Ask a Catholic

[Mr.wizard]

^This^

Jenny-

I have already answered this question in the post to which others have objected. Would any one of us fail to stop a rape or a person from getting hit by a bus? No, of course not. We prevent evil or injury whenever we can - sometimes in heroic fashion. (As an aside, perhaps you have not considered that the existence of evil gives us a chance to choose to be heroic or self-sacrificing or to grow in our willingness to serve others.)

However, our circumstances are very different from God's because we are not omnipotent and omniscient as He is. We are not in a position to know that the woman next door is being abused every night or that the child we see at the bus stop is going to school hungry. God can and does see everything, and He is in a position to do something about it.

But how would He do so? Would God simply remove the desire to rape the old woman living alone from the mind of the man who sees her leaving her garden door open? Then where is free will? It is eliminated. Would God allow the man to have the desire but not allow him to take one step in the direction of the house thereby allowing him to freely choose to rape but not allowing him to actually commit the rape? Is this really free will? This strikes me being somewhat akin to taking a child to a candy store and telling her that she can look but not touch. How would any of us feel about living life in that type of straight-jacket? How much resentment would that engender toward God who placed us in such confinement?

Finally, suppose God chose to protect the old woman by simply locking the door for her when she forgot or by sending a snarling dog who took up a post on her steps to dissuade the man from coming closer. These come closer to the types of approach that God would take, IMO.

In my previous post, I said that once God got Himself into the business of preventing one sort of evil or injury, it would be hard to find where to draw the line beyond which He would not be obligated to act since He has the ability to prevent ALL suffering.

The real impact of this, of course, would not be on God but on us, and we might soon find ourselves quite sickened by the Turkish Delight we would gobble down so eagerly at first.

I'm sure a god the creator of heaven and earth could figure out how to get people to not rape each other.  If god is not going to intervene, then why do we have prayer? Prayer is essentially people asking god to intervene in their lives for one reason or another.