The bed of 11-year old Michaela Petit, where she was sexually assaulted, tortured then burned alive by two intruders. What answers do the God-fearing have for this vile act? Answer: NONE! According to the pastor above: "THERE ARE NO INNOCENTS!"
Three years ago I thought I’d heard everything in terms of why a putatively “good” God refused to act to save a 12 year old Florida girl who had been reported raped, tortured and buried alive. My Christian friend John (from Barbados) rationalized this as an "intervention by the Divine", who – in His Omniscience- knew before all time the girl would later become a prostitute and go to Hell, so it was better she be murdered while still innocent.
When I asked him about how torture could be countenanced as part of this “premature offing” he had zero answers, other than “I don’t know, maybe to give her a sample of the Hell she might have experienced had she lived!”
Again, insane and barbaric rationalizations, but this is all the Christianoids have left when pushed hard against the wall of their delusions. So desperate are they to rescue their God and justify the basis for Its inaction that they will reach for any outlandish and churlish explanation, but which on face value is brutish, nasty and devoid of human compassion or context.
Then there was the believer in karma and reincarnation who, when I asked the question of why 6 million Jews were killed, responded by saying that in previous lives they’d all been murderers so were all delivered their “karma” in the Holocaust, at one time.
When I asked him what karma the S.S. butchers in the Holocaust will receive, he responded that: either they had fulfilled their obligation to provide the reincarnated Jews their karma (for past horrific transgressions), or they would get theirs in another life.
When I asked where or when the "chain" of karmic repercussions ended, he had no answer.
In many ways this is similar to Bernard Haisch's concepts in his "God Theory", e.g.:
"Under the God Theory ..... justice will be meted out by the action and reaction of the law of karma, which is built into the fabric of creation as surely as the conservation of momentum is built into the laws of physics. It is only your snapshot view from the perspective of a single lifetime that outrages your sense of justice or causes you to demand a day of divine judgment. Better to think of karma as a multi-lifetime process of re-education, rehabilitation, and inescapable balance."
So, in this sense, the God Theory follows closely the teaching of reincarnation of eastern religions, though not necessarily exactly. However, I would argue that merely because one's perception of horrific and foul tortures, such as endured by the Petit sisters (Hayley and Michaela) is a "snapshot", doesn't make those actions of the perpetrators any less vile! Nor is it consoling to think that the perpetrators get to remake themselves via a "multi-lifetime process" etc. while the Petit girls had wonderful lives cut brutally short!
Now we see another bible puncher who has an equally despicable answer for why Michaela and Hayley were horrifically tortured, raped and burned alive. THEY WEREN’T INNOCENT!
According to this mental misfit:
“Now , this often leads to the question , 'Why does God allow the innocent to suffer?' In answering this question, the first thing to consider is whether such a thing as “the innocent” even exists. According to the Bible, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9), and “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” ( Rom. 3;23 ). Therefore, no one is innocent in the sense of being sinless….Sin’s effects permeate everything, and the suffering we see all around us is a direct result of that sin”
In other words, the Petit girls weren’t really innocent so the savage acts perpetrated on them were totally understandable! One wonders how this character is able to even sleep at night with such a degenerate mind.
An even worse offense, morally and intellectually, is the failure to distinguish common every day suffering (that is obviously part of the human condition, to which even atheists agree – as we are biological organisms subject to a host of infirmities) from the most extreme kind perpetrated by others in the form of torture, etc.
Thus, the excuse proferred above totally ignores the distinction between intensity and nature of the suffering visited. Let's initially agree that all humans for whatever reason (he says "sin", I say the unpredictable, random nature of the world - controlled by no one) will suffer at some level, maybe from a fall, a severe illness, or being injured in a hurricane, or having one's house demolished in a tornado.
But these are all relatively anticipated, or possible-plausible experiences in a regular spectrum of human suffering. In other words, they are the sort of suffering each human can expect to undergo (unless extremely fortunate or lucky) in life . In principle, they are totally distinct from the suffering the Petit girls went through which was of an impossibly monstrous form, on the level of what the Jews experienced in the genocide (when many Jewish women were first raped, then whipped then driven into the gas chambers).
But rather than deal with that intensity of suffering, including explaining for us why ALL humans don't undergo it, he soft soaps it away with some babble from his Bible. This alone shows he isn't serious nor interested in offering a serious argument, but rather merely filling blog space to provide a fanciful and pseudo-justification for his inept and gullible followers.
The fact is, even IF one allowed that suffering is part and parcel of the human's existence and condition, the extraordinary suffering of the Petit girls was NOT, and he has not one scintilla of explanation for it!
