God's parenting skills.. or lack thereof

[spuriousmonkey]

a comment

Originally posted by Pammy
You say that God should make people stop killing one another. So what should God do? Kill those people? Suppose those people are taking care of their sons who are innocent, wouldn't killing those people also harm the innocent as well?
Now you'll say why not possess them so they won't kill people. As the saying goes, nobody's perfect. If God possess everyone who is not perfect, then this world will be a zombie world. Now you might say why not make everybody perfect in the first place? I think if everyone is perfect, then human's will not have survived to today because we will all be eaten by predators if we can't defend ourselves because everyone will be sacrificing ourselves to save someone else. It is through selffishness and self preservation that the fittest survive and not the weakest.

i feel i have to comment on these statements, because it seems like the theory of evolution is being raped again (although probably unintentionally). I shall try to explain why.
First of all, one should not try to distill a moral message from any scientific theory. Just look at eugenics.
"It is through selffishness and self preservation that the fittest survive and not the weakest."
This statement makes a moral comment of how the natural world works. You can only survive in nature if you are not selfish and if you are not weak. The moral is then that you have to be strong and ruthless to survive.
Unfortunately the original statement is already a wrong interpretation of how nature works (in my humble opinion of course). You survive in nature by being adapted to your environmental niche. This has nothing to do with being strong or selfish. It might be better in some situations to be weak and unselfish.

Therefore I would like to put forward that our survival is not dependent on us being strong or being selfish. We are comparatively weak compared to other primates, for instance. We live in social groups in which selfish behaviour often works against you. Paradoxically some unselfish behaviourial traits might be better for adaptation in social groups. Grouplife might require a mix of selfish and unselfish behaviours. This may explain many 'human' feelings that we have. And the so-called 'animal-like' behaviours. The human feelings might therefore not have a 'higher' origin at all. And our animal behaviour is as human as our supposedly human behaviour.

anyway...survival of the fittest is probably the most misinterpreted sentence ever.

 

[Xelios]

Maybe not. "Light" for example is a substance, and "darkness" is the mere abscence of it. The same work for "empty" and "full". Wheter it works for "good" and "evil" I still don't know. But the Bible compares "good" with "light", and "evil" with "darkness", so it might be true. But I don't know if it is what it is meant in the Bible...

But just the same you could say emptiness is the absence of fullness. But I do understand where you're going with this, and I suppose it is possible, but if it wasn't possible for a cup to be full is it still empty? If full cups don't exist, are all the cups in the world empty? I contend they are. Even if the word or concept of empty doesn't exist, there is still nothing in these cups.

But then God wouldn't be giving me the choice of doing "good", and that is what it is important here...

I don't agree, I think what is important here is not whether we can choose between good or evil, but the vast damage evil does to the human race; God's children. Not being able to choose evil is a small price to pay for living without fear of rape, torture, murder and so on, a price I would be willing to pay.

It is a big choice for everyone. You rlife would be totally different if you were evil. You would even feel as evil. Right? So, it is an important choice...

Granted it is an important choice, but then again so is drinking and driving, or what career you will enter after high school, or getting married, all of which could have a huge impact on your life.

 

[TruthSeeker]

Xelios,

But just the same you could say emptiness is the absence of fullness. But I do understand where you're going with this, and I suppose it is possible, but if it wasn't possible for a cup to be full is it still empty? If full cups don't exist, are all the cups in the world empty? I contend they are. Even if the word or concept of empty doesn't exist, there is still nothing in these cups.

(Although the word would be pretty bizarre without fullness, I'll going to use your example... )
But you are not aware of other realities, such as fullness. SO fullness wouldn't exist for you. It is kinda what happens in the movie "Pleasantville". In the movie, people live in a TV show where everything is always "perfect" and never changes. They don't know changes, so they cannot change at all. But once two people from the "outside world" come in, they start to make changes and the place start to get color. And then, when people discover color, they get amazed. In the end.... well, I won't tell ya... watch it... It is pretty good... You get my point, eh?...

I don't agree, I think what is important here is not whether we can choose between good or evil, but the vast damage evil does to the human race; God's children. Not being able to choose evil is a small price to pay for living without fear of rape, torture, murder and so on, a price I would be willing to pay.

But God wanted us to change between good (Himself) and evil (not Him) so that we could really Love Him. He wanted someone to Love Him by their own choice. That's why He gave us the choice.

Granted it is an important choice, but then again so is drinking and driving, or what career you will enter after high school, or getting married, all of which could have a huge impact on your life.

Yep, but those are limited in only a part of our lives. Like... before you choose a carrer, you don't have to worry about that. Butwe choose between good and evil since very early in our lives and it always have a major impact in our lives, it affects ALL areas.