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From: pez@pyuxn.UUCP (Paul Zimmerman)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: How come God doesn't affect Dave?
Message-ID: <344@pyuxn.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 11-Sep-85 09:14:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxn.344
Posted: Wed Sep 11 09:14:40 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Sep-85 06:09:21 EDT
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Piscataway, N.J.
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Dave,

	You confuse God's unwillingness to engage in evil damaging action
with weakness. Perhaps it is not to His advantage to be as evil as possible
all the time. Perhaps He has enough perspective to engage in just enough
evil on a regular basis to placate His urges, while at the same time planning
and executing evil on a larger scale (eg, the Spanish Inquisition, Nazi
Germany, Armageddon). Perhaps the greater evils take priority, and the lesser
evils are only engaged in for pleasure when it is feasible. All this is
certainly within the realm of reason. It is certainly at least as reasonable
as the God whorshipers' explanation of why a perfect good God would allow
evil to exist and flourish, isn't it? You talk about the way your experience
of tragedy pales in comparison to your good fortune. But then you mention
your problems and dismiss them by calling them minor. Are you saying that
you have never had the forces of anti-nature work against you and cause you
problems? Or are you saying that you have learned not to care when these
things happen? Who or what might have caused you not to care? Perhaps the
same entity that convinces those who whorship Him that suffering in His
name is good and pleasurable.

	You misunderstand the scheme of things with regard to God. If
people are under the erroneous misconception that God is the force behind
good and evil is simply the result of natural forces, why would they fear
God as a result of a spate of plane crashes? Actually they do fear God
more, but they have somehow come to believe that no matter how evil God
is, whatever He does is ``good'' because it is He who did it. You claim that
the sudden death of someone who spoke out against the Damager-God wouldn't
convince many people about God's evil. Perhaps not. But maybe it might infuse
the thought in the minds of just a few. The planting of that seed is something
God would certainly not want to see. In the preceding paragraph, I talked
about the reasons why God might not have the time or desire to harm or kill
you at any given time, His mind being occupied by more pressing things,
like the planning of Armageddon (which He of course prophesied). I think
your description of God as nothing more than a ``gremlin'' is diffused by
offering the examples of God's evil throughout history: Sodom and Gomorrah,
the Tower of Babel, the plagues in Egypt (which there is historical
evidence for), the Crusades, Nazi Germany.

> In other words it's wrong for people to try to understand why you hold such
> a radical view but correct for you to think their minds are being controlled.

	Dave, certainly YOU are engaging in bold speculation when you
assume I must have some negative character flaw for believing as I do. You
are not trying to ``understand,'' you are trying to rationalize away your
disbelief by claiming that since you cannot find a problem with the belief
there MUST be a problem with the believer. With regard to ``their minds,''
if control of their minds by an evil God is not the reason for their
single minded belief in a good God, what is?

Be well,
-- 
Paul Zimmerman - AT&T Bell Laboratories
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