Capricious God

[pom2014]

Recently came across a video where Stephen Fry, who calls himself a humanist more than an atheist, was asked about God.

In it he relates how people upon watching a nature programme would see the beauty of nature and then proclaim "Now you can't tell me there's not a God".

To which Fry then counters with how an insect infests the eye of a baby lamb and eats the animal's eye out and causes it to die a painful death. And then asks, "How about that God now?".

He then goes on to say that if God or gods exists he/they are capricious at the very least.

Here's my question then. How do you resolve the splendour of nature and its horror with an all loving God?

 

[HammerStone]

It starts "simple" even though it's not easy. At crux (pun intended), God must be smarter than me.

I've checked once or twice and I am not God. Thus, I am not privy to the reasons for everything if there indeed is a God. That said, I work from the framework that if God is smarter than me, than such an intellect will have larger purposes at work that may not even be perceptible to my little grey matter. Thus, we have a God of the universe who becomes a man and dies on some pieces of wood in a truly sadistic type of political capital punishment.

If I cannot reconcile that which appears evil in this world, then by my mere revulsion at something, I intuitively know that there is some greater standard that I am getting this concept of good and evil from. For example, why do I even care that a creature that is not me dies? Why does that matter to me?

 

[OzSpen]

Recently came across a video where Stephen Fry, who calls himself a humanist more than an atheist, was asked about God.

In it he relates how people upon watching a nature programme would see the beauty of nature and then proclaim "Now you can't tell me there's not a God".

To which Fry then counters with how an insect infests the eye of a baby lamb and eats the animal's eye out and causes it to die a painful death. And then asks, "How about that God now?".

He then goes on to say that if God or gods exists he/they are capricious at the very least.

Here's my question then. How do you resolve the splendour of nature and its horror with an all loving God?

pom2014,

There are three fundamentals of evangelical theology that answer this issue:

1. God is sovereign. As the Creator of all visible and invisible things, God owns them and he has an absolute right to rule over these things (see Matt 20:15; Rom 9:20-21. Charles Hodge said: 'Although this sovereignty is thus universal and absolute, it is the sovereignty of wisdom, holiness, and love' (Systematic Theology, vol 1, p. 441).
2. God is good. This includes his love (2 Cor 13:11), benevolence (Job 14:5), mercy (Eph 2:4), grace (Titus 2:11), and truth (1 John 5:20). And
3. Sin entered the world because of Adam & Eve's transgression (Gen ch 3). With the Fall, human beings lost the ability not to sin (Rom 3:10-18; 8:5-8) and a sinful nature is transmitted to the entire human race by natural generation (Job 14:4; 15:14; Ps 51:5; 58:3; John 3:6; Eph 2:3).

The beauty and ugliness in our world are best explained by the Christian world view that proclaims the sovereign, good (benevolent) God who gave human beings the freedom to obey or disobey God. Our representatives in the Garden (Gen 3) blew it and we have such fowl stuff happening in our world.

What's the solution?

a. Individual redemption through Christ (John 3:16), and
b. There will be new heavens and a new earth where righteousness reigns (2 Peter 3;13).

I have made some beginning suggestions in my articles,
(1) 'Did God create evil?' and
(2) 'Does God send cyclones?'


In Christ,
Oz

 

[pom2014]

pom2014,

There are three fundamentals of evangelical theology that answer this issue:

1. God is sovereign. As the Creator of all visible and invisible things, God owns them and he has an absolute right to rule over these things (see Matt 20:15; Rom 9:20-21. Charles Hodge said: 'Although this sovereignty is thus universal and absolute, it is the sovereignty of wisdom, holiness, and love' (Systematic Theology, vol 1, p. 441).
2. God is good. This includes his love (2 Cor 13:11), benevolence (Job 14:5), mercy (Eph 2:4), grace (Titus 2:11), and truth (1 John 5:20). And
3. Sin entered the world because of Adam & Eve's transgression (Gen ch 3). With the Fall, human beings lost the ability not to sin (Rom 3:10-18; 8:5-8) and a sinful nature is transmitted to the entire human race by natural generation (Job 14:4; 15:14; Ps 51:5; 58:3; John 3:6; Eph 2:3).

The beauty and ugliness in our world are best explained by the Christian world view that proclaims the sovereign, good (benevolent) God who gave human beings the freedom to obey or disobey God. Our representatives in the Garden (Gen 3) blew it and we have such fowl stuff happening in our world.

What's the solution?

a. Individual redemption through Christ (John 3:16), and
b. There will be new heavens and a new earth where righteousness reigns (2 Peter 3;13).

I have made some beginning suggestions in my articles,
(1) 'Did God create evil?' and
(2) 'Does God send cyclones?'


