There Cannot Be A God

[KnightofChrist]

[quote]
What purpose did God have in making this world? God intended to build a moral universe. He willed from all eternity to build a stage on which people with character would emerge. He might have made a world without morality, virtue or character. He might have made a world in which each one of us would have sprouted good-ness with the same necessity as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. But He chose not to make a world in which we would be good as fire is hot and ice is cold. He willed to make a moral universe that by the right use of the gift of freedom, people with character might emerge.
What does God care for things piled into an infinity of space,even though they be diamonds? If all the orbits of heaven were so many jewels glittering as the sun, what would their external but undisturbed balance mean to Him in comparison with a single character which could take hold of the tangled stains of a seemingly wrecked and ruined life and weave out of them the beautiful tapes-try of sacredness and holiness? The choice before God in creating the world, therefore, lay between creating a purely mechanical universe,people who were automatons and machines, or creating a spiritual universe in which there would be a choice between good and evil.
Granted, God chose to make a moral universe in which there would be character. What was the condition of such a universe?He had to make us free. He had to endow us with the power to say “yes” and “no” and to be captains of our own fate and destiny.Morality implies responsibility and duty, but these can exist only on condition of freedom. Stones have no morals because they are not free. We do not condemn ice because it is melted by heat. Praise and blame can be bestowed only on those who are masters of their own will. It is only because you have the possibility of saying no that there is so much charm in your character when you say yes. Take the quality of freedom away from anyone and it is no more possible for him to be virtuous than it is for the blade of grass which he treads beneath his feet. Take freedom away from life and there would be no more reason to honor the fortitude of martyrs than there would be to honor the flames, which kindle their branches. Is it any impeachment of God that He chose not to reign over an empire of chemicals? If God has deliberately chosen a kind of empire not to be ruled by force, but by freedom, and if we find His subjects are able to act against His will as stars and atoms cannot, does this not prove He has possibly given to those human beings the chance of breaking allegiance so there might be meaning and purpose in that allegiance when freely chosen?
Here we have a suggestion as to the possibility of evil. It’s bound up with the freedom of man. Man, who is free to love, is free to hate.He who is free to obey is free to rebel. Virtue in this concrete order is possible only in those spheres where it is possible to be vicious A man can be a saint only in a church in which it is possible to be a devil. You say, “If I were God, I would destroy evil!” If you did that you would destroy human freedom! God will not destroy freedom. If we do not want any dictators on this earth, certainly we do not want any dictators in the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who blamedGod for allowing man freedom to go on hindering and thwarting His work are like those who see smudges and errors in the student’s notebook. They would condemn the teacher for not snatching away the book and doing the copy himself. Just as the object of the teacher is sound education and not the production of neat and well-writ-ten notebooks, so the object of God is the development of souls and not the production of biological entities.
You ask, “If God knew I would sin, why did He make me?” God did not make any of us as sinners, we make ourselves! In that sense, we are creators. The greatest gift of God to man, short of grace, is the gift of human freedom and the power to love Him in return.

-[url="http://www.scribd.com/doc/104655108/3/Good-and-Evil"]Bishop Sheen[/url][/quote]

[4588686]

[quote name='Papist' timestamp='1348101177' post='2484447']
Don't let the facts blur out the truth.
[/quote]


I really appreciated BG's info but it doesn't really have anything to do with my point, which was that people found the story, even if it was incorrectly reported, morally shocking.

[PhuturePriest]

[quote name='KnightofChrist' timestamp='1348101183' post='2484448']
[/quote]

Thank you for this wonderful quote from an amazing man. I was hoping to find a good quote, but I don't think any quote is as good as this.

[4588686]

[quote name='FuturePriest387' timestamp='1348101452' post='2484452']
Thank you for this wonderful quote from an amazing man. I was hoping to find a good quote, but I don't think any quote is as good as this.
[/quote]


Now who's the gay one.

[PhuturePriest]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1348101511' post='2484455']
Now who's the gay one.
[/quote]

I can be a huge fan of a future Saint and be straight just as much as you can love Susan B. Anthony and still be gay.

[Papist]

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1348101276' post='2484451']
I really appreciated BG's info but it doesn't really have anything to do with my point, which was that people found the story, even if it was incorrectly reported, morally shocking.
[/quote]
You had a point? Please accept my apology.

[BG45]

Papist, our Lord asked Pilate, "What is Truth?" In an age of social media in addition to how we tend to socially construct crime, I sometimes ask myself the same thing.