But we see the lack of serious reasoning in other places, as when he avers (with a straight face) that God is "blamed for weather disasters but not given credit for all the good weather" (sic). Well, give me an effing break already! THAT is my whole point! IF there is variable weather which ranges from decent and fair to disastrous outbreaks, it is more plausible the variations arise from the fact that the Earth is a naturally dynamic planet .....with cold fronts, warm fronts, high pressure areas, low presure areas...and moreover, when cold and warm fronts collide, the bad weather (tornadoes) then transpire. Or at least active weather cells that can form funnel clouds.
Thus, for variable weather conditions one requires no God in the first place. The only reason for remotely positing a God would be IF this entity is subject to such propitiation that it might control bad weather and ameliorate its effects!
As an example, let's consider an actual incident that transpired in Southern Alabama in the Spring of 1994. On that occasion, seven little girls were leaving their church after Bible study, when a tornado appeared. They rushed back into the church, got down on their knees and began to pray earnestly for deliverance. All they wanted was for God to show mercy and maybe divert the tornado's path. Did that happen? No! It struck the church, demolishing it, and killing all seven children.
Assuming an infinite, all-powerful, all-seeing Omni God (as the believers declare over and over), It had to know from before all time a twister was headed for its "house" of worship in Alabama. Being omnipotent, it also had the power to deflect said twister and let it tear up some nearby forest or woodsheds- as opposed to its church with children inside. Did it? No it did not! It permitted the tornado to demolish the Church and the children within it. All innocents. All dead. Those who would defend such a deity - but who would hold a human parent accountable for negligence or manslaughter by allowing their child to perish in a house fire (when the child could be saved) - disclose inchoate ethics. To wit, demanding a vastly lower ethical standard of behavior for their deity than for fellow humans. (As Kai Neilsson notes in his Ethics Without God, the very least we must expect from any proposed deity is that it act with the same level of concern and compassion as a decent human parent, if not, it doesn't exist and isn't needed)
Those who beg the question with theo-babble ("we cannot fathom the ways or mind of God") are no better, and do no better. In many ways, they're worse, because they lack even the courage to face their own logic. And the consequences of their definitions! They either invoke the escape clause of "faith" or the impotence of human logic beside the alleged Divine Mind.
What about the inherent "natural evil" in the wake of earthquakes and tsunamis? Is there a rhyme or reason for the loss of human life and the major suffering that accompanies such natural events?
For the atheist or naturalist these are simply normal events for a planet with a dynamic core and tectonic plates. There is no “evil” in any of the earthquakes since humans inhabit a disruptive planet. There are, in fact, about 7-12 earthquakes per year over magnitude 7.0 all over the Earth. We don’t hear about most of them because they occur in inaccessible, far off regions like Siberia or Mongolia or in the sea. We do hear about them when they manifest in populated land centers, but this doesn’t imply more are occurring or “the end of the world is nigh” or any such nonsense.
So, why does a problem of natural “evil” enter? It enters only for the theist, and specifically one type of theist who predicates his world view on a supposed benevolent personal “Creator” or “designer”. Because at root, if humans inhabit a world subject to monster storms, hurricanes, tidal waves and earthquakes…it is the fault of the Creator for designing such a world in the first place when He knew he’d put humans at risk. As Harry Truman once said: “The buck stops here”.
Religionists go round and round in circles trying to avoid this unsavory conclusion, but there it is! If you're going to posit that a Designer made it all, then logic informs that if we inhabit a world with large faults (no pun intended) it is that Designer’s fault when natural tragedies occur! After all, if He was truly omnipotent then why couldn’t he find or create a planet without these defects which he had to know would kill his ‘children’ by the millions each year? If, as some religionists argue, He did it to "teach us" something, then what exactly was it? Did it require mass death to get the lesson over?
Maybe. Another "out" often taken by these cowards is to assert that God gave us a defective planet which conforms to our "fallen" state. Fair enough, but then that means one can't count on the deity for any deliverance, period. If the world and its people are all in a "fallen" state and this state is imparted for some "original sin" or other bullshit, then it means none of us are exempt from the residual suffering, including the chaotic and unpredictable nature of violent storms and earthquakes, or tsunamis. However, it does not explain why SOME humans (like the Petit girls) undergo extraordinary suffering out of all proportion to everyone else. I mean, was their "fallen state" more egregious and depraved to merit sexual debasement, torture and being burned to death on their beds while alive? The religionists, so full of shit, have no answers, zero.
They merely compare us to "Pharaoh" or say we're "hard hearted" but won't come up with the ballast of reason's goods to satisfy us that they know squat of what they're yapping about. And like dogs, they often yap without even knowing why.
At least my Christian friend finally came around and agreed that the Socinian God makes the most sense, given the random and uncontrolled evil in the world. With this limited deity, all the "omnis" vanish, no more "omnisicent', "omnipotent" or "omnipresent". God exists in the collective consciousness of humans and acts in tandem with that consciousness but can know no more or less than the most advanced consciousness. If all humans perished and only roaches were left, it'd know no more than the most advanced roaches! Thus, it is liable to make mistakes, and not foresee other events, including catastrophic ones....hence couldn't do anything about them.
