Hassan's Ornery Atheism Rears Its Ugly Head

[Hassan]

I have several questions.

I posted this in another thread.



[i]
I knew a girl whose friend, once a devout Christian, lost her faith after her prayers went unanswered.

Or specifically her prayers while she was being violently raped (I'll let you guess what her request was) went unanswered.

God is our heavenly Father. In fact I'm told the Aramaic Jesus uses to describe him could more accurately be translated as "daddy" a term of close affection. And like any good daddy our requests-like her sobbing pleas that it would stop-must sometimes go unanswered. But we must remember it's for our own good.






I'll try to quote Aquinas from memory, and Rexi can tell me how close I am.

"The only way God, in his goodness, could permit evil to exist is if his omnipotence were such that he could bring goodness even out of evil.

When I was a Catholic that girl challenged my insistence on the power of prayer by asking about her best friend's desperate pleas that God would deliver her from her rapist. Like a good Dervish I quoted that line from Aquinas (More accurately, I'm sure than I just did here).

She seemed to be filled with righteous indignation that I would dare propose such an empty answer. While I did whore my conscience out for the defense of the faith, and spoke Aquinas' word with solemnity, the truth is that I was embarrassed by my response. Or rather shocked at my own audacity.[/i]



Can anyone here give me a human answer to this?




Next.


In response to my queries regarding the Divinely sanctioned genocide in the Old Testament I am told, again and again, that these orders by God are not morally repugnant. God has done nothing wrong. Murder is the unjust taking of a life. God is the author of life. As such it is his to give and take.

A selection from Dostoevsky

[i]One day a serf-boy, a little child of eight, threw a stone in play and hurt the paw of the general’s favourite hound. ‘Why is my favourite dog lame?’ He is told that the boy threw a stone that hurt the dog’s paw. ‘So you did it.’ The general looked the child up and down. ‘Take him.’ He was taken — taken from his mother and kept shut up all night. Early that morning the general comes out on horseback, with the hounds, his dependents, dog-boys, and huntsmen, all mounted around him in full hunting parade. The servants are summoned for their edification, and in front of them all stands the mother of the child. The child is brought from the lock-up. It’s a gloomy, cold, foggy, autumn day, a capital day for hunting. The general orders the child to be undressed; the child is stripped naked. He shivers, numb with terror, not daring to cry.... ‘Make him run,’ commands the general. ‘Run! run!’ shout the dog-boys. The boy runs.... ‘At him!’ yells the general, and he sets the whole pack of hounds on the child. The hounds catch him, and tear him to pieces before his mother’s eyes!...[/i]

If the General wanted to save his soul he would need to go to a Priest and receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation to receive God's forgiveness.

Was his sin, his wickedness an offense against the child or against God? What exactly was his sin in murdering the child? That he destroyed God's property without sanction? What grounds does God have to forgive the man? Does the child's only worth come in virtue of his being the creation of the Sovereign?

[dairygirl4u2c]

i would say there's an element of mystery involved. sure you can answer the question, as to why bad things happen to good people, or there's suffering- in as best manner as is humanly possibly to answer it. but, afterwhile, when you keeping asking, "why", you have to just say "that's just the way it is", and, "God has a plan", and ulimately "it's a mystery".

I could go on talking about the reasons I could see God allowing this stuff. and i'm pretty confident in forming good answers to it. but, even from the theological theory side, it's hard to answer when it's an all powerful God we're talking about. and, most importantly for this post, i doubt they'd suffice when telling it to someone who's enduring it. that's the human element.

i don't think you were ultimately audacious in telling her what you did- it's a superficial answer, and a cookie cutter answer especialy in how much more profound you could have gotten, but it's essetnially the truth.
it may have been audacious to tell her that when she was inccuring said suffering, "how can you spout superficial answers at a time like this? cause no matter how profound you can conjure it, "that's just the way it is" never really answers very adequately when it's an all powerful God we're talking about."

to someone incurring it, it's superficial and phony. my hope is that it's not ultimately superficial and phony, and the "God has a plan" etc line of reasoning is true.

