Gotta love the Calvinists.
Somebody who is reasoning to faith from logic has to explain why it is logical that God allows cruelty.
Interesting, because my natural response is that it would be the other way 'round, that it would be disallowing cruelty that would be the more remarkable state, and thus in need of explanation.
Because if there's *anything* we don't know, it's what happens after the monitor flatlines.
Oddly enough, I just started reading a Connie Willis book last night that's about precisely that, specifically researchers trying to pin down the near-death experience and what it might mean.
That is part of what drove a wedge between me and my original Methodism. There were tons of folks born between the death of Christ and the time the first missionaries came by. They should go to hell why now? And I'm supposed to worship the kind of deity that would set that sort of situation up? Nuh and uh.
In our church, this was handwaved away with, "God will figure something out."
Well, if you're staying within the framework of a literal interpretation of the bible, then God is a *just* god. A just god wouldn't hold someone responsible for knowledge they didn't have -- or, more to the point, for knowledge they didn't even know they needed to have. (This explanation works for the "ignorant savage" stereotype, too -- you know, the dude on Borneo (or wherever -- maybe the island on Lost) who has never heard of Jesus -- does he go to hell when he dies? Well, no. Because damning someone due to a lack of knowedge is unjust. The bible says God is just, and logic dictates that A cannot equal non-A.)
Why do you think it remarkable that God (Christian God, often portrayed as loving) would be anti-cruelty, brenda?
Fay, have you read Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet? Four interlinked novels set in colonial Alex. Great stuff.
Sweet fancy Moses. I read Justine a million years ago (okay, 11 years), and it was really really REALLY hard slogging. Maybe I should give it another shot now that I'm all growed up and a Woman Of The World.
In our church, this was handwaved away with, "God will figure something out."
Well, yeah. I mean, there's, who was it, Augustine, who said only 144,000 people would ever get into heaven, and then Julian of Norwich, whose visitation sort of did a wink and nod and seemed to imply that it might be everyone ever? And the "except through me" is lovely and vague and says, basically, you won't know until you get there. Just do your best, and have faith. Which argues strongly against a checklist -- we've got no way of knowing what'll actually get us in, but we can know generally good and bad and how to do it.
That's my best attempt at what I take to be my mother's belief -- I'm still an agnostic, except that the God I'm not sure I believe in is pretty clearly a Christian God, and I'd sort of like for him to exist so he could answer some questions. Boy will I be disappointed if I die and turn up before Iffler the Crocodile God. I'd be all, "Okay, I want to see who's in charge here, I've got some que... oh. Damn. Okay, never mind."
Hey, Aimee... how are you doing? Are you at work?
I am exhausted but otherwise doing alright. And I am at work, which sucks.
And launch.com won't give me love.
Bastids.
Why do you think it remarkable that God (Christian God, often portrayed as loving) would be anti-cruelty, brenda?
Well, presumably the whole thing would be more coherent if you didn't assume omnibenevolence. Cause that's the tricky part. It seems to me.
