🚀 go-pugleaf

In <3t98t2$t4v@hahn.informatik.hu-berlin.de> 
scott@informatik.hu-berlin.de (Matthew Scott) writes: 

>
>srussell@ix.netcom.com (Sandra Russell) writes:
>
>>In <3t1a3t$lp1@hahn.informatik.hu-berlin.de> 
>>scott@informatik.hu-berlin.de (Matthew Scott) writes: 
>
>>>God makes everything easy for us, just possible.  First of all, it's 
>>not really
>>>a particularly important question (in the large scheme of things) 
what 
>>the distance
>>>to the stars in question are.  Second, our capability to measure this 
>>distance is
>>>adequate.  Therefore, it is by no means time to expect an emergency 
>>message from
>>>God about the distance to a star.  Keep in mind that God is a parent 
>>with a lot of
>>>responsibilities.
>
>
>>ROFL!  And what was our Parent doing during Auschwitz?  Getting drunk 
at 
>>the corner saloon while nobody baby-tended?  Or do you suppose that 
the 
>>millions of Jews, Gypsies, etc. and others getting tortured, starved, 
>>murdered, etc, in unspeakable ways, forgot to add in their prayers 
that 
>>their problems were an "emergency"?
>
>
>     What you consider to be an emergency and what God considers to be 
an
>emergency are two separate things.  Suppose God would strike every 
would
>be tyrant with lightning before he could ever take power.  The people 
would
>never have any experience with such tyrants, and they would all thirst 
after 
>that powerful leader that they never got.  Hitler didn't come to power 
simply
>based on his own characteristics.  He came to power because the german 
people
>had some critical flaws in their character.  Some very significant 
flaws that
>could only have been solved through bitter experience.


Comment: I'm not sure that all the murdered people and their families 
would be very happy about the theory that God allowed them to suffer in 
order to correct "critical flaws in German character."  This idea is so 
macabre it borders on black commedy.  Der Herr Gott does seem to move 
Heaven and Earth in quest of the eternal prefection of Germany, does he 
not? <g>   Give us break, Scott-from-Berlin.

>  Similar flaws can be >observed again and again in different times and 
nations because it is a typical >flaw of human nature to give power to 
tyrants.  Your emergency was..people >being tortured and dying.  God saw 
this emergency, but he also saw one much >much more significant.  He saw 
that the people would have to learn what a tyrant >is, and learn how to 
keep such from power, or else, the trend would continue >even in the 
afterlife, and jeopardize the stability of God's own kingdom.

ROFL!  Even funnier.  God didn't act because he didn't want fascism to 
spread to Heaven?!?   You've got to go on the road with this stuff.  You 
could earn big money in the Catskills...

> And don't >think God's kingdom is completely immune to such problems. 
May I refer you to >Satan (the dragon) and the war in heaven 
(revelations).  God has to deal with all >of the same kinds of political 
situations that we experience here.<


Oh no doubt.  I'll bet that election nights are not much fun for Him, 
though, knowing how it's all going to come out.

>  One of his >ways of dealing with them is letting people learn in a 
sphere of mortality where >everything is just for a little while anyway.
>
scott@informatik.hu-berlin


Thanks, Scott.  You've made a great argument for allowing criminals and 
evil people to keep working instead of resisting or neutralizing them-- 
they are actually performing a needed teaching chore.  No electric chair 
for Ted Bundy-- he's helping us by serving as a bad example....

The problem, Dr. Pangloss, is that you've now come to the Harris 
Goldilocks Theodicy Problem: if the amount of evil in the world is not 
too little, and not too much for our eternal good, but JUUUUST right 
(as you argue), then does it not follow that God has to balance with 
evil each good dead we do in the world, and balance with good each evil 
deed, just to keep the mix right?  So why get up in the morning?  And 
why worry about the choice between good and evil if you can't change the 
world either way for the better, and can't change the world either way 
for the worse?  

                                       Steve Harris