Edited August 14, 2009 by dairygirl4u2c

[dairygirl4u2c]

"Blessed are they who bash your children's head against a rock"
-Psalm 137

and:
[url="http://www.evilbible.com/"]http://www.evilbible.com/[/url]


I wouldn't tie the joke of a god of the old testament, with the real God, though.

[Hassan]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' post='1948684' date='Aug 14 2009, 08:53 AM']i don't think you were ultimately audacious in telling her what you did- it's a superficial answer, and a cookie cutter answer especialy in how much more profound you could have gotten, but it's essetnially the truth.
it may have been audacious to tell her that when she was inccuring said suffering, "how can you spout superficial answers at a time like this? cause no matter how profound you can conjure it, "that's just the way it is" never really answers very adequately when it's an all powerful God we're talking about."[/quote]
Any answer I gave which would have tried to reconcile what happened to her friend with an all powerful and loving God would have been cheep.

[scardella]

I think the first answer's issue is one of tact rather than correctness. Frankly, spouting theology and philosophy in response to a traumatic issue usually comes across as cold and dispassionate whether the theology/philosophy is correct or incorrect in an ultimate sense.

If you want to watch a playing out of something to that effect, the original Star Trek did an episode based on the observation that humans are emotional and social creatures and not just beings of logic. It was Season 1, episode Galileo Seven. (You can watch it online at cbs.com, BTW.)

You might notice that Revelation itself doesn't usually come out as a dogmatic theological treatise, but more often as a story or poetry or event... That's why devotionals tend to sell better than obscure theological texts.

Edited August 14, 2009 by scardella

[Ziggamafu]

Job suffered injustice. Here you have a guy that God himself says is righteous and yet God smites him. Hard. He loses all of his beloved children, all of his wealth, and his health in the same day. Then his friends come and tell him how horrible of a person he is.

And yet everything is okay for Job, he is at peace, before God even restores the things taken. Why? What satisfied Job? Answers? No. At least not the answers Job originally wanted. It was the beatific vision. Job saw God, the source and standard of justice and beauty itself. The thing upon which perceptions of any goodness depends. That essence of what it is, maximally, to love a child or want justice served in the first place - that's what Job saw.

And when Job saw this, everything was fine even though the reasons that goodness should make use of evil and injustice were left as mysteries.

I have to hope that therein is the key to understanding why injustice - like the torture, rape, and brutal murder of children beneath the age of reason - exists in the world. I have to believe that the next life is simply that good, that this life could be immeasurably worse for everyone and still there would be no complaints upon sight of the divine essence.

We are all part of a Shakespearean comedy - perhaps influenced by God, but written by us - that seems, from the perspective of this life, to be a tragedy; written, line by line, unimpeded by God except in the rarest of circumstances, by the choice of every human "actor" within the story. We only find out it is a comedy in the end, just like the happy ending of fairy tales tends to come only after the characters some kind of purgatorial trial.

This of course hinges on a very liberal hope for the salvation of most, if not all, of humanity by the extraordinary graces of God. The injustice is not rectified if the victim doesn't get a happy ending. Aquinas did not seem to have such a hope in his Summa, at least from the portions that I have thoroughly read. We'll see.

[jkaands]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1948813' date='Aug 14 2009, 12:24 PM']Any answer I gave which would have tried to reconcile what happened to her friend with an all powerful and loving God would have been cheep.[/quote]

There is no answer or justification. The problem of evil is THE reason many people don't believe in a god--the 'usual' god, all-powerful and all-loving.

All attempted explanations attempting to reconcile a god with the problem of evil are insults to the intelligence.

[Era Might]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1948585' date='Aug 14 2009, 12:45 AM'][i]I knew a girl whose friend, once a devout Christian, lost her faith after her prayers went unanswered.

Or specifically her prayers while she was being violently raped (I'll let you guess what her request was) went unanswered.