In Christ,
Oz

This does not address the animal world. Only the state of mankind.

View the video, look back over the question presented and come back with a logical answer to why God can still be revered as good, even when, as many non-theists will assert, he allows them to live horrible lives.

Thanks

 

[OzSpen]

This does not address the animal world. Only the state of mankind.

View the video, look back over the question presented and come back with a logical answer to why God can still be revered as good, even when, as many non-theists will assert, he allows them to live horrible lives.

Thanks

pom,
Genesis 3:14-19 (NIV) does address the animal world and the vegetation:
So the Lord God said to the snake, ‘Because you have done this,

‘Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.’

16 To the woman he said,

‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labour you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.’

17 To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat from it,”

‘Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.’ (Source: Biblegateway)


This is why the Bible's answer is profound in the fallen and wicked world in which we live. It gives the reasons why it happened and tells what was affected. ALL OF CREATION!

God can still be revered as good because HE IS GOOD. That's his nature. What he gave to human beings was the option to obey or disobey eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17). Our representatives did what we would have done if we had been there, they disobeyed God and ate and suffered the consequences for them and the whole world for all of life.

To make God change his mind now would cause him to violate a fundamental of his nature - his immutability. This is one of the attributes of God that is fundamental to his nature. It means that his essence, attributes, consciousness and will are unchangeable. You can read about this nature of God in passages such as Jas 1:17; Mal 3:6 ('I am the Lord, I change not'); Ps 33:11; 102:26-27, etc.

Oz

 

[lforrest]

It is ironic Fry chose this example, It pretty much sums up his spiritual condition. However I don't know what sort of parasite he was talking about, so I can't study it to find parallels.

I have observed that nature often reflects some sort of spiritual truth. Such as the serpent crawling along the ground. Imagine living in the days when you could be put to death to satisfy some symbol of an eternal truth.

 

[pom2014]

pom,
Genesis 3:14-19 (NIV) does address the animal world and the vegetation:
So the Lord God said to the snake, ‘Because you have done this,

‘Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.’

16 To the woman he said,

‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labour you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.’

17 To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat from it,”

‘Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.’ (Source: Biblegateway)

This is why the Bible's answer is profound in the fallen and wicked world in which we live. It gives the reasons why it happened and tells what was affected. ALL OF CREATION!

God can still be revered as good because HE IS GOOD. That's his nature. What he gave to human beings was the option to obey or disobey eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17). Our representatives did what we would have done if we had been there, they disobeyed God and ate and suffered the consequences for them and the whole world for all of life.

To make God change his mind now would cause him to violate a fundamental of his nature - his immutability. This is one of the attributes of God that is fundamental to his nature. It means that his essence, attributes, consciousness and will are unchangeable. You can read about this nature of God in passages such as Jas 1:17; Mal 3:6 ('I am the Lord, I change not'); Ps 33:11; 102:26-27, etc.

Oz







Let me see if I am understanding your position.

You assert that the parasitic worms only started to eat the eyeballs of lambs AFTER Adam and Eve fell? Is that what you are saying?

That previous to this event there were NO parasitic worms that ate anything let alone a lamb's eyeball?

 

[OzSpen]

Let me see if I am understanding your position.

You assert that the parasitic worms only started to eat the eyeballs of lambs AFTER Adam and Eve fell? Is that what you are saying?

That previous to this event there were NO parasitic worms that ate anything let alone a lamb's eyeball?

pom,

I gave you a biblical answer and now you have skewed it to make my words say what I did not say. I am not interested in playing that kind of game.

The biblical evidence from Genesis 3 is:

17 To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat from it,”
‘Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.

Is that not good enough for you to understand and accept? I accept the Scripture as God's truth and he is not lying when he told us that.

All of life, human, animal and vegetation suffers because of the sin-cursed world in which we live.

I look forward to new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Oz

 

[pom2014]

It is ironic Fry chose this example, It pretty much sums up his spiritual condition. However I don't know what sort of parasite he was talking about, so I can't study it to find parallels.

I have observed that nature often reflects some sort of spiritual truth. Such as the serpent crawling along the ground. Imagine living in the days when you could be put to death to satisfy some symbol of an eternal truth.

The problem with Mr. Fry is that he has fallen into a bit of faulty logic. Faulty logic that has been, sadly, conditioned by theists that do not quite understand God.

Let's break down his example. He asserts God is capricious because as a God of Love (by the theists) and therefore when bad things happen he must not be that God of love for he lets a tiny little lamb die in pain and stress.
Further he does this to every animal, letting them live in a nightmare of the natural world where to kill or be killed is the norm.

