[quote]Professor X wrote:
The Tsunami disaster was an indescribable negative occurrence. That much human suffering from one natural disaster is often hard to put into words. I think it is natural to ask why things happen. Why did my Grandmother have to die the way she did. She helped a lot of people in her life time…most of all me. Why did she have to suffer? One thing I can tell you, is that I work harder and live harder because of it. I know I won’t live forever and that nothing is guaranteed. In my honest view, if a man lives well in spite of the negative, there isn’t anything much better. I have also seen some very negative things in my life. Maybe it helps me appreciate the positive that much more.[/quote]
Personally, I don’t believe there is an inherent reason why things happen the way they do. Assuming an omnibenevolent God, though, I still wonder how it can be that any creature would have to suffer the consequences of “natural evil”, i.e. evil which is not the consequence of the exertion of free will.
Anyway, I guess the way you see things in this regard is the most constructive approach one can take. I for my part don’t always manage to take away something positive from negative (from my perspective) occurrences. At least knowing that I have done everything possible at that time in order to make the positive occur and the negative stay away gives satisfaction to some extent, even when things go wrong.
[quote]
In all honesty, do you get the impression that the majority of the people in the world are deep thinkers? Do the majority come across as “highly intelligent” to you? Is that even necessary to understand the value of human life?[/quote]
No, no and no. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t even consider it necessary to be exceedingly knowledgeable with regard to the bible or the philosophical substructure of any specific system of belief to be a religious person and to live a life compliant to the moral framework of that system.
The issue I was alluding to is that some definitions of God in the bible which describe Him using negative human attributes and experiencing negative emotions seem diametrically opposed to what I would consider God to be. As far as I know, the words omnipotent, omniscient or omnibenevolent aren’t mentioned in the bible. Nevertheless, I think Pookie summed it up very well…
[quote]pookie wrote:
For those who believe in God, that’s what God is: A perfect being. He has to be, or else he’s not “God”.[/quote]
Surely, there would be ways to signalise this “perfection”, yet at the same time keep the verbalisation simple enough for a broad range of readers to understand, e.g.
1 John 4:8
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
Why did God not choose to do so?
[quote]
I think we did pretty good. Don’t you?[/quote]
Yes, you did. Just as I expected…