God is our heavenly Father. In fact I'm told the Aramaic Jesus uses to describe him could more accurately be translated as "daddy" a term of close affection. And like any good daddy our requests-like her sobbing pleas that it would stop-must sometimes go unanswered. But we must remember it's for our own good.






I'll try to quote Aquinas from memory, and Rexi can tell me how close I am.

"The only way God, in his goodness, could permit evil to exist is if his omnipotence were such that he could bring goodness even out of evil.

When I was a Catholic that girl challenged my insistence on the power of prayer by asking about her best friend's desperate pleas that God would deliver her from her rapist. Like a good Dervish I quoted that line from Aquinas (More accurately, I'm sure than I just did here).

She seemed to be filled with righteous indignation that I would dare propose such an empty answer. While I did whore my conscience out for the defense of the faith, and spoke Aquinas' word with solemnity, the truth is that I was embarrassed by my response. Or rather shocked at my own audacity.[/i]



Can anyone here give me a human answer to this?[/quote]
The Christian answer is found in the person of Christ. God does not tell us why he allows what he allows. But he became man and shared in the same suffering that he allows us to endure. If God himself was willing to endure the sufferings of this world, then what can we do but follow his example, knowing that if we suffer with Christ, then we will also be glorified with Christ (Romans 8:17). Does this make suffering easy? Of course not. Christ himself prayed, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Matthew 26:39). Christ revealed to us what it means to have God as our Father. It means that we love and trust him absolutely, because "we know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28).

[Hassan]

What about the second matter? Who is the sin against. Why does God have standing to absolve the general of killing the child?

[Selah]

[quote]"Blessed are they who bash your children's head against a rock"
-Psalm 137[/quote]



Why don't you read the entire Psalm instead of cherrypicking one verse out of it.

[Hassan]

[quote name='Ziggamafu' post='1948839' date='Aug 14 2009, 02:17 PM']Job suffered injustice. Here you have a guy that God himself says is righteous and yet God smites him. Hard. He loses all of his beloved children, all of his wealth, and his health in the same day. Then his friends come and tell him how horrible of a person he is.

And yet everything is okay for Job, he is at peace, before God even restores the things taken. Why? What satisfied Job? Answers? No. At least not the answers Job originally wanted. It was the beatific vision. Job saw God, the source and standard of justice and beauty itself. The thing upon which perceptions of any goodness depends. That essence of what it is, maximally, to love a child or want justice served in the first place - that's what Job saw.

And when Job saw this, everything was fine even though the reasons that goodness should make use of evil and injustice were left as mysteries.[/quote]

I love the book of Job. It's my one favoriate books of the Old Testment.


From the standpoint of literature (And while I haven't read it in a while I don't remember the author of Job mentioning any Beatific Vision).

Outside of literature, taken as a literal theological proposal I don't know what to make of it. The God of Job doesn't seem worthy of reverence or admiration. He put's a man who on God's own accounting is morally irreproachable through hell because Satan egged him on.

That is the behavior of a capacious and cruel dictator, not a loving God.



[quote]I have to hope that therein is the key to understanding why injustice - like the torture, rape, and brutal murder of children beneath the age of reason - exists in the world. I have to believe that the next life is simply that good, that this life could be immeasurably worse for everyone and still there would be no complaints upon sight of the divine essence.

We are all part of a Shakespearean comedy - perhaps influenced by God, but written by us - that seems, from the perspective of this life, to be a tragedy; written, line by line, unimpeded by God except in the rarest of circumstances, by the choice of every human "actor" within the story. We only find out it is a comedy in the end, just like the happy ending of fairy tales tends to come only after the characters some kind of purgatorial trial.

This of course hinges on a very liberal hope for the salvation of most, if not all, of humanity by the extraordinary graces of God. The injustice is not rectified if the victim doesn't get a happy ending. Aquinas did not seem to have such a hope in his Summa, at least from the portions that I have thoroughly read. We'll see.[/quote]

I don't think you could really say this to the girl I mentioned. God refused to answer her prayers because he's going to make it up to her later?

