(August 7, 2012 at 9:24 am)cato123 Wrote: This is nothing more than a poorly disguised 'mysterious ways' excuse.
It's not an "excuse". It's a hole in the criticism of God; if you're going to say that God has certain obligations, you have to explain why. How, for instance, do you know that God doesn't have some unique relationship to humanity that isn't present in human-to-human ethics, but which necessitates obligations for God that are different from the human-to-human ethic? If you're sure that God does in fact have some particular obligation, you should be able to support it.
Quote:Let's consider the biblical cure for leprosy. I don't remember the passages verbatim, but it had something to do with bird blood and chanting. God could have given the proper cure and better yet educate his chosen people as to the germ theory of disease. Not only did he not divulge the truth, no obligation to do so in your opinion, he batantly lied which resulted in immeasurable suffering until humans figured it out for themselves. If you believe the Bible to be the inspired or actual word of God you are left with having to invoke the 'mysterious ways' argument in an attempt to justify despicable behavior.
But you don't know the counterfactual. What those particular people would do with that particular information...human behavior isn't that predictable. Unless somehow you know precisely how things would have gone down? Or perhaps you have some system of drawing inferences that lets you quantify how confident you are that a certain scenario would happen?
“The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.”
