If Stephen Fry Met God . . .

Husker_x · March 12, 2015

So you know that question about what would you say to God if you met him at the pearly gates? Stephen Fry has a pretty cogent answer.

TGHusker · March 13, 2015

This is too big of a topic to answer with just a few posts. There are many excellent Christian resources that answer Mr Fry's basic assertion - that if there is a god, he is not worthy of my presence because of all of the suffering he has placed on man kind. One book I that I might suggest is Randy Alcorn's book - "If God is good ...." Timothy Keller's book - "The Reason for God". There are many more and also some coming from the deeper world of theology, philosophy or apologetics.

A quick web search I found one person's answer - not exhaustive

http://answers.org/theology/suffering.html

Each of us has watched a loved one die, been the victim of a crime, lived among the poverty-stricken, or in some way been confronted with the reality of suffering. Human history sometimes seems like one long chronicle of suffering and despair. In the midst of suffering we cry out,

Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of the soul, to those who long for death that does not come, who search for it more than for hidden treasure. . . . For sighing comes to me instead of food; my groans pour out like water. What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil. [Job 3:20-21, 24-26]

Why is there suffering? Why are the innocent victimized? Is there purpose in pain? Is there any escape? For the Christian, who believes that God is all-good and all-powerful, answers to these questions are especially important.

Skeptics frequently challenge Christians with the problem of a good God allowing suffering. Usually their argument says, “If God is all-powerful, he could prevent or eliminate suffering. If God is all-good, he would not want his creation to suffer. Since you say God is both, suffering should not exist. In fact, however, we see suffering all around us and experience it ourselves. Therefore, God doesn’t exist, or he’s not all-powerful, or he’s not all-good.”

First, we need to distinguish between philosophical and personal engagement with suffering. When someone is in the midst of anguish, all the logic and truth in the world is incomplete without a demonstration of compassionate love. Answers are not merely conclusions of mental exercises, they should have consequences in our lives.

Second, we need to consider the consequences of accepting the skeptic’s alternatives: Suffering proves that God does not exist, or He is not all-powerful, or He is not all-good. If God does not exist, then all of existence, including our suffering, has no enduring value, purpose, or goal. If God is not all-powerful, then we have no hope that suffering will ever be eliminated. If God is not all-good, then to pain and despair we must add the threat of immanent divine sadism. Each of these alternatives is at least as problematic as the Christian alternative, so the skeptic has merely exchanged one answer he doesn’t like for others equally unpleasant. The skeptic has not solved the problem of suffering merely by refusing to solve it. We should judge answers by truth, not emotion.

Third, we need to understand that many problems with theology come from problems with personal world views and values. For example, the pleasure of helping someone who is needy has absolutely no value to the person to whom self-indulgence is the highest good. Many people struggle with the problem of God and suffering because they reject a Christian world view. Avoiding suffering has become preferable to learning patience; immediate gratification means more than self-discipline; self-gratification is more important than sharing; and physical pleasure is superior to spiritual joy.

Fourth, the skeptic assumes parts of the Christian world view in order to indict the Christian God, but he is unwilling to acknowledge the other parts of the Christian world view that answer his indictments. He assumes a standard of “good” that is absolute and eternal (and, therefore, cannot have its source in changing, finite humans), but denies the existence of the absolute and eternal.

In a non-theistic world where values are social conventions, survival mechanisms, majority opinions, or assertions of the most powerful, there can be no absolute, eternal values. “Good” as a social convention is merely what a society declares to be good; in one society it might be eating one’s enemies, in another it may be loving one’s enemies. “Good” as a survival mechanism could include killing off imperfect, non-productive members of the species, such those with less than average intelligence or poor eyesight, or restricting reproduction to the physical and mental elite; etc. If the skeptic wants to borrow the Christian definition of values as absolute and eternal, then he can’t reject the Christian explanation of suffering which is consistent with such values.

If the Christian world view is considered, there are a variety of approaches to the question of God and suffering. Biblical convictions include (1) suffering does not originate with God and will be eliminated at some point; (2) God works good in the midst of suffering; (3) not all pain is suffering in the moral sense; (4) and physical, transient suffering and death are relatively inconsequential compared to spiritual, eternal suffering and death.