God is supposed to be of love, by the hippy dippy theists, and so when unloving things happen he is either not there or at least inconsistent in his love.

I would pose that most people that are humanist, agnostic and atheist BECAUSE of the theists that misinterpret scripture into trying to paint a rosy view of God. Add to that the mistrust of the churches do to heretical views and through evil actions; and really ANYONE would say it is all a bunch of bunk.

Theists are also guilty of faulty logic by spouting nonsense like if I do not understand it, it must be God. (Google Magnets ICP and Tides Bill O'Reilly)

It is these smatterings of bad logic on both sides that cause division.

Mr. Fry, saddened by the fact that theists deny science and rather upset that although God talks to Moses and other people in the bible can't seem to ring him up and get an answer himself; then jumps right into there is no God or if there is he is a ripe scoundrel. (Mainly because he allows things to suffer and won't answer Fry personally)

The Theists, are all up in arms because they are losing their power base to non-theists (who have become this because of bad theism) and because now their knowledge of their world is being challenged by advances in human understanding. (same thing happened when they started transfusions, transplants and invitro fertilisation; all of which were said to have been man playing God).

So really both sides fight each other over errors and willful ignorance in both camps. All the while the enemy laughs in glee.

It is indeed sad that this is happening.

 

[pom2014]

pom,

I gave you a biblical answer and now you have skewed it to make my words say what I did not say. I am not interested in playing that kind of game.

The biblical evidence from Genesis 3 is:

17 To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat from it,”
‘Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.

Is that not good enough for you to understand and accept? I accept the Scripture as God's truth and he is not lying when he told us that.

All of life, human, animal and vegetation suffers because of the sin-cursed world in which we live.

I look forward to new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Oz

I will agree to disagree and leave it at that.

 

[HammerStone]

Then you assert that everything God's purposed is fully knowable by any man or women, right? It's an honest question.

How do you reconcile the question of theodicy, then?

 

[pom2014]

Then you assert that everything God's purposed is fully knowable by any man or women, right? It's an honest question.

How do you reconcile the question of theodicy, then?

God became a man for more than just to be the New Adam.

He became a man so that we would have a better knowledge of God himself. The main fact that Christians are, through the Holy Spirit, to have God in them means that understanding him would be a lighter yoke to bear.

As for Theodicy... well although I am against Ireneus on the choices that he made in the final canon of the New testament. I agree with his assertion that the presence of evil and bad things are indeed for development of humanity and to illuminate how evil can be turned to good by God. Logically if you look at it within the context of all of scripture (Cain, Job, Esau, Pharaoh, Jesus and even Peter and Judas) as well as outside of the scriptures the only reasonable answer is that life is a proving ground. A way to sift the wheat from the chaff if you go by Jesus or steel hardened by fire if you like the blacksmith analogy.

Yes it is rough, but without that experience we could not possibly know how good we have it, how just God is nor how really powerful he is either.

Also if God had made us all without freewill we would be merely puppets to play with. And seriously how powerful is a god that just makes whining, cringing, sycophantic yes men? He didn't even do that with his angels.

 

[OzSpen]

I will agree to disagree and leave it at that.

So are you saying you don't agree with the content of Gen 3 that I posted that all of creation was affected by the fall into sin?

Do you believe in original sin or not?

 

[pom2014]

So are you saying you don't agree with the content of Gen 3 that I posted that all of creation was affected by the fall into sin?

Do you believe in original sin or not?

Like Augustine on his stance about fetuses, in light of his time period, not a fan of his theodicy.

A theodicy you agree with.

So we will have to agree to disagree.

 

[OzSpen]

Like Augustine on his stance about fetuses, in light of his time period, not a fan of his theodicy.

A theodicy you agree with.

So we will have to agree to disagree.

With what are you disagreeing?

 

[mjrhealth]

You missed corruption, when sin eneterd into teh world so did corrution. In teh beggining everything had its place now because of corrution al things hav " left there first estate" i suppose you could put it. And since the serpent could talk to Eve in teh beggining there is nothing to say all animals could not talk yet today they do not, not even snakes, yet God spoke to a prophet by a Donkey. It really isnt that hard.

 

[aspen]

I do not accept the Job response. I believe we are called the to be outraged at all suffering and to what we can to remedy it. Compassion and empathy is the city erect response to pain.

