A few weeks ago, Rev. Dan mentioned that he has glaucoma, and made this statement:
According to the Bible God made all things and called all things “good.” Glaucoma is yet another example of “God’s good creation” which I have non-trivial issues with. Why did God create a disease which silently and permanently erodes one of the senses, negating possible joy and full experience of already short human lives? Doesn’t this show that God is incompetent or playing destructive games with humanity? It’s yet another example of why I think the whole story about God, especially the version of God described in the Bible, is a load of horsepuckey. If God has a “plan” or “purpose” for my life (which is something I’ve heard a majority of Christians assert at various points, and which the questions Mike posted above suggest), why does it involve so much seemingly unneeded suffering and misery… especially on a biological level? If God is “good” and all of “His creation” is good, then doesn’t this suggest that God himself is diseased and corrupt?
I’m not asking these things as purely rhetorical questions, I’d really like to hear what “Christians” or “Christ Followers” or “” have to say about this.
I’ll post a comment later, but I didn’t want the topic to become “my answer to Rev. Dan’s question.”
If you’re a Christian, how do you answer, and can you understand why it’s difficult for people like him to believe in your God?
If you’re not a Christian, how do you answer the Christian responses, and can you understand why it’s difficult for people like me to *not* believe in our God?
Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Mike O | 16 Comments »Last week I wrote about false assumptions and how Christians suffered in the past because of them just as atheists suffer today. Atheism doesn’t have a philosophy or principles to counter these false assumptions any more than it has a philosophy or principles to deserve them. Secular humanism does put forward a set of positive traits and promotes a world view. These are:
The first one I wish to discuss is the need to test beliefs.
Need to test beliefs – A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.
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This is the 5th and final installment in my series called “S.H.A.P.E Workshop.” I do hope you found it interesting. Even though there were some differences of opinion, I hope it helped you to gain some insight into the mentality of Christian teaching - Christians put God - or more specifically, Jesus - as both the motivator and benefactor of everything we do. Or at least we’re supposed to :)
Just to recap, the five basic components that make up a person’s “S.H.A.P.E.” are:
S - Spiritual Gifts
H - Heart/Passion
A - Abilities
P - Personality
E - Experiences
This week we covered the last piece - experiences - and how our past experiences factor in to who we are today. Here’s one illustration that was presented:
Two hunters flew deep into the remote backwoods of Alaska to hunt Elk. They bagged six elk. The pilot told them the plane could carry only four of the elk out. “But the plane that carried us out last year was exactly like this one,” the hunters protested. “The horsepower was the same, the weather was similar, and we had six elk then.” Hearing this, the pilot reluctantly agreed to try. They loaded up and took off, but sure enough, there was insufficient power to climb out of the valley with all that weight, and they crashed. As they stumbled from the wreckage, one hnter asked the other if he knew where they were. “Well, I’m not sure,” replied the second, “but I think we are about two miles from where we crashed last year.”
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