The Problem of Evil

This will never get anywhere. Religion is not about reason so to argue logicaly just will not work. I content myself with knowing that of the 100's of Religions in the world (all with devoted and ' we can't be wrong' followers)at the very best ONLY ONE can be right. The majority of religious people on this planet are wrong!

 

There's always one.......

 

I wasn't talking about a religion mkenny I was talking about faith.......there's a difference friend. Why do you want to cut off the conversation ? It must be bothering you as it does 95 % of the individuals that habitate this planet. As to the statement that most religions are wrong I suppose you are right as many have taken the spoken word out of context and warped it to suit their needs. Go see the Passion.....

Erich

 

I don't want to 'cut it off' It's just that I think it will turn ugly. Already one person has decided to try and provoke and I find that on the matter of religion no one can be converted to see the others view. As a Christian you obviously believe that Muslims, Jews, Buddists, Hidus ect are wrong. They equally see your ideas as alien and there just is no middle ground. Ideas that seem logical to you are not to me.
It does not bother me at all that I have no creator and I was certainly not born with any wight or 'sin' on me. I never sit and think about it and I can accept the fact I do not know how we came into being. You do not know either you 'believe' you do. I do not need belief to live a full life.

[ 28. March 2004, 04:10 PM: Message edited by: m kenny ]

 

Why would any Christian "obviously" believe that Hindus, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists are wrong?
Why would they "obviously" believe Christianity to be wrong? You don't convert anyone to your point of view; you make your own views known to prevent a monologue.
We're in danger of letting a minority of idiots on both sides convince us that everyone shares their particular take on religion.
As the saying goes, there are many paths to God.

[ 28. March 2004, 04:18 PM: Message edited by: The_Historian ]

 

seems like an unfullfilling life without hope man........

as to Jews, Buddists and other religions yes I have my views but I openly listen then respond. Remember I lived through the psycho 60's, was there and particpated in the "great silliness of man". Have had some very interesting discussions concerning life after death and what the meaning of life is all about for the past 35 years and then some whenI have guided on the high peaks. I think you are not as satisfied as you say you are. If it gets ugly let me be the determining factor if this gets completely off track and in view of the topic Good/Evil it has not

v/r

E ♠

 

Gordon I do not think it is a minority of idiots presenting their beliefs. I cannot convert you and that is not my plan. But if you listen to HIS words through my typing or other evangelical Christians that are sincere, honest and try to be above reproach then you will be in good hands. The doom and gloom sermons of old never did a thing except create witch hunts. things have changed and our soul belief in ourselves has failed, and yes I have my feelings about Hindu's, Buddists, Islam and others that have chosen a different path with works of self to attain immortality. Gordon we are not all reject jerks as some would have you believe.

E

 

Born in Ireland, educated first by Nuns and then by Priests. Over 50 and with my experiences behind me I can truthfully say the majority of ordinary Christians believe all other religions as work of the Devil. Yes I hear the sermons about working together, 3 Religions of the one book ect. but it is only skin deep. Every devout Jew, Muslim or Christian would ,if pushed, kill the other to protect their take on events. I see the hatred in Northern Ireland and again despite the efforts by the few to solve the conflicts the ordinary Protestant and Catholic will never get on in my lifetime. SOME will but the bulk will never compromise. Even within the Christian community we have many wierd and wonderful sects that have really strange views about their 'God'. Knowing a number of Jehovas Witnesses I can tell you their views (or should I say private views) of say Catholics or Protestants is far from balanced and I am assured that the Devil corrupted them all with his false translation of the Bible. They are the keepers of the true path and the others are doomed. Same with Mormons and thats just 2 of the dozen or more wonderful sects that sprang up in America in the 19th Century. If inter-Christian sects cant agree what hope for the bigger rifts?

 

But what qualifies you to know what the vast majority of Christians believe?

Erich,
I never considered you any such thing. As I said, there are many paths to God. You have yours, I have mine. Whose to say which of us is right?
I'm a Freemason. The rules only state that a candidate for membership must believe in a God.

 

Religon today has changed a lot over the years. The vast majority of people do not hold true to (for example) what a Catholic was back then. Sure, there are a number of people who are very devoted and resemble the Catholics of old, but as for the masses, a lot has changed. For instance, some people think that being Catholic means that they will try to live a good life. But this can be said about every other religion.

 

Just because God knows the outcome does not mean we do not have free will. Now if God intervened and forced us to choose, then it is not free will. We are the ones that choose to commit a crime or not to. The consequences are just that and as a result of our choices. Just because he does not intervene and save us from the consequences does not mean that he does not exist or that he is the cause. It is our choice and therefore it is our fault.

 

I really don't know if I should make a post in here... maybe later some moron gets in, makes a mess and suddenly I see my posts and this all discussion —civilised until now, thanks gentlemen— banned.

Anyways. First of all, whether we like it or not, believe it or not there is "a Last Cause" to everything in Universe. An Infinite Entity, the absolute and undivisable Number One as Pithagoras said, the Last Cause of Aristotle, the Contingent Entity. Most of us call the summon of all these concepts: God —whether we call Him/Her whatever, Aláh, Yahvé, Jehováh, Jesuschrist, Buddah, etc.

