Re: The Flat Earth? - Conclusion

Sandra Russell (srussell@ix.netcom.com)
4 Jul 1995 03:25:19 GMT

In <3t98t2$t4v@hahn.informatik.hu-berlin.de>
scott@informatik.hu-berlin.de (Matthew Scott) writes:

>
>srussell@ix.netcom.com (Sandra Russell) writes:
>
>>In <3t1a3t$lp1@hahn.informatik.hu-berlin.de>
>>scott@informatik.hu-berlin.de (Matthew Scott) writes:
>
>>>God makes everything easy for us, just possible. First of all, it's
>>not really
>>>a particularly important question (in the large scheme of things)
what
>>the distance
>>>to the stars in question are. Second, our capability to measure this
>>distance is
>>>adequate. Therefore, it is by no means time to expect an emergency
>>message from
>>>God about the distance to a star. Keep in mind that God is a parent
>>with a lot of
>>>responsibilities.
>
>
>>ROFL! And what was our Parent doing during Auschwitz? Getting drunk
at
>>the corner saloon while nobody baby-tended? Or do you suppose that
the
>>millions of Jews, Gypsies, etc. and others getting tortured, starved,
>>murdered, etc, in unspeakable ways, forgot to add in their prayers
that
>>their problems were an "emergency"?
>
>
> What you consider to be an emergency and what God considers to be
an
>emergency are two separate things. Suppose God would strike every
would
>be tyrant with lightning before he could ever take power. The people
would
>never have any experience with such tyrants, and they would all thirst
after
>that powerful leader that they never got. Hitler didn't come to power
simply
>based on his own characteristics. He came to power because the german
people
>had some critical flaws in their character. Some very significant
flaws that
>could only have been solved through bitter experience.

Comment: I'm not sure that all the murdered people and their families
would be very happy about the theory that God allowed them to suffer in
order to correct "critical flaws in German character." This idea is so
macabre it borders on black commedy. Der Herr Gott does seem to move
Heaven and Earth in quest of the eternal prefection of Germany, does he
not? <g> Give us break, Scott-from-Berlin.

> Similar flaws can be >observed again and again in different times and
nations because it is a typical >flaw of human nature to give power to
tyrants. Your emergency was..people >being tortured and dying. God saw
this emergency, but he also saw one much >much more significant. He saw
that the people would have to learn what a tyrant >is, and learn how to
keep such from power, or else, the trend would continue >even in the
afterlife, and jeopardize the stability of God's own kingdom.

ROFL! Even funnier. God didn't act because he didn't want fascism to
spread to Heaven?!? You've got to go on the road with this stuff. You
could earn big money in the Catskills...

> And don't >think God's kingdom is completely immune to such problems.
May I refer you to >Satan (the dragon) and the war in heaven
(revelations). God has to deal with all >of the same kinds of political
situations that we experience here.<

Oh no doubt. I'll bet that election nights are not much fun for Him,
though, knowing how it's all going to come out.

> One of his >ways of dealing with them is letting people learn in a
sphere of mortality where >everything is just for a little while anyway.
>
scott@informatik.hu-berlin

Thanks, Scott. You've made a great argument for allowing criminals and
evil people to keep working instead of resisting or neutralizing them--
they are actually performing a needed teaching chore. No electric chair
for Ted Bundy-- he's helping us by serving as a bad example....

The problem, Dr. Pangloss, is that you've now come to the Harris
Goldilocks Theodicy Problem: if the amount of evil in the world is not
too little, and not too much for our eternal good, but JUUUUST right
(as you argue), then does it not follow that God has to balance with
evil each good dead we do in the world, and balance with good each evil
deed, just to keep the mix right? So why get up in the morning? And
why worry about the choice between good and evil if you can't change the
world either way for the better, and can't change the world either way
for the worse?

Steve Harris