[Hassan]

[quote name='Selah' post='1949140' date='Aug 14 2009, 08:45 PM']

Why don't you read the entire Psalm instead of cherrypicking one verse out of it.[/quote]

O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
Happy shall he be who requites you
with what you have done with us!
Happy shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock

[Selah]

What's the theme of the Psalm, Hassan? What's going on in it? What events have just taken place?

They were held captives. They missed their homes. They were being tortured. Their children were being tortured.

You know, it's funny. People look at the Bible and think everything in it is "right" when really, it's simply recording events that took place. The Israelites, so overcome with grief, so overcome with sadness at having their children destroyed, tortured, ripped from their hands...and remember, they themselves were being tormented as well...they decided that they needed to kill their children as infants to keep them from experiencing what they were experiencing. Was it right? No, but based on the circumstances and the events that were going on, it's only understandable that they would want to spare their newborns from the fate they had. Again, was it right? No. God isn't saying, "yay! Babies being killed!" Neither are they, really. Don't you think that broke their hearts as well? Knowing their children would never see the sunrise or the beauty the earth has? Yet they also felt that they needed to spare them this fate.

Was it right? no. Did God approve? Of course not. Was it understandable? To an extant. Remember, this is a different culture, a different people, a different time. Stop thinking with a Western mind and put yourself in their shoes.

[Hassan]

[quote name='scardella' post='1948835' date='Aug 14 2009, 02:11 PM']I think the first answer's issue is one of tact rather than correctness. Frankly, spouting theology and philosophy in response to a traumatic issue usually comes across as cold and dispassionate whether the theology/philosophy is correct or incorrect in an ultimate sense.

If you want to watch a playing out of something to that effect, the original Star Trek did an episode based on the observation that humans are emotional and social creatures and not just beings of logic. It was Season 1, episode Galileo Seven. (You can watch it online at cbs.com, BTW.)

You might notice that Revelation itself doesn't usually come out as a dogmatic theological treatise, but more often as a story or poetry or event... That's why devotionals tend to sell better than obscure theological texts.[/quote]


I was compassionate (although I understand how it came off different initially). I mean it's not like I just quoted Augustine and then walked off. The impotency of the answer wasn't because of the medium it was delivered (I mean however poetic, when you strip away the thrills the answers all boil down to that don't they?) but because of the content.

I'm reasonably tall and have a pretty solid frame, I'm in pretty good shape and extensive experience with Karate. If I hear a woman being violently raped screaming and begging for help and rapist is a man I could easily overpower, but I simply ignore her pleas, you would say I'm a monster wouldn't you?

[Hassan]

[quote name='Selah' post='1949150' date='Aug 14 2009, 07:58 PM']What's the theme of the Psalm, Hassan? What's going on in it? What events have just taken place?

They were held captives. They missed their homes. They were being tortured. Their children were being tortured.

You know, it's funny. People look at the Bible and think everything in it is "right" when really, it's simply recording events that took place. The Israelites, so overcome with grief, so overcome with sadness at having their children destroyed, tortured, ripped from their hands...and remember, they themselves were being tormented as well...they decided that they needed to kill their children as infants to keep them from experiencing what they were experiencing. Was it right? No, but based on the circumstances and the events that were going on, it's only understandable that they would want to spare their newborns from the fate they had. Again, was it right? No. God isn't saying, "yay! Babies being killed!" Neither are they, really. Don't you think that broke their hearts as well? Knowing their children would never see the sunrise or the beauty the earth has? Yet they also felt that they needed to spare them this fate.

Was it right? no. Did God approve? Of course not. Was it understandable? To an extant. Remember, this is a different culture, a different people, a different time. Stop thinking with a Western mind and put yourself in their shoes.[/quote]

I know about the Babylonian Captivity. I thought when you said cherry picking you meant like the Psalm actually said

"One ought not..."