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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: God and suffering
Message-ID: <781@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 2-Oct-85 10:50:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.781
Posted: Wed Oct  2 10:50:44 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 4-Oct-85 04:23:46 EDT
References: <389@decwrl.UUCP> <2203@sdcc6.UUCP> <351@pyuxn.UUCP> <2213@sdcc6.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 24
Xref: linus net.religion:7450 net.religion.christian:1356
Summary: 

In article <2213@sdcc6.UUCP> ix415@sdcc6.UUCP (Rick Frey) writes:
> Monty Python said it simply and clearly in the ending of Time Bandits
> when the child star of the movie asks why the God figure created evil
> and His response (which is accurate in more abstract terms) was that it
> has something to do with free-will.  God doesn't want the bad part of
> free-will, the death, the suffering, the separation from God, but
> without the ability to choose going away from God, there's no way to
> choose going to Him.  You can't have one without the other.

How appropriate that you select an authority on comedy to support your
beliefs.  :-)

Even assuming that the line wasn't intended as tongue-in-cheek, it still
doesn't answer the quantitative question of why there is so much evil in
the world.  Why couldn't a hypothetical good god have left out smallpox
and a few of the others?  Or even most of them?  Free will bears little
or no relationship to the large number of things attributed to "God's will".
For example, I can choose to fornicate whether or not earthquakes kill
thousands in Mexico.  I can choose to fornicate whether or not a god decides
to punish me harshly for it.  The fact is, only a pig-god would choose to
do things as noisomely as they are in the Bible and the world today.
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh


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