Direct answers, I hope
You mean the "God has a bigger plan" idea? That all evil is a part of his plan to equal more good?
Yep. Like I said, it's the simplest idea.
I'm sorry tiassa, sometimes I have a hard time understanding some of your posts, my reading isn't that advanced
Oh, stop ... someday I'll figure out how to quantify the immeasurable stupidity I protest. In the meantime, that post isn't supposed to make a whole lot of sense. I find it nonsensical, but that's part of the point. And I'll let you know, honest, when I think it's your reading comprehension
But if this is what you're saying, then Hitler killing 6m+ Jews in some way brought about a better good?
Yep.
Closest thing I can speculate is that humanity now has a data set by which it can examine such ideas. As events in Rwanda and in the Balkans showed, though, not everybody understands the idea. It might even be fair to say that
nobody understands the idea, myself included.
But, yes. If God is what the Bible says, then it is by God's will that Hitler & Co. executed six million Jews, a bunch of Catholics, a bunch of Gypsies, and a gaggle of gays, among others. Likewise, the 20 million Russians who died in that war ... this, too, is good. (Somehow.)
Also, what about the contradictions in the definition of God's characteristics?
They probably arise from humans trying to quantify God's actions in order to qualify them. Religious books, no matter how divinely inspired, are still human creations, and reflect human limitations. Six million Jews? Well? Given God's history in association to the Jews, why not? God sells them to slavery, disperses them to exile, and sends them to exterminate His enemies for centuries-old grudges. Six million Jews? So God's stepping up production, so to speak.
It's all Good.
God is the Alpha and the Omega.
Like I said, it's the
simplest reconciliation. A number of ideas splinter out from there. For some, denial and crusade. For others, myself included, we just shrug and say, "Okay." And in the meantime, we assert good against the nonsensical priorities of an ill-considered, poorly-conceived God writ in insufficient hand to be given to ages of battered intellects.
It is the simplest reconciliation.
That doesn't make it right. But it's the easier one to go with.
Specifically: Good and Evil are conditions which transcend human comprehension.
A Sufi story tells of an impatient man who went to a dervish for help with his problem. Ad nauseam, ad nauseam, and eventually the dervish sends the man to a mountain pass to offer food and rest to weary travelers. The man gains some fame for his mission, but one day a traveler ignores him entirely, and, offended, the impatient man shoots him in the back whereupon the voice of God or one of His agents tells the man that he has killed a murderer on the way to the most heinous crime of his career. Murder is bad, but the result is good. God made the man impatient, by the theology, and thus cannot change his impatience but merely exploit it to the Goodness of His Will.
Yeah, I know, it's dumb. But it's the simplest reconciliation. God knows what God is doing, and the rest of us can just bugger off.
Or something like that.
But if it seems absurd in its implications, well, you're not wrong.
Such is the nature of God.
Or ...
Such is life.
The end result is that if we're offended by an event in the world, we must figure out what good God intended by it. Sometimes that's an exercise in futility, but who here will argue that a situation is merely that which one immediately perceives?
No, it's not the best answer. It's probably not even a good answer, but think of why I like it: it makes discussion of God's actions useless, and eliminates the grounds of religious people to assert God's will, or God's opinion.
That I tend to call that condition progressive is symptomatic, but make of it what you will.
thanx,
Tiassa
