Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cybvax0.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!unc!mcnc!philabs!cmcl2!harvard!think!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh
From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: God and suffering
Message-ID: <785@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Oct-85 17:40:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.785
Posted: Thu Oct 17 17:40:43 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Oct-85 06:19:07 EDT
References: <389@decwrl.UUCP> <2203@sdcc6.UUCP> <351@pyuxn.UUCP> <2213@sdcc6.UUCP> <781@cybvax0.UUCP> <111@sdcc7.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 38
Summary: 

In article <111@sdcc7.UUCP> ln63fac@sdcc7.UUCP (Rick Frey) writes:
> In article <781@cybvax0.UUCP>, mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes:
> > 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?
> 
> So after that lengthy prelude, my basic idea is that maybe there's all sorts
> of things that could happen to people that don't.  Women could die after child
> birth (like some animal mothers).  Teeth could rot out by age twenty instead
> of later in life.  Many detrimental processes could happen faster, the list
> (if you're a good pessimist) is endless for the things that could be worse
> as well as those that could be better.  So using that as a moral premise to
> hold against God, at least to me, doesn't seem to stand up.

I can't follow your logic.  The above statement seems consistant with two
non-christian hypotheses:

1)  That the hypothetical god is incapable of fixing those bad things, and
    thus not omnipotent.

2)  That the hypothetical god doesn't really care enough about us to fix
    them, or wants them that way so that we can suffer.

> > For example, I can choose to fornicate whether or not earthquakes kill
> > thousands in Mexico.  
> 
> ...  The only real thing I go back to that gives me any frame of
> reference not to call God a pig because of this is that in the garden of
> Eden, it wasn't like this.  Nature was perfect and in perfect subjection to
> both God's will and man's will.  I still believe that nature must obey God's
> laws, but it seems to have gotten off the track that God created it on.

This too is only consistant with one or both of the above non-christian
hypotheses.
-- 

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