(April 9, 2012 at 10:15 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: I get why God might not stop a 4-year-old from getting raped if free will for the rapist is so damn unimaginably important. Sure, apparently it's okay to threaten him with hell after he dies, but the occasional mild electrical shock in this life would be just too much freakin' much interference. But why would God allow a 4-year old die a slow and agonizing death from an accident of nature like an earthquake or a parasitic infection? Where does the almighty free will figure in there? What free will imperative is served by letting us get hit with stuff we could not possibly foresee or defend against? What about natural evil?
I know you have heard this answer before. But we live in a fallen world. What that means is that at the time of the fall the reigns of this world the care for it and all of the things in it including infections and earth quakes are now our responsibility to manage and to deal with. If We want to be like God and enjoy the freedom it offers, we also have to accept the responsibility of that job.
That means it is up to us to manage disease and sickness, it is up to us to manage the damage and destruction of the planet, or to pick up after said D&D has ravaged the land. Again it is all apart of freewill. If you want to be independent of the Expressed will of God then it is on you to manage the ALL of consequences of that desire. If you want to be God then be God and hold back the hurricanes an keep the tornadoes from destroying entire cities.. Can't? Then how about we do our part in stopping the one thing that has taken more lives and destroyed more land than all of the natural disasters to this point. War. This is well within the firm grasp of man and yet we still have war. War is a far greater threat than anything else that has plagued man from the time of the garden. Why wasn't that on your list?