God is all-powerful, meaning He can accomplish anything that can be accomplished with power. He cannot use power to do “non-power” kinds of things, such as the logically impossible. He cannot make two plus two equal five, violate His unchangeable nature, make Himself go out of existence and come back into existence, and He cannot make morally responsible persons without allowing for the possibility of those persons making wrong choices. The Bible says that suffering is the consequence of the wrong choice (sin) of morally responsible persons. If God always prevented people from sinning, or always prevented the consequences of sin, then human goodness would be mere programming, not true goodness. We do not pat a computer on its head when it executes its program -- it is a determined function, not an exercise of moral responsibility. Suffering, the consequence of human sin, is not caused by God, but by the sin of persons with moral responsibility. Also, God has not abandoned the world to eternally suffer the consequences of sin. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to provide ultimate freedom from the consequences of sin. It is wrong to indict God because suffering is not yet eliminated, just as it would be wrong to indict a doctor who treats a gunshot wound he didn’t cause, simply because the wound is not healed instantly.

Our assurance that God will eliminate suffering is not the only comfort God gives us. While God did not cause suffering, he has given it purpose. It became the vehicle for our salvation when “Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame” (Hebrews 12:2). Complete avoidance of suffering is not an option for any of us. Our option is to waste our experience or realize God’s purposes in the midst of suffering. Through suffering we can learn patience, self-discipline, trust, and many other “virtues.” When we suffer we can experience the love, compassion, and self-denial of those who help us. When we help someone who is suffering, we find significance in our own lives as well.

Not all pain is “bad” in the moral sense. God created us with nerve endings that use pain to protect us. Pain keeps us from burning our hands in a campfire, bending our legs back until the joint breaks, neglecting nourishment until we starve, etc. Suffering can also be a direct, just consequence of our own actions. Our sense of justice says that it is “good” when an exploiter loses his friends, even though loneliness is “painful.” It is good when a mugger is locked up, even though he “suffers” the loss of his freedom.

All humans have a moral conscience, even corrupted by sin and often ignored. Our conscience should not rejoice in sin, suffering, and death. When we see innocents suffering, we should experience moral outrage and seek to rescue the sufferer. When we see someone suffer death, we should experience loss and sorrow. Sin, suffering, and death are not the destinies for which God created us. He created us to enjoy perfect, good, loving fellowship with Him for eternity. Despite our moral betrayal, he continues to offer eternal life.

The skeptic has it partly right -- suffering should offend our sense of goodness and justice. Sadly, he misses the rest of the argument: Because suffering violates goodness and justice, there must be an all-good, all-powerful God whose remedy restores the perfection he created. This is the hope that the Christian offers in the midst of suffering:

I consider the that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. [Romans 8:8]

Suffering and death in this sinful world are not without remedy. The only reasonable response to the existence of suffering is confidence in God’s promises for eternity:

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. . . . Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. . . . Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. [Matt. 5:3-10]

TGHusker · March 13, 2015

another person's post on the subject

http://www.whypain.org/did_god_create_evil.html

Did God Create Evil?
Or Does Evil Prove God Does Not Exist?

The following is a quote that appears on a number of atheist web sites. It has been in atheist literature for the forty years that this program we call “Does God Exist?” has been in existence:

Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot
…or he can but does not want to,
…or he cannot and does not want to,
…or lastly he can and wants to.
If he wants to remove evil, and cannot, he is not omnipotent.
If he can, but does not want to, he is not benevolent.
If he neither can nor wants to, he is neither omnipotent nor benevolent;
But if God can abolish evil and wants to, and if evil still exists, then God must not be God.
God does not exist.
How can God be benevolent and omnipotent and still allow evil to exist?

There are many approaches to the subject of evil. Modern atheists not only deny the existence of God, but also the existence of evil. Richard Dawkins, perhaps the leading twenty-first century spokesman for atheism says:

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky; and you won't find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.
- Richard Dawkins, Out of Eden, page 133.

