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"God doesn't make mistakes."

TimCallahan said:
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Another out, one frequently invoked by creationists to explain such imperfections as the appendix, hernias, fallen arches, lower back problems, etc. is that God cursed all creation because of man's corrupting influence. Therefore, genetic aberrations are our own fault.
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This is the one I've heard most often. Of course, one has to wonder why God made the threshold for our tendency to “sin” so low from the get-go. It's not like we chose our own neurotransmitters, brain architecture and the mechanisms of our subconscious.
 
Rationalizations abound. NPR was talking with a fellow who suffered from severe chronic pain last week. Virtually every therapy had been tried with limited or no success.

He described how his faith helped him. He was talking to a cleric who told him, essentially, that it was his "strength" that was causing the Devil to tempt him. That the Devil would continue to "go after" him as he would be frustrated by resistance....

Supposedly, the Devil would want him to give in to despair....

Such magical thinking would seem to be commonplace... Rather than blame God for his problems, he's able to pass it on to the Devil....
 
truethat said:
Stop doing that. Not even for the purpose of a hypothetical situation. Would you spend time debating how Santa could really know for sure who was naughty and who was nice?
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Duh, that's a simple question. He has a host of helpers, all called Zwarte Piet, who collect that information for him in an organized fashion which makes the former East-German Stasi look like boy scouts.
 
One way around the problem of evil that so animates the debates of theodicy is Dr. Frank Tipler's use of the multiverse. His assumption is that God creates every kind of universe that could be. Thus, in one universe I'll reject God and be damned. Yet, in another, an analogue of myself will accept God and be saved. Thus the evils of this universe don't really matter. There a universes both better and worse, including one in which there is no evil at all (see Tipler's book The Physics of Christianity).
 
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TimCallahan said:
One way around the problem of evil that so animates the debates of theodicy is Dr. Frank Tipler's use of the multiverse. His assumption is that God creates every kind of universe that could be. Thus, in one universe I'll reject God and be damned. Yet, in another, an analogue of myself will accept God and be saved. Thus the evils of this universe don't really matter. There a universes both better and worse, including one in which there is no evil at all (see Tipler's book The Physics of Christianity).
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Some philosophers have attempted to address the intractable theodicy conundrum by suggesting that God created the "best of all possible worlds" which is not flawless, because perfection is unachievable in a material system. But Tipler happily permits God to create not only the best, but also the worst, of all possible worlds, and an infinity of others almost as bad. If Tipler regards this as a "way around the problem of evil" he's even crazier than I thought!
 
TimCallahan said:
One way around the problem of evil that so animates the debates of theodicy is Dr. Frank Tipler's use of the multiverse. His assumption is that God creates every kind of universe that could be. Thus, in one universe I'll reject God and be damned. Yet, in another, an analogue of myself will accept God and be saved. Thus the evils of this universe don't really matter. There a universes both better and worse, including one in which there is no evil at all (see Tipler's book The Physics of Christianity).
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What an utter waste of time.
 
TimCallahan said:
As terrible as this example is - since infants afflicted with Tay-Sachs live only a short while, apparently in intense pain - the idea that there are no accidents even means that God intends to happen to you whatever does. Thus, on a TV series on fundamentalism, I saw a minister, relating how his little girl was severely burned, scarred and crippled for life, preaching how hard he found it to deal with God doing that to his family, yet knowing there was a purpose to it. All the while he's doing this, the kid is sitting there listening to this. Thus, she must believe in a God who wanted here scarred, deformed and crippled for life.
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It's that type of thinking that briappeals to people who are suffering. People, for what ever reason, need to believe that there was a purpose for whatever went wrong; be it a birth defect or some kind accident. To be told that out of billions of people, god chose you to send a particular message, though no one can say what that message was, suddenly turns seemingly meaningless suffering into a cause.
 
TimCallahan said:
Yeah, it's mental masturbation and nothing more.
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Not sure there if you mean philosophy generally or just that person's same. I used to find it entertaining but more and more realized it was no more functional except simply as a way to approach certain things than the aforementioned mental masturbation Oooooor (think Buddy Sorrell) words are only as good as the reality they describe accurately.
 
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Just to toss in my 2p...

I don't even need to take the grander view of whether God makes mistakes, and in fact I'd rate that as counter-productive, since it gets one bogged in obscure points about the flood and at the end of the day didn't address the actual abortion argument.