[quote name='Hasan' timestamp='1348101276' post='2484451']
I really appreciated BG's info but it doesn't really have anything to do with my point, which was that people found the story, even if it was incorrectly reported, morally shocking.
[/quote]

Oh I figured, I just hate how that myth keeps popping up. The first time I actually heard it was in a rather well selling textbook in my undergraduate criminal justice courses...so after heading to grad school and reading different journal articles and in one class, once, the court records themselves, I have this kneejerk reaction when it comes to that story.

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='BG45' timestamp='1348101720' post='2484459']
Papist, our Lord asked Pilate, "What is Truth?" In an age of social media in addition to how we tend to socially construct crime, I sometimes ask myself the same thing.
[/quote]

The medium is the message, eh?

[cmotherofpirl]

[url="http://alltheblognamesarealreadytaken.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/cs-lewis-on-why-evil-does-not-disprove-a-good-god/"]http://alltheblognamesarealreadytaken.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/cs-lewis-on-why-evil-does-not-disprove-a-good-god/[/url]

[BG45]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1348101766' post='2484460']
The medium is the message, eh?
[/quote]

More or less.

Sorry to have sidetracked your thread the 171, you still definitely are going to have my prayers, as someone else who has asked similar questions before.

[cmotherofpirl]

[b] “God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they've got to be free.
Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (...) If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.”[/b]


[color=#181818][font=georgia, serif]― [/font][/color][url="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1069006.C_S_Lewis"]C.S. Lewis[/url][color=#181818][font=georgia, serif], [/font][/color][i][url="http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/404221"]The Case for Christianity[/url][/i]

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' timestamp='1348101970' post='2484461']
[url="http://alltheblognamesarealreadytaken.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/cs-lewis-on-why-evil-does-not-disprove-a-good-god/"]http://alltheblognam...ove-a-good-god/[/url]
[/quote]

Ack. White text on black background. So very wrong. So very bad.

Good thing I learned the keyboard shortcut to invert colour on my laptop.


Heyyyy, you edited.

Edited September 20, 2012 by Nihil Obstat

[Era Might]

This is a vast topic, and far be it from me to try and answer it in three sentences, but just my two cents: if you look at God as some supreme power watching over history, like a chess player waiting to say checkmate, then the problem of evil does seem like a cruel game. But the Christian story, I think, is that God is not an absent landlord, but a deeply personal (indeed, tri-personal) God. He does not exist above us, but with us (and this is revealed in Christ, Immanuel, "God-with-us"). Evil, then, is not something that can be "stopped" because this is not a game. God can invite us to share in his life, and that is what Christianity is about, becoming the Body of Christ, joining God in this thing we call existence. But to imagine evil as something that can be "stopped" from above, like a riot for the king to put down, is to deny that God is "God-with-us," that we exist with him. Pope John Paul II expresses this in "Crossing the Threshold of Hope" by saying that the Cross was the only way God could justify himself to man, because Christ is "God-with-us" on the Cross.

Edited September 20, 2012 by Era Might

[mortify]

[quote name='the171' timestamp='1348087032' post='2484304']
If there is a God up in the sky why the hell does he allow rape, abuse, murder, assault...
[/quote]

Even God reveres the free will of man

[BigJon16]

When John Paul II got shot, what did he do once he recovered? Did he get mad at God? "Hey, God! I'm the floopin' Pope! Why did you let this happen?" I bet that's what part of him wanted to say.. but he knew something, he knew that he "was not made for comfort--that he was made for greatness."

He didn't blame God for the evil and the injustices of the Nazis and eventually the Soviet Communist regime. Rather he dedicated his life to working to bring an end to injustice and suffering all over the world.

Same goes for Maximilian Kolbe, He didn't get mad at God and blame God for the horrors that he saw daily in Auschwitz. Instead He gave his own life for the sake of easing the suffering of those around him.


Now, we all know how hard it is to live up to those two examples, but God doesn't ask us to. He asks us to trust Him, to rely on His love and providence and to hope in His cross--His own suffering at the hands of evil.

That was the simple step that JPII and Kolbe took, but God takes that simple step and makes it a giant leap. It's like that quote from Saint Francis goes (at least I think it's from him..) "Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible."

It is necessary for us to trust God in all things. This trust then makes it possible for us to "die to ourselves" and do everything for His sake. And suddenly, we are achieving what we once thought was impossible for us to achieve: Holiness.


171, you know that we all care about you, and the we want you to be okay. I'm praying for you. Listen to the previous answers. There are some great ones!

Edited September 20, 2012 by BigJon16