(October 26, 2017 at 2:21 pm)wallym Wrote:(October 26, 2017 at 12:59 pm)Shell B Wrote: Interestingly enough, within the grand scheme of things, little things happen. These smaller events may not be so grand as seeing all of space and time, but they have an impact on the so-called children god supposedly loves so much. There is no big picture that would excuse the rape of infants, cancer in small children, innocents starving to death, women in the bush getting raped with rifles so hard their anuses and vaginas become a single hole, etc. These are all things that indisputably happen on this planet. It would seem your god is ignoring the "little" picture. I think you're a kind and thoughtful person, CL, but dismissing atheist arguments as being simply unable to understand how all-knowing god is is doesn't cut it.
You can excuse those things without God with little difficulty by simply not believing people are inherently important.
The trick is reconciling God who allegedly believes people are inherently important and the actions. I can't do it. But I can't do a lot of things. And that's in the real world, let alone a hypothetical world involving infinite amounts of things I can't know.
Yeah, that's the problem. The bible irrefutably sets people apart as important. I don't personally believe people are important in the grand scheme, but people are important to me. People are also important to the Abrahamic god. Therefore, it would make sense that he would care about their suffering even on the "small" scale, if you can believe the horrors on this planet are small potatoes. It's never going to set right with me, and that's not even the core of my disbelief in god. I don't believe because it isn't true. I write fiction. I know what it looks like.
