[Winter wind]

I really apologies for taking such a long time to respond.

Quote by: freefallife So, then is it your opinion that we will one day be able to control the weather and prevent earthquakes?

No way. The things people think sometimes, I mean you heard of these two brothers that want to actually fly in the air...with wings! The lunacy of it all! Landing on the moon, craziness. The earth revolving around the sun...insanity.

Moral: never be to sure about what can and what can't be until you prove it one way or the other. You never know what new technology could come out in the next few centuries.

Which still doesn't change the fact that growth could easily be facilitated without suffering. It is a teaching method that is malicious at best. When is killing a good teaching method?

there's nothing at stake. Nothing accomplished when you grow. Plus, Christians believe in heaven so death isn't the end...

Death isn't the problem. Its the ways in which we die...the pain involved that is the problem.

people who live without pain have a miserable life. It's a medical illness that no one wants.

I know it's excessive, you know its excessive. I'm sure there are countless others in the world that feel as such. If this god hears the prayers of the world, he knows its excessive

Maybe it isn't excessive. It's that we can see what the world could be and the gap between that and what it is right now. That's where growth comes in. You make the world better and things get nicer. If we lived back in the stone ages, we would think it was the most gruesome and base thing ever, yet they probably were thinking the same thing we were. It could be just a little better. Look how far we've come. Our expectations of the conditions of living have changed as life has gotten better and better.

There you go. Now you're getting it.

Thank you :p

And you have to justify the use of violence to facilitate that growth. I watch my child grow both physicly and mentally with no need for pain and suffering. It happens on a daily basis. Why use torture to allow us to grow? It is not consistant with a god that loves us unconditionaly.

Think of the whole picture. If the earth needs to learn not put it's hand on the stove. (lets say nuclear weapons). So to stop them when they don't listen to you (You were given a brain by God, which should tell you "things that can blow the world up 47 times over are probably not a health thing to have") So to avoid having the world blow itself to pieces, you keep it on the edge during the Cold war and gradually let humans experience how dangerous these things are.

Being visible would be to easy? Then why did he do it before? He walked and spoke directly to Adam and Eve. He gave detailed instructions to Noah for his ark. He appeared before and spoke to Abram. He appeared and spoke with Abraham and his wife Sarai (in fact directly instructing him to rename her Sarah) and gave them the good news of her bearing a son in the near future. He spoke in person with Rebekah, the wife of Isaac. He appears before Isaac to tell him where to live. Abimelech actually witnesses the lord with Isaac. He spoke directly to Moses throughout the exodus. He spoke to Aaron and tells him to meet Moses in the desert.

First off, you already know I'm suspicious of the Bible in this sense. Second off, even if it were, it could possibly be because we were more vulnerable during that time and needed more direct supervision. However, I don't know. I don't claim to have a perfect answer to that question, only ideas.

Right, so somewhere along the line he decided that he should remain hidden from us all, never to appear again and torture us from afar hoping that we "get it". Rediculous.

I donno, Christianity wasn't well known at those times, so something like that may have been necessary.

Imagine the universe for a moment. We live on an insignificant speck of rock orbiting an unimpressive star in a galaxy among billions. Out of all we've been able to determine, Earth is the only hospitable place in the universe. The rest of the universe is a violent malstrom in which we can never survive. In as much as the universe is concerned, there is almost infiately more evil than good.

And yet we exist. Isn't that just ironic. Somehow in this incredibly inhospitable environment, we exist and we haven't been wiped out yet despite how idiotic our actions have been. That's pretty lucky.

Who ever said you couldn't get out of torture. Perhaps you should speak to a Vietnam POW survivor sometime.

Nono, I mean eventually. We have the capacity to, in some distant future, to avoid maybe all suffering. Not in a single instance, but as a whole race. Things would get better, instead of us just being used to the best of the best.

Depends on the level of suffering involved. If a person was born without the "helpful" bacteria in their digestive systen that did not allow the proper absorbsion of nutriens and that person had to undergo medical treatment for life, yes, I would call that evil and question why god had allowed this person to be born at a disadvantage.

because he had gotten rid of illness already to answer your prayer.

We were created in god's image. Are you saying that god is a big ape?

no, He's a cell. That's were evolution started.

but jokes aside, he created us with a conscious. Something to set us apart from all the other animals. If you think literally as in "looks like" then you are guilty of the same crime that Christians are when they think God is a big white bearded Zues like figure. No, it would make more sense that we were give this thought process that separates us from other animals, God Himself is everything and nothing, so that really isn't an image.

I'm still trying to see how harmfull genetic defects are a requirement for evolution to suceed.

Evolution is caused by changes to genes. Changes to genes are neither good nor evil, just successful and unsuccessful. If every change were just an improvement, logic would collapse. There would be no explanation for the absolutely luck in being able to evolve without any unsuccessful changes.

Not necessarily cynical. I'd call it realistic. And its not just the world, but the universe in general. As I stated, it is a very violent place.

You skip right over the good and point at the bad. It is focused only on one small piece of the whole reality.