So, God is not matter, is not shape and is not movement because all that recquires previous existence. God is the cosmic Reason that provides order, sense and intelligibility to the universe. And I'm not saying that, Aristotle did.

Whether we are religious or not, we cannot deny that there must be a final cause to everything, to the Energy that gathered and exploded in the Big Bang and created the Universe during zillions of years —that the Judeo-Christian Bible calls seven days.

There were no Adan and Eva. But there were microscopic living organisms which evolved and generated life. And there's a reason behind of that, and a cause of it, an another behind it, all the way back until the Last Cause.

Believing that is having faith. To my view, there's no need of believing in resurrection, re-encarnation, a Paradise or Hell. But I believe in the philosohpy of men: of Jesus of Nazareth, of Plato, Buddah, Lao-Tsé, etc. Be fair and live like a fair man. Love and be loved. Live and let live.

Evil is not Satan. It is only the sins which come hand-by-hand with the freedom and liberty we have as mortal men we are. In the Judaic tradition there is the image of a God —Jahvé— that creates men like Himself and then punishes and destroys it. Well, to illiterate nazis that can be the interpretation word-by-word of the Bible, but there is the sense of an Almighty God who created men and gave them precisely the freedom which makes us different of the rest of the animals. Without that freedom there wouldn't be sin; the apple of the Good and Evil Tree, but there wouldn't be progress, culture, technology, History and Cience. There wouldn't even be a Bible, a Torah, a Coran... because all those are primarily and finally, product of mankind.

And those are the thoughts of this man, a Catholic who prays and believes in God, His son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit... but most important than that, a man who makes his best to live according to the thoughts of many wise men in History —whose philosophy was born by their manly freedom, with its respective good
and evil.

Take care.

 

Even a moron would have a hard time arguing with that one.



Regards,
Gordon

 

This wasnt exactly clear, but stating you are a Catholic and not believing in Adam and Eve but believing in the Big Bang sounds a bit like a contradiction.

Also, if there is a "First Cause" to everything, what 'created' God? If nothing created God and that he just existed, you can use the same arguement about the universe and the big bang, that it was just there. To take that a step further, if something created God then God is not the Supreme Being as there is something that exists that is greater then him.

 

Religion always is a complicated matter do discuss, especially by lay(men/women) such as us.

As I can't do much about it, I prefer to leave it more or less inside the terms of the Wager of Pascal. In short this means:

...................................God exists....../......God does not exist
Wager for God.....................great......../..nothing gained/lost
Wager against God......you're screwed..../..nothing gained/lost,

so you're better off if you wager there is a God and choose to believe in Him.

Of course Pascal put it in much more elegant terms. Alas I am not Pascal Here's a primer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager

I have seen and am still seeing too many people slaughtered in the name of religion. The earliest records of my family name are found in 16th century archives of the Portuguese Inquisition (true), which I find great. Too many killings for scant apparent reason.

 

Religion is more often then not the reason behind a war or a mass killing. Bloody Mary got her name not for murdering people but burning people at the stake in the name of Religion. Then you have the Spanish Inquisition. Cant forget the Crusades. And a lot of European Wars had to do with Religion too. Even today, you can look at it as certain muslims have declared a Holy War on the United States and other countries though they do not fight in the conventional state. Then theres the whole Israeli/Pakistani thing too.

 

Being a Catholic doesn't automatically make me believe that everything the Bible says is an axiom and unquestionable truth, because it isn't. Not because I'm a Catholic I have to believe many of the things Rome dictates...

Your statement proves my point and Aristotle's theory. That First Cause is the first one and therefore has no cause, it simply is. This Last Cause or Contingent Entity doesn't need anything to exist, doesn't have beginning nor end. You, me, everybody are Necessary Entities, because we exist because of something. A Contingent Entity exists by Itself and because of itself and is the beginning of everything else. If you start analysing that you exist because you had parents, that your parents exist because they had parents and all the way up to a monkey and there to a unicell organism and then to DNA and then to carbon, nitrogen and matter, and rocks and volcanos and the planets, galaxies, the Big Bang, energy... you have to stop somewhere, and that's Aristotle's Last Cause —what we know as God— and if you don't stop, then you've already reached it, the Infinite Entity.

As you see, I'm a Catholic. But I support my catholicism with onthology, history, antropology and other sciences. Religion is philosophy. What we're discussing is philosophy.