Trying to deny the existence of evil does not eliminate it. It is like trying to convince a two-year-old about to get a shot that it is not going to hurt. The two-year-old knows better from experience, and trying to deny it will not make the pain go away. Most of us have had enough things happen in our lives that have convinced us, like the two year old, that evil is real. There is much that lies outside of DNA, and even DNA does not require mutations and alterations in it to make it automatically doomed to bring pain and suffering into the lives of human beings.

The fact is that evil does exist. It is not a substance. You cannot take a pile of evil and measure it in any way. In fact it is not something God created. There is no passage in the Bible that says God created evil. Passages like Isaiah 45:7 were translated in the King James as "evil," but more modern translations use the more accurate rendering of the word, which is "disaster." A disaster is not intrinsically evil. The Nile River flooded every year for centuries. This was unquestionably a disaster for the people who lived in the Nile delta, but it was not evil. It made Egypt the bread basket of the ancient world as it fertilized and rejuvenated the soils of the area. Evil is not something God sat down and deliberately and maliciously created so that humans could experience pain and suffering.

So if evil is not a product and creation of God, why does it exist and why does God allow it to exist? Why is evil not a proof that God is not really God but rather a creation of man.

The problem is that atheists and many believers have never stopped to deal with the questions, “What is the purpose of man's existence?” “Why are we here?” “Why do we exist?” If you assume that man is a chance event, then you automatically deny there is a purpose in our existence. Huxley, representing the atheist view, said it well:

We are as much a product of blind forces as is the falling of a stone to Earth, or the ebb and flow of the tides. We have just happened, and man was made flesh by a long series of singularly beneficial accidents.
Julian Huxley, The Human Degree, J.B. Lippincott Co., 1976.

The atheist view of man reduces man to an insignificant dot in the grand scheme of things -- just one of an infinite number of accidents that has no purpose and no reason to exist. The views of Huxley and Dawkins and their followers demean man and offer a very negative and pessimistic view of man with no hope and no value placed on human life above that of any other life on the planet.

The biblical concept of man is just the opposite. Man is presented in the Bible as something created in the image of God. Man has the life force as do other living things, but man also has a component that sets us apart from every other thing on the planet -- both living and nonliving. This component allows man to be creative, and to be able to express that creativity in art, music, and worship of God. It also is what enables man to encounter evil. Evil results from our capacity to choose to reject good. When mankind ate of the forbidden fruit, a uniqueness was activated which enabled us to make choices. The fruit was not an apple, it was "the tree of knowledge of good and evil" (Genesis 2:9). I would not be so presumptuous as to pretend I understand all that this involves. Scientists have been trying to understand the unique characteristics of humans from the time of Adam, and we still do not understand all that makes us human.

In biblical terms, however, it is simply man's capacity to make choices that affect other humans. Deciding whether to pull a weed out of your garden is not a decision that involves good or evil. Deciding whether to pull the trigger of a gun pointed at someone is. Evil involves making choices, and mankind has uniquely been given the capacity to make choices that involve good and evil. How we make these choices is a reflection of what we believe about ourselves and our relationship to everything in the cosmos. An atheist like Carl Sagan would limit what he believes about that relationship. Sagan was fond of saying:

The cosmos is everything that is or was or ever will be.
Carl Sagan, Cosmos, Random House, New York, 1980, page 257.

That view excludes anything that is not a part of the universe we observe. It limits the effect of our choices to what we observe with our senses. That is the easy way out, but there is evidence from every discipline known to man that there is more to the cosmos and to our existence than what we perceive through our senses. In the Bible there are references to things beyond what our senses perceive. Ephesians 6: 12 says it best: "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." We do not understand all of what those entities involve, but their existence and effect upon man is undeniable.

