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From: root@trwatf.UUCP (Lord Frith)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: reply to Teitz
Message-ID: <746@trwatf.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Mar-85 18:47:21 EST
Article-I.D.: trwatf.746
Posted: Tue Mar 12 18:47:21 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 16-Mar-85 03:22:21 EST
References: <141@cvl.UUCP>
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Organization: TRW Advanced Technology Facility, Merrifield VA.
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A very nice article!  But I have some comments (as always)...

> On the other hand, who will test God? Could we coerce Him
> so that He proves Himself in a series of replicable experiments?
> Hardly. It is we who are to be tested...

The intention is not so much to "test" God but to discover through
intellectual means if God really exists; if there is some proof of
his existance; or if what is said of him is really the truth.  This
last issue might be considered testing God, but without such tests
we cannot be assured that he is indeed everything he says he is.

Reason provides an added dimension to perceiving the world.

> What sort of God would be challenged by intellectual twits who
> are full of themselves? No, I think things are just so.
> (As for why there is suffering -- again, that seems a
> test of mankind rather than of God.)

Starving thousands of helpless people in remote third-world countries
seems to test little.  If we are to believe that God is just and
merciful we should see it in everyday life... yet reality provides
glaring contradicitions.  How can we love a God that allows (or
according to your reasoning CREATES) such suffering when it seems
to serve no useful purpose?  If anything, reality provides a
great deal of evidence that God is not merciful or just.

If God were willing to answer your questions, wouldn't YOU want
to know why he did things this way?  And if his arguments weren't
reasonable, wouldn't you object to them?
-- 


UUCP: ...{decvax,ihnp4,allegra}!seismo!trwatf!root	- Lord Frith
ARPA: trwatf!root@SEISMO

"And Frith made the world"