Question for freethinkers

[diffidus]

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This is a question for atheists, deists and such. If you were to be asked what is God like and why in case he existed what would you say? The answer should be based on your observation and reflection of everything that has surounded you. Also try to look into your emotions. Thanks

Diffidus:

If a God existed (and I cannot base this on my observation, since I have never witnessed such a phenomena) it would need to have all the attributes necessary to create the whole universe including life itself. I would imagine such a God to be impersonal. A being that created the universe and then left it to evolve so that people could have free will within it. A God could not be all powerful, omnipotent and perfect due to the fact that evil exists. An impersonal God, of the sought that I describe, may even answer Epicurus' riddle with regard to the existence of evil in the world:

If He is able and willing - whence cometh evil.
If He is unable but willing - then He is not omnipotent.
If He is able but unwilling - then He is malevolent.
If He is unable and unwilling - then why call him God?

You can call it what you like. You're saying I can't have doubts and faith, which I've shown is categorically wrong. My entire belief does not break from one moment of doubt, because doubt is an instance and belief is a collection of congruent and fortified instances. I will answer your question. I am as close to a gnostic 100% belief that God exists as I could get to anything. For instance I support the statement that If I know anything that is real or useful, it is that God exists. I equate my level/intensity of faith with my belief in gravity. I "know" if I throw an apple up it will fall, There are instances that could make that not happen (ie. in space or an anti-gravity chamber), but for all practical usefulness and purposes, the apple falls and God exists for me. I have instances of doubts just as it's possible for the apple not to fall, but there's a proven track record of personally reliable information supporting his existence for me.

Diffidus:

Yes - and you can show me the apple falling at any time I request it. But you cannot show me your God.

Aberfan is a tiny mining community in Wales UK. In 1966 the little children of this small town had gone to school in the morning as usual. They went into the assembly hall, for the usual routine announcements, which finished in the usual manner, with a Hymn. There little innocent voices could be heard from outside:

"All things bright and beautiful
All creatures great and small
All things bright and wonderful
The Lord God made them all"

Shortly after this, a rumbling sound was heard and a huge mountain of slag avalanched on top of the school killing 116 school children, many young infants, and also a number of teachers and other adults. The rescue attempts were desperate - parents were screaming and digging the slag with there bare hands. Some parents lost there entire family of children.

God has sufficient power that he could have nudged the slag heap a couple of hours earlier, before the school children arrived. Imagine if you had such power, what would you do?

I find it hard to have faith in a God that has such power but just stood there and watched!!

Diffidus:

There is no emotional appeal only cold hard facts. These facts may evoke an emotion in you, but they are facts. I notice that I give you facts and you give me some irrelevant academic argument about the difference between faith and belief - a point that I didn't even question in my post.

The reality is: I pose a real question about real events in the world and you have no answer to it. So I will ask again - why did God stand and watch the Aberfan disaster?

I apologize diffidus, I got your conversation mixed with bozo and I's conversation. I was having a specific converation about someone who claimed I couldn't doubt faith and still believe. Apparently I haven't responded to your arguement, as I never even saw it, at all so please allow me to now.

1-You posed no question till that last post, just made a statement that you couldn't have faith in a god that sat by and watched.
2-My point was an academic arguement, I apologize becasue it wasn't directed at you
3-You use a natural disaster from 1966 (was Japan not recent enough?) that involved children (plays to every parent) singing a hymn (and even quoted some of it... how sweet). To think this wasn't intended to slide emotionalism in your favor is in err as there were 50 other cases at least that you could have used. Point 3 is your abhorrent use of a tragedy for emotionalism.
4-To answer your question let me get this straight first. You're using the fairly standard Problem of Evil arguement: ie. God is an evil god because he did not stop the Aberfan disaster.
5-I'll assume that 4's assessment is accurate to your position so I can speed this along. Allow me to quote an actual First hand witness to the tragedy.

"During my childhood I played on that monstrous mountain of slag, and in my youth I rummaged coal from it. Everyone knew that one day – some day – this hideous scar on the landscape, this indiscriminate dumping of colliery refuse, would bring disaster. But little did we think that when it did happen, it would leave such devastation and heart-breaking sorrow in its wake."

