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From: craig@think.ARPA (Craig Stanfill)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.religion.christian
Subject: The Damager God
Message-ID: <3001@think.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 8-Oct-85 09:54:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: think.3001
Posted: Tue Oct  8 09:54:04 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 10-Oct-85 07:02:26 EDT
References: <8508172148.AA02946@sdcc6.ARPA> <308@pyuxn.UUCP>
Reply-To: craig@think.UUCP (Craig Stanfill)
Organization: Thinking Machines, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 24
Xref: linus net.religion:7537 net.religion.christian:1386
Summary: 

Paul Zimmerman's opinions on God as evil suffer from illogic.  Depending
on how it suits his arguments, he seems to implicitly change his stance
on whether God created the world or not.  Generally he says He did not,
but his arguments are more ambiguous.  


1.  If God created the world, as Christians, Jews, and Moslems believe,
and He also created us, Paul's argument is void.  We are His.  If He
chooses not to give us eternal life, that's His business, not ours.
Having received the greatest gift of all, just being alive for however
short a period, we are not in a position to demand an additional gift,
eternal life with Him -- especially seeing how selfishly we have used
His first great gift.  And since it is our lot to die, why is God
required to grant us 80 years of life and a peaceful death?  As selfish
and sinful individuals we treat our fellow men no better.

2.  So Paul's arguments only work if God did NOT create the world.  But
if that is the case, why assume that God also bears responsibility for
disease and natural disaster?  You cannot take half the doctrine of God
the Father and still have God.  Indeed, if you assume God did not create
the world, but that God does bear full responsibility for natural
disasters and death, and that God did not make man but arbitrarily
inflicts disease and pestillence on him, you do not have our God, the
God of Abraham, but someone else's God, a monotheistic version of Zeus.