If you must believe in a deity, this is at least one that makes sense, but alas, not as much sense as believing in NO deity.
When I asked him about how torture could be countenanced as part of this “premature offing” he had zero answers, other than “I don’t know, maybe to give her a sample of the Hell she might have experienced had she lived!”
Again, insane and barbaric rationalizations, but this is all the Christianoids have left when pushed hard against the wall of their delusions. So desperate are they to rescue their God and justify the basis for Its inaction that they will reach for any outlandish and churlish explanation, but which on face value is brutish, nasty and devoid of human compassion or context.
Then there was the believer in karma and reincarnation who, when I asked the question of why 6 million Jews were killed, responded by saying that in previous lives they’d all been murderers so were all delivered their “karma” in the Holocaust, at one time.
When I asked him what karma the S.S. butchers in the Holocaust will receive, he responded that: either they had fulfilled their obligation to provide the reincarnated Jews their karma (for past horrific transgressions), or they would get theirs in another life.
When I asked where or when the "chain" of karmic repercussions ended, he had no answer.
In many ways this is similar to Bernard Haisch's concepts in his "God Theory", e.g.:
"Under the God Theory ..... justice will be meted out by the action and reaction of the law of karma, which is built into the fabric of creation as surely as the conservation of momentum is built into the laws of physics. It is only your snapshot view from the perspective of a single lifetime that outrages your sense of justice or causes you to demand a day of divine judgment. Better to think of karma as a multi-lifetime process of re-education, rehabilitation, and inescapable balance."
So, in this sense, the God Theory follows closely the teaching of reincarnation of eastern religions, though not necessarily exactly. However, I would argue that merely because one's perception of horrific and foul tortures, such as endured by the Petit sisters (Hayley and Michaela) is a "snapshot", doesn't make those actions of the perpetrators any less vile! Nor is it consoling to think that the perpetrators get to remake themselves via a "multi-lifetime process" etc. while the Petit girls had wonderful lives cut brutally short!
Now we see another bible puncher who has an equally despicable answer for why Michaela and Hayley were horrifically tortured, raped and burned alive. THEY WEREN’T INNOCENT!
According to this mental misfit:
“Now , this often leads to the question , 'Why does God allow the innocent to suffer?' In answering this question, the first thing to consider is whether such a thing as “the innocent” even exists. According to the Bible, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9), and “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” ( Rom. 3;23 ). Therefore, no one is innocent in the sense of being sinless….Sin’s effects permeate everything, and the suffering we see all around us is a direct result of that sin”
In other words, the Petit girls weren’t really innocent so the savage acts perpetrated on them were totally understandable! One wonders how this character is able to even sleep at night with such a degenerate mind.
An even worse offense, morally and intellectually, is the failure to distinguish common every day suffering (that is obviously part of the human condition, to which even atheists agree – as we are biological organisms subject to a host of infirmities) from the most extreme kind perpetrated by others in the form of torture, etc.
Thus, the excuse proferred above totally ignores the distinction between intensity and nature of the suffering visited. Let's initially agree that all humans for whatever reason (he says "sin", I say the unpredictable, random nature of the world - controlled by no one) will suffer at some level, maybe from a fall, a severe illness, or being injured in a hurricane, or having one's house demolished in a tornado.
But these are all relatively anticipated, or possible-plausible experiences in a regular spectrum of human suffering. In other words, they are the sort of suffering each human can expect to undergo (unless extremely fortunate or lucky) in life . In principle, they are totally distinct from the suffering the Petit girls went through which was of an impossibly monstrous form, on the level of what the Jews experienced in the genocide (when many Jewish women were first raped, then whipped then driven into the gas chambers).
But rather than deal with that intensity of suffering, including explaining for us why ALL humans don't undergo it, he soft soaps it away with some babble from his Bible. This alone shows he isn't serious nor interested in offering a serious argument, but rather merely filling blog space to provide a fanciful and pseudo-justification for his inept and gullible followers.
The fact is, even IF one allowed that suffering is part and parcel of the human's existence and condition, the extraordinary suffering of the Petit girls was NOT, and he has not one scintilla of explanation for it!
But we see the lack of serious reasoning in other places, as when he avers (with a straight face) that God is "blamed for weather disasters but not given credit for all the good weather" (sic). Well, give me an effing break already! THAT is my whole point! IF there is variable weather which ranges from decent and fair to disastrous outbreaks, it is more plausible the variations arise from the fact that the Earth is a naturally dynamic planet .....with cold fronts, warm fronts, high pressure areas, low presure areas...and moreover, when cold and warm fronts collide, the bad weather (tornadoes) then transpire. Or at least active weather cells that can form funnel clouds.
