[Winter wind]

Quote by: freefallife So, these viruses were introduced to teach us how to create their respective vaccines? Why? We would never have to learn to cure all these devastating diseases at the cost of so much human life if god hadn't created them to begin with. We could focus our efforts on far better things in the world. I can only imagine where we might be if we didn't have to commit so many resources to erradicate these diseases.

I'm currently sitting in a Swiss airport, waiting to go home from my week long ski trip, and am on a wifi connection that is literally called "hidden" so this may come out as gibberish for any number of reasons.

I've looked at the entire post, not just the segment quoted above, and I understand your argument as follows.

"there needs to be evil in the world, but why so much?"

My argument is that no matter how much evil there is in the world, once you get used to that amount, it will always seem to be too much.

As for vaccines...no matter how much evil you find in this world, there seems to always be a method of making that evil lesser. Most of the time to the point of vanishing it. Yes, deadly illness are not great, but they are part of the world we live in. How would you create symbiosis and not create parasites that kill it's host? That's what infections are. Evolution without genetic defects? The reason we have these is the way our universe was created. It's the logic that makes it. So how would you eliminate the above without destroying the logic of the universe? God created the logic, but arguing about how he could have changed the logic is...more then slightly difficult.

(at least we don't have the T-Virus, from Resident Evil, in anything beyond our imaginations)

The cold war ended, and now we fight a far more deadly war against a far more aggressive enemy that has actually cost us the lives of several thousand.

Terrorism? That wasn't there already? Americans have only payed attention since 9-11-2001, but terrorism was around before that. It's been there since assassins killed crusaders.

Civil rights has been successful? Are you really going to try to maintain that discrimination is dead?

Aw come on! Discrimination may not be dead, but woe betide the man who so much utters a racist comment in the wrong area. No more slavery and no more legal racism (debatable on a certain level, but mostly true.). This is a process that is getting better. Not just in America, globally as well.

For every evil you list that we have overcome, I can probably list 2 that have taken its place.

bring it.

So, god created earthquakes so we could become better architects? Could we not have learned the same lesson without the deaths of so many? Would we not still be fighting to cure cancer even if it didn't cause painful deaths?

Q1: God created earthquakes so that continents could move.
Q2: It would have taken longer as we would have been more complacent.
Q3: Not as hard. Curing cancer could mean curing aging as well (controlling cell aging). This is how great breakthroughs happen, when there is a great incentive (free market and everything).

Im not saying that there should be NO evil. Im stating, as you seem to agree, that there is currently too much. So, if god knows the line, why would he not then therefore set it there? Why not less death?

Because no matter where the line is, whether death camps or fuzzy bunnies are the norm, it will always seem there is too much evil. The only way to solve this is to eradicate it which we agree is bad. It is that feeling you have is the human drive (or maybe just the good humans) to push that line as much as possible and lessen evil in the world.

See above. An omnipotent god should be able to accomplish anything with fewer needless, painful deaths. He could have programed us with an automatic appreciation of life and therefore not have to cause death to teach us that lesson. Besides, don't we kill ourselves enough? Why would he feel that he had to add to it?

To the see above...I need something more specific.
To the rest...This may be the best point you have made so far. Why not pre-program an appreciation for life? Well we have been preprogrammed to some extent. To appreciate our own life. The rest is the humans growth. Society teaches to appreciate other's lives (mostly).

The answer is basically the same as to why evil needs to exist to some extent. So that we can overcome it. The growth.
So we aren't preprogrammed completely so that we can grow. program it ourselves.

As for those last two questions. The real question you should be asking is why we should be killing each other when we already have all these lethal puzzles God throws at us?

Your argument fails to justify any evil of which I do not choose.

Nice (I get to say that since it wasn't my argument.)

Refuting my argument by directing me to posts I did not create is a rather poor debate tactic, to say the least. You linked a post by darts...not me. Try again.

Wait. I think that was on purpose. Use the post as a response to what you wrote. If that doesn't work then...well just ignore it then.

(My internet is dying so I'm not sure what the post was)