The purpose of man's existence involves the battle Ephesians 6:12 describes. The book of Job gives us a spectator's view of man's existence and how one man's existence serves as a battle ground for the struggle between good and evil. Job was created for this purpose, and in Job 42:5 he rejoices in having come to an understanding of why he was created. This is quite a contrast to Job 3:3-11 where Job laments the fact that he was ever born. Each of us can take the name "Job" out of the book of Job and write our name in place of it. We are all Job! Virtually every science fiction story in existence focuses its message on the struggle between good and evil, and we all seem to understand and profit from such literature. Yet when we become the prime players in the same kind of struggle that science fiction describes, we seem to find the concept too hard to grasp.

The atheist statement at the start of our article then radiates a failure to have any comprehension of why we exist. It is not that God is not omnipotent. It is not that He does not care. What God is focused on is His purpose in creating man. He will not compromise that purpose by interfering in the natural consequences of the choices that humans make. Sin leads to death, and God tells us that it is appointed unto man once to die (Hebrews 9:27). We are told that we will reap what we sow (Galatians 6:6-8). God can and will abolish evil. The story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 makes it clear that a "great gulf" will be placed between good and evil across which nothing can pass. The greatest act of benevolence known to man is the fact that God promises that we will eventually be in a place where "there will be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (Revelation 21:4).

Claiming that the existence of evil is a proof that there is no God is an unfortunate demonstration of a lack of understanding of why we are here.

The ultimate beauty of the picture the Bible gives us of God and the question of evil is that when God came to the Earth in a physical form and saw how much sin pains, and what agony humans suffer because of the consequences of sin, God burst into tears (John 11:35).

We serve a God who cares. As the writer of Hebrews states it, "For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). - John N. Clayton

TGHusker · March 13, 2015

A couple of short videos. I also saw that Dawkins had a video like Fry's. Same argument. BTW: we won't be solving this problem on this forum. People much smarter than us have been arguing these points for centuries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=it7mhQ8fEq0#t=94

TGHusker · March 13, 2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=NDDC1-_e7hI

TGHusker · March 13, 2015

Here is a funny story -- Dawkins prays to 'God'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Y9bR3zcAcDY

NUance · March 13, 2015

Stephen Fry. That's a very appropriate name for what's going to happen to this guy on judgement day. :lol:

strigori · March 14, 2015

Fry countered all of this in his explanation as well. It never ceases to amaze me how much effort people put into defending a supposed omnipotent and omniscient who, if it chose, could supposedly make everything a paradise with a thought. It is also impossible to "Know all that is, was and will be" and there still exist "free will." These are mutually exclusive. Also, it's extremely telling that any of the Abrahamic sanitize and rationalize large segments of "The Truth" from their various holy books as no reasonable person in this modern world would accept any of the mythology if they tried to push it. Because if they pushed the literal text, they would be trying to run things a lot like ISIS.

Landlord · March 14, 2015

walksalone · March 14, 2015

first of all, Russell Brand is a tw@t...

at :40, truth...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn9W6RseDz0

The Dude · March 14, 2015

If it was up to you, would you have created pediatric bone cancer?

I wouldn't have.

Husker_x · March 14, 2015

Second, we need to consider the consequences of accepting the skeptic’s alternatives: Suffering proves that God does not exist, or He is not all-powerful, or He is not all-good. If God does not exist, then all of existence, including our suffering, has no enduring value, purpose, or goal. If God is not all-powerful, then we have no hope that suffering will ever be eliminated. If God is not all-good, then to pain and despair we must add the threat of immanent divine sadism. Each of these alternatives is at least as problematic as the Christian alternative, so the skeptic has merely exchanged one answer he doesn’t like for others equally unpleasant. The skeptic has not solved the problem of suffering merely by refusing to solve it. We should judge answers by truth, not emotion.

It's not the skeptic's job to "solve" the problem of suffering. Such language assumes that suffering is a philosophical problem in the first place; it's only a problem if you assume an all-loving god placed us here in this belching swamp of viruses, poisons, parasites, and predators. They're all relatively easy to explain––along with our relationship to them––if you don't take on that assumption. The Problem of Evil is unique to monotheistic religion (Fry's answer about the Greek gods already sort of addressed this point).

Suffering does not prove that God does not exist. Suffering must be explained in light of God's existence. It may be that God is just a capricious dick. That would also answer the problem of suffering. Either way, the burden is on the theist to explain this problem with their supposedly benevolent deity. The skeptic just has to sit there and decide if their explanation holds water.