And this religion you're mentioning is the same philosophies applied to life —mostly unsuccesfully— which was only an hypocrit pre-text for all what you mentioned before. But those mass-murders, wars and killing didn't happen because of religion. They happened because of power, richess and territory. Mary I chase protestants because at the time being protestant made you politically different and dangerous to a Queen backed by Rome and continental Catholic powers. The Spanish Inquisition? First, it's a myth that it killed hundreds of thousands of people, it didn't. And it was no bloodier than any other justice court in Europe at the time. The Inquisition was created to solidify the King's authority throughout a territory just unified by the sword. It was a secret police and the official tribune to trial criminals of every kind exactly in the same manner as happened in England, France or the Empire at the time, with the only difference that the Spanish Inquisition was a perfectly definied, organised and efficient institution for arbitration and cohersion. Crusades? Have you looked into a map and realised that Palestine is the key to the markets of Asia and Africa, that the Bizantine, Egipcian and Syrian Empires fought for it for hundreds of years. The Crusades were no different than the Asyrian, Babilonian, Persian, Greek or Roman invasions... They were wars for commerce, territory and richess started by the most powerful political ruler of the time: the pope. Getting converses into Christianity meant more incomes and more soldiers for the papacy. It wasn't a matter of who's better, Mohammed or JC... and nor is it nowadays.

 

I have to agree with 'The General' and 'The Historian' on this.

All down the centuries there have been conflicts between faiths. All the major religions have fought for 'their faiths' at soem time or other.

Even within faiths, where breakaway factions have caused conflict with their 'mother church'.

None of this makes it right or honourable to take the life or land of another just because their belief is different from your own.

"Live and let live"

 

If God can just 'exist' with no first cause, then so can the atoms etc that then resulted in the Big Bang. No God involved in that. I cant word it any clearer then that.

And the Israel area was not the center to trade with the rest of the world - Alexandria and Egypt were (why do you think the Brits had to hold onto the Suez Canal during WWII? If it had been captured by DAK then the Pacific for the Brits would have been cut off). Not controlling Israel was not that big of an issue - faster to travel by sea and it was easy to avoid by going through Egypt.

The Protestants were a threat to Mary I because of their difference of Religion. People like to be right - their religion is right - and some cant stand other people saying that there Religion is right. People also associate themelves as being part of some Religion first rather then some Political faction. The Protestants could have rebelled and reclaimed the throne for the Protestants and most people dont have the same Political Ideas so the 'Politics' would have changed too.

The modern Israeli/Palenstinian conflict is not political. Both countries are founded on religious principles and both want their Holy Land back. Its not about economics or politics, its about Religion.

 

By the word God you're thinking of some of Michellangelo's paintings of an elderly man with long white beards... No, no and no. The atoms of the Big Bang were full of smaller particles and another thing called energy. And energy cannot be created from nowhere, there you have a last cause to life. Whether you understand it as a cientific concept of pure energy or as a Last Cause to everything, or the Number One of the Universe or a God called Alláh, Jahvéh or whatever, it's up to you. What we cannot deny is that there's either a last cause to everything or an infinite number of causes, which both are the summon of the same concept: a Contingent Entity —or thing.

To get to either Alexandria or the Nile riviera you have to either use the naval routes of the eastern Mediterranean or through the Sinaíh Desert, south of Palestine. To achieve either of both things you had to have controll over Palestine, its ports in case you wanted to seccure your naval communications with Alexandria and southern Palestine in case you wanted to seccure the route to Egypt. And at the time of the Crusades there were many kingdoms which fought for it over and over again: the Bizantine Empire, the Sarracens, Egypt, Syrians, Lebanese, Turks... who all wanted to have controll of the area to expand their own economical, territorial and political rule. And it was easier to convince the people of that by using the name of Alláh and Christ for the purpose.

You're precisely confirming my statement. If the protestants were going to de-throne Mary I, then they were a political threat towards her and her régime. And why did the Protestants want her out? Not because she believed in Virgin Mary or the saints, but because being Catholic and supporting catholicism would have meant either a Spanish or a French monarch in England and of course, the richess of England mostly on the Roman Catholic Church's hands. The religion by itself, doesn't have almost anything to do with all these conflicts. Conflicts are made in the name of religion , not because or by it.

Religion? Compare both the Toráh and the Coran. The latter is mostly based in the first. Both peoples are semites, both are very closely related by blood and culture. It doesn't have to do with ideologic confrontation.

It is a group of people fighting another for territorial, political and economical power. All these in a small piece of land which by its very History is a conflictive region. It is not a matter of burning synagogues and mosques. It is because the Arabs had been living there for a thousand years and after WWII, hundreds of thousands of Europeans started arriving, displacing Arabs, taking away their wealth and their political power. How was decided who would live in Kibutz and who in refugee-camps? By where do you pray, just to segregate a group seeking power from another. That simple. A practical reason, because religion in this case is not very different from nationalism...

If you listen to what both peoples have to say, you won't find remarks as "I want to kill Arabs because the Coran is silly" or "I hate Jews because of their kipáhs". No. It is because the Arabs want to be the rich and powerful majority they were before 1948 and the Jews want to remain as they have been since 1948. Not because of religion. Christian churches, synagogues and mosques are built side by side in Jerusalem and people quietly attend to their respective one because there's not the problem. It is who owns which farm, which well, which house, because it means trade, incomes, a nice home, a place to live properly.

[ 30. March 2004, 01:26 PM: Message edited by: General der Infanterie Friedrich H ]