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From: david@cvl.UUCP (David Harwood)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: reply to Lord Firth
Message-ID: <184@cvl.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 16-Mar-85 00:04:56 EST
Article-I.D.: cvl.184
Posted: Sat Mar 16 00:04:56 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 17-Mar-85 21:59:41 EST
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This is a reply to another reply:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>From: root@trwatf.UUCP (Lord Frith)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: reply to Teitz
Message-ID: <746@trwatf.UUCP>
Date: 12 Mar 85 23:47:21 GMT

> 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?


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
	Pascal, the famous apologist for Christianity, said that
the heart has its reasons which reason cannot understand. My feeling 
is that everyone who sincerely wants to know whether there is a God 
will be given sufficient reason for faith, but that not everyone is 
sincere. You have only to look around to see that many lord it over 
the others -- in their hearts, they would presume the place of God. 
They hardly want to find out that they were wrong.
	If there is God, then we may believe that we are created
in the image of God, so that if there is suffering, then we may
therefore believe that the knowledge of good and evil, of what
gives life or destroys it, may be a reflection of the nature of God.
For, without suffering, and consciousness of the causes of suffering,
we would not be moral beings, since good and evil, as we ordinarily
understand them, would simply have no meaning.
	I am not saying that that our creation is fulfilled; we are
certainly not what we should be. But, as Paul says, we do not 
know what we shall become, but we know that we shall be like Him.
	There is a very old Jewish commentary on the "tree of
knowledge" of Genesis, whose fruit was said to awaken mankind's
moral self-consciousness, and to make them like gods. The comment
is that they were become like gods in having knowledge to create and
destroy worlds. Today, we certainly have the fruits of a very 
powerful and dangerous technology; but what shall we do with it?
	You say, "Why is there suffering?" Then you would say that 
this "reality provides evidence that God is not merciful or just."
But I would say, with John, that if a man possesses more than
enough, but turns his heart against his brother in need, then how
is God's love in him? Or, with the Gospel, how does it benefit
a man to gain everything of the world, but to lose his very soul?
No, the existence of suffering is largely witness against us, that 
we are not merciful, and are not yet justified. However, we shall
be justified by following the example of Christ.
	The Lord said to Job, "Are you to accuse me in order to 
justify yourself?" Here, the meaning is not that Job was a "sinner", 
as such, but that Job presumed, as also did his "friends", wrongly 
against God that our suffering should be related to our notion of 
His justice. But as Jesus said about the man who was blind from birth,
this suffering did not originate with his sins, or even those of his
parents, but so that the nature of God might come to be known 
through him, as was in the case of Job, and also of Jesus himself.
	While the wisdom of this is not very explicitly clear to us, 
it is intuitively clear to most adults that somehow we are made better
moral beings, by our experience of suffering, our own as well as that
of others. Something this obvious is generally overlooked, especially
something about our own common psychological nature, but my point is 
that, whether or not we understand this, through suffering, we are 
made a new creation, I would say, more nearly the image of God.

					David Harwood