badger]

The basics:

Eternal: Psalm 90:2; 102:25-27; Isaiah 57:15, Revelations 1:4.
Immutable, unchangeable: James 1:17; Malachi 3:6; Psalm 33:11; Isaiah 46:9-10; Num. 23:19.
Omniscient, all knowing: Psalm 147:5; Ezekiel 11:5; Acts 15:18; Matt. 10:30; I John 3:20.
Omnipotent, all powerful: Matt. 19:26; Jeremiah 32:17,27; Revelations 19:6.
Omnipresent, everywhere present: Psalm 139:7-10; Jeremiah 23:24; Matthew 6:6.
Just, Righteous: Genesis 18:25; Psalm 7:11 (margin); Psalm 96:13; 97:2
Holy: I Samuel 2:2; Psalm 99:9; Habakkuk 1:13; Revelations 15:4; Isaiah 6:1-5.
Truth: Titus 1:2; Numbers 23:19; I Samuel 15:29; John 1:14; 14:6.
Sovereign, Absolute: Psalm 115:3; Daniel 4:35; Ephesians 1:11; Romans 11:36.
Love, Good: I John 4:8, 10; Ephesians 2: 7; John 3:16.

In your words please.

[Rhizomorph13]

He did use his words then backed them up with biblical references. That is how I read it anyway.

[chatpilot]

Okay I have actually gone through this whole thread and have now decided to put in my two cents. fr0d0, you stated in a nutshell that god is the creator of the universe and this includes everything in it including what we interpret as nature and everything that that word entails. So, that being the case it would be wrong to blame god for natural disasters because the system (nature) is basically on auto-pilot doing what it normally does. But at the same time if you read your bible more carefully you will see that despite what you stated god has intervened many times in the affairs of mankind and not always in the most beneficial way. Here are some examples of your "good god" being bad.

Isaiah 45:7:
7.I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Deuteronomy 32:39
See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.

There you have it! Straight from the horses mouth himself.

Keeping that in mind lets see what happened during the "great flood".
Genesis 6:17
And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.
Genesis 7:23
And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

There was nothing natural about this so called event, this was god having a shit fit and personally claiming responsibility for destroying mankind. This is not the first time that your god has intervened in human affairs to the detriment of mankind. It is also a blatant contradiction to what you have been saying in this thread.

[fr0d0]

Chatty:

Re: Isiah 45:7: http://www.carm.org/does-god-create-evil
Deuteronomy - yeh why shouldn't you be terrified at the horrendous alternative of living apart from nature?

The flood has been done well here already... no need to re-visit that one.

I never said that God doesn't intervene. Of course I believe he does, but that's a step outside the discussion here. Given God's attribute of never leaving a trace... that nothing supernatural can be proved to have occurred, is no surprise.

[chatpilot]

fr0d0 the flood is one of many instances in which your god throws a hissy fit and takes his anger out on man. Our evil and sinful ways piss him off so much that he has to kill everyone and everything in site. On to your pathetic apologists explanation for Isaiah 45:7 and god being the creator of evil if you look at the last paragraph of that article it states exactly what I was saying. And it's completely relative to this discussion about Haiti.

"We can see that the Bible teaches that God is pure and does not approve of evil, that the word "rah" (evil) in Hebrew can mean many things, and that contextually, the verse is speaking calamity and distress. Therefore, God does not create evil in the moral sense, (but in the sense of disaster, of calamity.")

I was referring to the topic at hand regarding whether or not god had a hand in what occurred in Haiti. You said the following: "If plate tectonics didn't exist the planet wouldn't support life... is the argument both for God and Nature. They both just 'are'. It's egotistical to project human attributes to the phenomena, and fallacious to assume that God 'chose'. Assuming 'God': everything (as in nature) is him so 'deciding' is just nature enacting it's 'course'."

So according to you god and nature just are and since god is in everything including nature it's just nature enacting its course. The bible as stated many times states that god has those human attributes such as anger, deciding things, and as stated by your apologist friends article "creating evil...in the sense of disaster and calamity." I love the fact that you ignore that it is supposedly god stating that "I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." (evil in the sense of disaster, of calamity). In your bible it's god giving himself human attributes and not the other way around as you stated earlier:"The bible applies Gods attributes to humans."

[fr0d0]

People separate themselves from God chatty. You'll say the next minute that you don't give a toss anyway because you don't believe. People get killed - it's a fact of life. Life/ nature is a wonder to behold.

Those stories are there to teach something. It's just ignorant to try to pin evil on God. Cherry picking where those that wrote it and uphold it don't cherry pick. You can't understand how they can include such stories in the bible and also say that God is love. I suggest it's you that isn't getting it and not them.

[chatpilot]

It seems that the one that is cherry picking here is you fr0d0. You are giving these nomadic authors way too much credit for writing about things that they did not understand.

[tackattack]

That's correct they didn't understand God, and we still don't today.

---

Isaiah 45:7:
7.I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

---

This is what the Lord says to Cyrus. Cyrus then passed that to people who wrote it down, eventually. I won't mention Cyrus saying that " treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places" will be his, because I'm sure the Lord cares about Earthly treasure. If you continue to read you'll easily see that the idea the Lord is conveying is that he is the maker and creater of all things and theese are just some examples of the results of his creation. Drawn through the conscious mind of Cyrus this is what he understood the Lord to mean, using awe inspiring examples seems self-serving and humanistic on a line by line basis. Take it a chapter at a time not a line at a time.

---

Deuteronomy 32:39
See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.

There you have it! Straight from the horses mouth himself.

---

There sure are a lot of extra I's in there. I'll be the first to admit The song of Moses which you've taken excepts from sounds like a Pat Robinson speech. I won't mention God kicked Moses out of the club immediately after this tyraid. I'll just read what you've quoted and it sounds like he's calling himself the Lord.
" I sharpen My flashing sword, And My hand takes hold on justice, (CG)I will render vengeance on My adversaries, And I will repay those who hate Me. 42'(CH)I will make My arrows drunk with blood, (CI)And My sword will devour flesh, With the blood of the slain and the captives, From the long-haired leaders of the enemy." Which I was that Moses of God? Sonds like something my diety does regularly

Keeping that in mind lets see what happened during the "great flood".
Genesis 6:17
And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.
Genesis 7:23
And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

There was nothing natural about this so called event, this was god having a shit fit and personally claiming responsibility for destroying mankind. This is not the first time that your god has intervened in human affairs to the detriment of mankind. It is also a blatant contradiction to what you have been saying in this thread.

the actual hebrew translation is kol and erets meaning all land ,earth, country or ground. It's a common term and is common usage also reffering to rivers and cities, basically on a local scale. I ascribe to no global flood in the verses quoted. All that's beside the point though. Noah believed the Lord told him a flood was coming and to prepare. Faced with losing everything and everyone save his family couldn't bias him at all to those humanistic characteristics and connotations of death and destruction. Perhaps it was time for one of the many local floods that have happened over the course of the planet, the Lord favored him and warned him, and he was all "woe is me the Lord destroys everything I know!, but he's saving me" Maybe he though it'd be a great spin on a story about a premonition from God about a natural event?


Perhaps I'm just tired, but if you need deprogramming from any more of your fundamentalist stoic views I'd be happy to help.

[theVOID]

So God created the laws of nature and put them to work and won't stop them if they're about to kill a quarter of a million mostly innocent people, but he doesn't mind stepping in and sending an Angel to scare a donkey into kicking off it's passenger so that it might convince Balaam of his existence?

Seems fucking absurd doesn't it?