I'm pretty happy to concede God infallibility on all other domains, for the scope of such a discussion, but I'd like to take the idea that no conception is accidental to its logical conclusion. Way I understand their argument, basically there is some kind of divine plan -- which actually seems to be a dear of many fundies on a more general scale -- and whatever other scope it may have, pregnancies are definitely in it. For now it doesn't even matter if the plan is long term or made up by God on the spot. But whatever pregnancy you've got, and with whatever mutations or consequences or complications, is from God and God's will, right?

Well, the first and actually least important implication is that they have a pretty wimpy and impotent God, if a human can override God's plan or will. You'd think a pregnancy which will result in a horribly mutated baby which is supposed to be some divine punishment, if God wills that, he could make it stick somehow. If people can simply decide to not take God's punishment, that makes God rather helpless, innit? I mean, why would I expect him to do something as grand scale as the Apocalypse happening exactly as described, when other wishes of his, he can't enforce.

Second, what about sperm banks? For a God that's supposedly so obsessed with who touches himself where, if all pregnancies are God's will and planned by God, then effectively God's plan involves a bunch of students masturbating in plastic cups.

Third, and the more important and disturbing implication is: what about rapes that result in a pregnancy? If that pregnancy is part of God's plan, then isn't the rapist just doing God's work? The good devout Christians should be thanking him, innit? There aren't many ways one can go around that, and all make god an a-hole.

I mean, honestly, if God plans pregnancies in such detail as to even include some rare genetic mutations as PLANNED, then God has already decided what DNA goes into the Zygote. And a half of it can only come from one specific male, and in rare cases from exactly one specific mutated spermatozoid of that male. Seems to me unavoidable that some pregnancies HAD to happen with a specific batch of frozen sperm from a specific student, or from a certain rapist around a set time (sperm cells don't live for ever.) How can those not be doing God's plan?
 
sgtbaker said:
It's that type of thinking that briappeals to people who are suffering. People, for what ever reason, need to believe that there was a purpose for whatever went wrong; be it a birth defect or some kind accident. To be told that out of billions of people, god chose you to send a particular message, though no one can say what that message was, suddenly turns seemingly meaningless suffering into a cause.
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Yes, but considering that a lot of those misfortunes have to do with other people, in some way or another, effectively it then makes a lot of people be just doing God's work.

E.g., if someone grew up as an orphan because some drunk driver killed both his parents, and that's God's plan or will, then effectively that drunk driver was just doing God's work. Shouldn't we thank him instead of punishing him?
 
HansMustermann said:
E.g., if someone grew up as an orphan because some drunk driver killed both his parents, and that's God's plan or will, then effectively that drunk driver was just doing God's work. Shouldn't we thank him instead of punishing him?
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And similarly Christians should thank Judas who ensured that Jesus would be crucified and "die to save us all"!
 
You know, the whole "no accidents" thing pretty much puts paid to the idea of free will, also. If it's all God's plan, then he's responsible for (to take earlier examples) making the drunk driver kill people or forcing the rapist to commit his act. So his plan essentially chooses out people to be damned...which also directly contradicts several scriptures...those that talk about how every soul is sacred, God would save everyone if he could, etc, etc, etc.
 
TimCallahan said:
The title of this thread is rendered in quotes because I've heard said thus many times by evangelical Christians. Along with this bit dogma is another: "There are no accidents." The ideas that God doesn't make mistakes and that there are no accidents are often used to attack not only abortion, but birth control as well. So, if you find out early in the pregnancy that the embryo / fetus / child has Tay-Sachs syndrome, you aren't allowed to abort. God doesn't make mistakes, You were meant to care for that child, not abort it before its brain synapses connect up.

As terrible as this example is - since infants afflicted with Tay-Sachs live only a short while, apparently in intense pain - the idea that there are no accidents even means that God intends to happen to you whatever does. Thus, on a TV series on fundamentalism, I saw a minister, relating how his little girl was severely burned, scarred and crippled for life, preaching how hard he found it to deal with God doing that to his family, yet knowing there was a purpose to it. All the while he's doing this, the kid is sitting there listening to this. Thus, she must believe in a God who wanted here scarred, deformed and crippled for life.

It appears to me that those Christians who follow the theology that prohibits either mistakes of accidents have painted themselves into a corner and must accept absolutely horrible things about God, just to make God perfect. of course, it goes without saying that free will depends on there not being a perfect God. This is where pagans might have an edge on monotheists. Their gods are often less than perfect, thus allowing for accidents, mistakes and the existence of evil. Those worshipping God, however, are stuck with all sorts of conundrums, not the least of which is the existence of evil in a world made by a perfect God.
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This is another of those "I didn't pay attention at sunday school threads" isn't it
this existence to evangelicals is irrelevant, its the next one where all the questions are resolved, anything that happens here is a test of faith
;)
 
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