These words are written by a native of Aberfan, an ex-pupil of Pantglas school. They are contained in a letter to the editor expressing heartfelt sympathy to all those people who are suffering in this hour of indescribable tragedy.

There is today sadness in the hearts of everyone who lives in a mining valley. But there is bitterness too.

The coal mining communities of South Wales have lived so long with death as a companion that they reconcile themselves to accepting the peril that hangs over them.

Everyone knows that coal tips move. Everyone fears that one day the tip above their village will come rumbling down into the valley, but it is a possibility that they accept.

[1]taken from here emphasis by me

So you would have a God with no consequences for a man-made decision, they knew would have deadly consequences? Or do you want to continue to play with how religion affected the area?

After the disaster I warned the community would have to come to accept its guilt. This guilt came out in many ways. There were the so-called guilty men who were blamed for what happened; they suffered themselves and were the victims of a hate campaign. But it wasn’t only them. Women who had sent their children who hadn’t want to go to school that day suffered terrible feelings of guilt. … Grief and guilt came in many different ways. There was a strange bitterness between families who lost children and those who hadn’t; people just could not help it.

Aberfan doctor
-same source emphasis by me

I couldn't find one first hand account that blamed god.. and I looked hard.. there was one that mentioned god that wasn't a preacher.

In those days talking of your emotions was an embarrassment. As a child you felt ashamed to tell someone what you were feeling, even if you were crying. You didn’t want them to know you were crying. I only cried when I’d gone to bed in the evenings. If my mother heard me she would come in to see me, But I couldn’t talk to her about how I felt – and in the morning I would feel embarrassed. In my family we never discussed what had happened. Nothing was said. Just tears and very quiet. It’s the same round here today – people don’t want you to see they’re upset. I’ve never seen my dad to cry, never. When I went to bed I would speak to God. He was the only one I could speak to at the time. You don’t get an answer back but you could feel there’s somebody there. And that’s a comfort. … My Dad was very bitter for years. It was his only son, you see. My mother still won’t talk about that time. She doesn’t want to know. She’s blanked it out. It was the only way she could cope. We always went to church and she turned atheist for a while, which was bad because it meant she had no comfort anywhere. But she started to believe again and I think it has given her back her strength.

Pupil, Pantglas Junior School


As far as we’re concerned now, we’ve still got two boys. We’re only separated for a time. One day we’re going to meet. The parting and the loneliness and being without him is terrible, but it’s not for ever.

Bereaved Baptist minister, speaking in 1996

I tried to rescue people but I realised it could be dangerous just digging, not knowing what you were doing and I was getting in the way of people so I immediately switched over to pastoral work … The end of chapter 8 of Romans is a great summary of faith - What can separate us from the love of God - It’s a passage I always use when there’s a personal tragedy or disaster and that’s a message we always try to emphasise - I am certain that nothing can separate us from the love of God, neither death nor life, neither angels or other heavenly rulers or powers, neither the present nor the future.

Bereaved Baptist minister, speaking in 1996

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Diffidus:

You seem to have side stepped the issue again. This time you have just given me more (interesting) facts about the Aberfan disaster and, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that certain people in the community were to blame for the disaster and that they should have known better.

When I was aged 23 I was waiting at a bus stop on my way to the city centre to do some shopping. I noticed an infant playing with a ball close to me. Just as the bus was pulling into the stop, the ball ran out into its path. The infant had his full attention on the ball and had not noticed the bus and so he was running out after the ball. Luckily, I had noticed his mistake and at the last moment I was able to grab him and avert a potential tragedy.

This incident stuck in my mind. I had acted partly instinctively, but partly because I could. It did not occur to me to let him run under the bus because it was his own fault (maybe he should have looked left and right, maybe he should have listened to that road safety lesson) or anyone else’s (maybe mankind for creating a bus that was capable of killing people.

I cannot get it out of my mind that if I’d had the wherewithal l to avert the Aberfan disaster then I would have.
The Aberfan disaster is particularly relevant to my questions, which is why I chose it. Firstly, children are inherently innocent and, secondly, they had just finished singing ‘All things bright and beautiful’ a hymn of celebration to God and his creation.

This leaves two questions that I am genuinely interested in:

i) Would you have stood by and watched the Aberfan disaster if you had the power to avert it?
ii) Why did God do nothing?