The origin of pain and suffering in creation is Gods heart breaking, and creations isolation. Time is an illusion - it only appears long to us. A&E are falling, Christ is being born, and God is reconciling we His creation at the same instant. This traumatic, instantaneous event is like a car wreck - the damage is reflected throughout nature

 

[aspen]

'Do what we can to remedy it'
'Only correct response'

 

[lforrest]

I do not accept the Job response. I believe we are called the to be outraged at all suffering and to what we can to remedy it. Compassion and empathy is the city erect response to pain.
The origin of pain and suffering in creation is Gods heart breaking, and creations isolation. Time is an illusion - it only appears long to us. A&E are falling, Christ is being born, and God is reconciling we His creation at the same instant. This traumatic, instantaneous event is like a car wreck - the damage is reflected throughout nature

Interesting analogy. If we were to see things from an eternal perspective, that is what it would look like. But lets not forget God is in control of this crash, and can dictate exactly where the debris should fall. He decides who and what should be spared from destruction. Everything would surely be lost in the crash if he did nothing.

 

[katabole]

I have heard Fry's argument and have seen a video of him expressing his distaste with God. When he says God, he actually means the Christian God.

His argument is an emotional one. It is not an intellectual argument.

Fry, like just about everyone else on this planet believes there is good and evil in the world. In fact, if I were to directly ask him if there is such a thing as good and evil, I am sure he would agree that there is both good and evil in the world.

Therefore, Fry is assuming that an unwritten moral law exists in order for him to distinguish between both good and evil.

The interesting thing about moral law, is that moral law can only originate from a Moral Law Giver. If there is no Moral Law Giver, very simply, there is no such thing as moral law. If there is no moral law, then there is no evil. And if there is no evil, then there is no good either.

Frankly, I find Fry like most atheists I have either spoken to or debated, as intellectually dishonest. They do not want to believe in God, especially the God of the Bible, not because of some strong intellectual argument. Very simply, they reject the God of the Bible because they do not like the God of the Bible.

Some may say that they believe that good and evil exists but that is not dependant on a God or gods of any form. Again, this is being intellectually dishonest. If I lined up a thousand atheists and asked them if murder was right or wrong, then an atheist is only going to give their subjective opinion. Some may say murder is right. Others may say it is wrong. Whether or not it is right or wrong varies from person to person. If I asked a thousand Christians whether murder was right or wrong, the answer should be unanimous that it is indeed wrong because God has deemed that it is wrong as written in His Word.

As a Christian, I believe every human being is made in the image of God. Because God made both man and woman in His image, then this is the reason why we have a sense of right and wrong because as the Bible claims, God is righteous. There are things God considers right. And things God considers wrong. Therefore, one of the reasons I believe God exists is because of an objective moral reality among humanity.

"Here's my question then. How do you resolve the splendour of nature and its horror with an all loving God?"

I believe that nature itself has been corrupted by Lucifer in ages past. I have certainly admired the efficiency of ecosystems around the world, how everything seems to be in a sacred balance. But when I look closely at those ecosystems, I see creatures which survive by devouring other creatures. Every single day, hundreds of millions of creatures die. Whales devour krill by the millions. Bats eat thousands of moths. Snakes eat frogs and so on and so on.

Isaiah 14:13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

Isaiah 66:1 Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest?

If you notice, Lucifer is claiming in verse 13 of chapter 14 that he will exalt his throne above the stars of God.

But according to Isaiah 66, heaven is God's throne and certainly not Lucifer's..

In order for Lucifer to exalt his throne above the stars of God, he had to originally have a throne to exalt. I believe that throne was originally here on the Earth in the ancient past. A throne designates a place to rule from and a kingdom. I believe that Lucifer ruling over the Earth was part of Lucifer's original commission from God because he earned it but then it was taken from him because of his rebellion as described in Ezekiel 28 and Revelation 12.

When Jesus is tempted by Lucifer in the New Testament, Jesus does not dispute Lucifer's claim that all the kingdoms of the world have been given to him.

Lucifer in my opinion, corrupted all of God's creations. Our world is full of the fossilized remains of ancient animals. The existence of coal from forests many hundreds of millions of years ago and oil fields buried deep underground attest to the fact there was a lot of death in the ancient world. Many of those ancient creatures were abominations which devoured other creatures. And according to the New Testament in Hebrews 2:14, Lucifer had the power of death. In other words, he had the ability to cause plants and animals to die. And he is certainly not called the "prince of this world" by Jesus and the "god of this world" by Paul in the New Testament for no apparent reason.

I suppose, you would have to define evil. I define evil "Evil" as a violation of purpose or a departure from the way things ought to be. So if we all agree that there is evil in the world and that it is a departure from the way things ought to be, then there is evidently a way things ought to be.

So if there is indeed a way things ought to be, then there must be some design plan or purpose for the way things ought to be. And so there must be some transcendent being, a Creator in fact, whose will is the basis for how things ought to be. And thus the existence of evil is therefore evidence that God must exist.

Hope that helps.