Thus, for variable weather conditions one requires no God in the first place. The only reason for remotely positing a God would be IF this entity is subject to such propitiation that it might control bad weather and ameliorate its effects!
As an example, let's consider an actual incident that transpired in Southern Alabama in the Spring of 1994. On that occasion, seven little girls were leaving their church after Bible study, when a tornado appeared. They rushed back into the church, got down on their knees and began to pray earnestly for deliverance. All they wanted was for God to show mercy and maybe divert the tornado's path. Did that happen? No! It struck the church, demolishing it, and killing all seven children.
Assuming an infinite, all-powerful, all-seeing Omni God (as the believers declare over and over), It had to know from before all time a twister was headed for its "house" of worship in Alabama. Being omnipotent, it also had the power to deflect said twister and let it tear up some nearby forest or woodsheds- as opposed to its church with children inside. Did it? No it did not! It permitted the tornado to demolish the Church and the children within it. All innocents. All dead. Those who would defend such a deity - but who would hold a human parent accountable for negligence or manslaughter by allowing their child to perish in a house fire (when the child could be saved) - disclose inchoate ethics. To wit, demanding a vastly lower ethical standard of behavior for their deity than for fellow humans. (As Kai Neilsson notes in his Ethics Without God, the very least we must expect from any proposed deity is that it act with the same level of concern and compassion as a decent human parent, if not, it doesn't exist and isn't needed)
Those who beg the question with theo-babble ("we cannot fathom the ways or mind of God") are no better, and do no better. In many ways, they're worse, because they lack even the courage to face their own logic. And the consequences of their definitions! They either invoke the escape clause of "faith" or the impotence of human logic beside the alleged Divine Mind.
What about the inherent "natural evil" in the wake of earthquakes and tsunamis? Is there a rhyme or reason for the loss of human life and the major suffering that accompanies such natural events?
For the atheist or naturalist these are simply normal events for a planet with a dynamic core and tectonic plates. There is no “evil” in any of the earthquakes since humans inhabit a disruptive planet. There are, in fact, about 7-12 earthquakes per year over magnitude 7.0 all over the Earth. We don’t hear about most of them because they occur in inaccessible, far off regions like Siberia or Mongolia or in the sea. We do hear about them when they manifest in populated land centers, but this doesn’t imply more are occurring or “the end of the world is nigh” or any such nonsense.
So, why does a problem of natural “evil” enter? It enters only for the theist, and specifically one type of theist who predicates his world view on a supposed benevolent personal “Creator” or “designer”. Because at root, if humans inhabit a world subject to monster storms, hurricanes, tidal waves and earthquakes…it is the fault of the Creator for designing such a world in the first place when He knew he’d put humans at risk. As Harry Truman once said: “The buck stops here”.
Religionists go round and round in circles trying to avoid this unsavory conclusion, but there it is! If you're going to posit that a Designer made it all, then logic informs that if we inhabit a world with large faults (no pun intended) it is that Designer’s fault when natural tragedies occur! After all, if He was truly omnipotent then why couldn’t he find or create a planet without these defects which he had to know would kill his ‘children’ by the millions each year? If, as some religionists argue, He did it to "teach us" something, then what exactly was it? Did it require mass death to get the lesson over?
Maybe. Another "out" often taken by these cowards is to assert that God gave us a defective planet which conforms to our "fallen" state. Fair enough, but then that means one can't count on the deity for any deliverance, period. If the world and its people are all in a "fallen" state and this state is imparted for some "original sin" or other bullshit, then it means none of us are exempt from the residual suffering, including the chaotic and unpredictable nature of violent storms and earthquakes, or tsunamis. However, it does not explain why SOME humans (like the Petit girls) undergo extraordinary suffering out of all proportion to everyone else. I mean, was their "fallen state" more egregious and depraved to merit sexual debasement, torture and being burned to death on their beds while alive? The religionists, so full of shit, have no answers, zero.
They merely compare us to "Pharaoh" or say we're "hard hearted" but won't come up with the ballast of reason's goods to satisfy us that they know squat of what they're yapping about. And like dogs, they often yap without even knowing why.
At least my Christian friend finally came around and agreed that the Socinian God makes the most sense, given the random and uncontrolled evil in the world. With this limited deity, all the "omnis" vanish, no more "omnisicent', "omnipotent" or "omnipresent". God exists in the collective consciousness of humans and acts in tandem with that consciousness but can know no more or less than the most advanced consciousness. If all humans perished and only roaches were left, it'd know no more than the most advanced roaches! Thus, it is liable to make mistakes, and not foresee other events, including catastrophic ones....hence couldn't do anything about them.
If you must believe in a deity, this is at least one that makes sense, but alas, not as much sense as believing in NO deity.
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