Fourth, the skeptic assumes parts of the Christian world view in order to indict the Christian God, but he is unwilling to acknowledge the other parts of the Christian world view that answer his indictments. He assumes a standard of “good” that is absolute and eternal (and, therefore, cannot have its source in changing, finite humans), but denies the existence of the absolute and eternal.

In a non-theistic world where values are social conventions, survival mechanisms, majority opinions, or assertions of the most powerful, there can be no absolute, eternal values. “Good” as a social convention is merely what a society declares to be good; in one society it might be eating one’s enemies, in another it may be loving one’s enemies. “Good” as a survival mechanism could include killing off imperfect, non-productive members of the species, such those with less than average intelligence or poor eyesight, or restricting reproduction to the physical and mental elite; etc. If the skeptic wants to borrow the Christian definition of values as absolute and eternal, then he can’t reject the Christian explanation of suffering which is consistent with such values.

I added my own bolded/italicized part which was actually the most interesting line in there to me. If I hadn't been paying attention, I could have sworn this person was talking about theology, what Thomas Paine called: "[T]he study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing. Instead then, of studying theology, as is now done, out of the Bible and Testament, the meanings of which books are always controverted and the authenticity of which is disproved . . ."

There is also the point that even if good is a mere social convention, it is a useful––quite functional––social convention. When a society applies itself to preventing children from dying from the cancers God created, for example, or saving children from the parasites God intelligently designed to devour their eyes, there are certain standards that naturally emerge to guide you towards correct action and incorrect action in relation to those goals. No appeal to the supernatural is required. I don't understand what philosophical basis is necessary to remind you why you would want to cure cancer or kill parasites, or how introducing an unprovable supernatural being would help.

God is all-powerful, meaning He can accomplish anything that can be accomplished with power. He cannot use power to do “non-power” kinds of things, such as the logically impossible. He cannot make two plus two equal five, violate His unchangeable nature, make Himself go out of existence and come back into existence, and He cannot make morally responsible persons without allowing for the possibility of those persons making wrong choices. The Bible says that suffering is the consequence of the wrong choice (sin) of morally responsible persons. If God always prevented people from sinning, or always prevented the consequences of sin, then human goodness would be mere programming, not true goodness.

So the child with leukemia or the blinding parasite are suffering consequences of sin? What possible choice could a three year-old make that would permit––let alone require––that kind of punishment to be carried out? If it is not a direct result of their "wrong choices," why would this silly God devise a system of punishment so cruel, so unusual, and so completely arbitrary? Am I to understand that the moral response to eating the wrong fruit is to carpet bomb humanity with horrific disease and violence for hundreds of thousands of years? If that's the company line, I have bad news. This God of yours is probably crazy. Do not trust him/her/it to save your soul, because there's a good chance it's also lying to you if this is what passes for "absolute morality" in its realm.

Also, God has not abandoned the world to eternally suffer the consequences of sin. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to provide ultimate freedom from the consequences of sin. It is wrong to indict God because suffering is not yet eliminated, just as it would be wrong to indict a doctor who treats a gunshot wound he didn’t cause, simply because the wound is not healed instantly.

But it would be correct to indict a doctor who shot me, blamed me for my gunshot wound, and then failed to treat it for––well––a seemingly unending period of time with no clear indication when or if he ever will (oh but you must understand, my doctor really loves me).

admo · March 15, 2015

Wish I could have him sit down and watch this. Might soften up his stance.

Starts slowly. Important around 6 min mark, 830, and 14.

Husker_x · March 15, 2015

That's funny. I'm actually reading his book right now.

NUance · March 15, 2015

If it was up to you, would you have created pediatric bone cancer?

I wouldn't have.

Some people think that things such as this came into the world as a result of man pulling away from God. That the evil in the world today would not be present if we had chosen to follow God instead of Satan. Would you have given man the choice to choose God, or not to choose God? Perhaps God should not have given us the ability to make this choice.

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