You're absolutely correct. The post was done in a rush, and as such missed my
normal editing. I apologize.
<<Anyway. You seem to have attributed a great many traits to me after having
read that post. I'm not at all sure of how to disabuse you of them. I don't
feel "superior to god ". I don't think any such being exists to feel superior
to. I don't want god to fix everything just for me. But could you please
explain to me what function AIDS, or tuberculosis, or take your pick,, have in
perpetuating free will? Why does it have to be all or nothing? You claim that
I seem to want a perfect world. I never said any such thing. I simply
wondered, in the context of the thread regarding reconciliation of an
omnipotent/ominbenevolent god with the existence of evil. I equated the
existence of such things as disease with a seeming willingness on the part of
this god to create hardship for no apparent reason. Is cancer somehow a
neccesary penalty to suffer for the gift of freewill? I can't believe any
such thing. >>
To simplify:
<<1) I don't believe that this god being exists.
2) If such a being exists, the evidence available to me suggests that
he/she/it is at best uncaring and at worst remarkably cruel. In either case I
don't care to have anything to do with he/she/it.>>
I have no problem with the idea that god does not exist. I have no evidence
either way. I disagree with the idea that if such a being does exist, he must
be one cruel bastard because people suffer. As I stated earlier, most of the
forces that imperil us, such as AIDS, are products of the same scientific laws
that allowed us to evolve into sapient beings in the first place, and to
create a civilization in the second. To say that God is either uncaring or
sadistic because people die in airplanes is to say that the creation of
airplanes is in itself an evil thing. To say that God must be cruel because
people die of ebola is to disregard the fact that the same process that
produced ebola produced us. On of the tenets of deism/theism is that god
created the natural laws of the universe, and stood back from there. To
interfer with those laws once they had started running would be to destroy the
independence of that creation.
Have a lovely day,
Nature's id