Each day, 25,000 people, including more than 10,000 children, die from hunger and related causes. —the United Nations
Bellator Christi evangelical Christian blog: Dr. John Lennox explains it this way, “could God have created a world without suffering? Yes, He could have, but you and I would not live in it because, it would empty the world of something most precious to our humanity, and that is the capacity to love, and our capacity to love, hinges on our capacity to choose. In any possible world in which there is no free will, love can never truly exist because love, requires freedom.”
Gary: Ten thousand children die of starvation every day. 10,000! Dying of starvation is a slow, very painful experience. As a non-Christian, non-religious person, I would give up my ability to love and my free will in exchange for these ten thousand children not starving to death. Would you be willing to do that, dear Christians?
According to your holy book, your God is omnipotent, omniscient, and the very essence of what is good and just. Yet he allows 10,000 little children to slowly starve to death each and every day, week after week, month after month, year after year, century after century… And you tell us that the reason your God allows 10,000 little children to starve to death each and every day is because their ancient ancestors ate some of his forbidden fruit??? Is that just? Come on, dear Christian. Open your eyes! Your god is either the epitome of evil or your god does not exist.
Bellator Christi blog: the best possible world God could have created is a world in which free will exists, and the possibility to freely choose and to freely reject.
Gary: No, in the best possible world, little children are not punished with starvation for the sins of their ancient ancestors.
Your world view is sick, my Christian friends. Who today would starve a child for the sins of his parents or grandparents? No one with any ounce of decency. So why does your god do it? No, your God is not good. The next time you sit down for dinner with your children and ask Jesus to bless your food, think of all the little children he is allowing to starve to death that day.
Escaping Christian Fundamentalism 
The problem of harm. This is such a worn out, over-used cop-out. Suffering caused by mankind, inflicted upon mankind, is not a legitimate basis for comparison to try and judge God’s goodness, just as the historic existence of Jack the Ripper was not a reflection upon the character of the European people.
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The extent of your brainwashing is remarkable.
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Gary, you may fool others, but not me. Mankind has all the power in his own hands to keep stuff like that from happening. Blaming God for the evils of men, THAT is a level of brainwashing that you’re trying to aim at me. Why doesn’t someone do something about the governments that allow their kids to starve to death like that? I mean, let’s put the blame where it belongs before trying to shove it off onto someone else. You have no idea what you’re talking about when demanding that a loving God would not allow such. YOU have never lived under the slavery of not being able to make your own choices for good or evil. The day you live under that kind of robotic control over your choices, which is a level of slavery never before seen on this earth, and THEN you can come back to the side of freedom and we’ll see what you would say then. Until then, you’ve got nothing but whining and complaining against a God sho has given to you freedom of moral agency.
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I would be more than happy to give up my free will if it meant that 10,000 children would not starve to death each and every day. What about you, JR? Would you be willing to make that sacrifice?
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No, I would not trade freedom for stopping everyone else from choosing their own moral path. Why would you ask such a thing, trying to base it on saving the lives of others? Enslavement in exchange for saving lives? You have never experienced what it’s like being a slave, contrasted with the freedom to choose your own moral way of live…or immoral. To say that God should stop all evil, you’re forcing your own will upon all others. That indicates a level of monstrosity for which you have no idea what you’re talking about.
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Natural disasters kill an average of 60,000 people per year globally, and cause horrible suffering for those who manage to survive. Floods, hurricanes, tornados, volcanos, extreme heat and cold, wildfires. Why would a loving God allow this immense suffering?
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Can’t believe I left out earthquakes…death toll 3800 and rising from today.
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Why would a loving God allow this immense suffering? Oh … doncha’ know? It’s because MAN is so EVIL that Gawd has to eliminate a few every so often to balance things out. (Or something like that.)
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Don’t forget: something, something…free will…something, something…mysterious ways.
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You seem to pride yourself in thinking you know what all others believe and follow. I will leave you to wallow in your sewer of assumptions since you didn’t even ask.
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No, I don’t know what all others think and believe. But you yourself have referenced the “evils of men.” And isn’t it the underlying belief that one of the primary reasons for believing in a supernatural entity is to cleanse one’s self from evil?
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I guess your God could be being scapegoated if it wasn’t for the fact, his Son, your Savior, tells us he cares for human beings more than he does sparrows (which is, admittedly, not much at all), that he is concerned to the extent that he numbers each and every hair on individuals’ heads (Matthew 10:29-30). This must be before he allows so many of them to die of starvation and in natural disasters.
The evidence is that God does not care. He doesn’t care if you’re a child born into poverty who then dies a slow, miserable, painful death through malnutrition. He doesn’t care if you’re caught up in a natural disaster like the recent earthquake in Turkey (which, according to some Christian nutjob, was God’s response to Sam Smith’s performance at the Grammies) in which your entire community and you yourself are wiped out. He doesn’t care if you die of a nasty virus, which ultimately he’s responsible for, as millions, including Christians, did during the pandemic. He doesn’t care that you die, when or how horribly. He – just – doesn’t – care, period.
Jesus, as he was about so much, was plain wrong about his Father’s caring. The real world does not and will not match up with this early Christian fantasy.
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Out of sight … out of mind.
Oh, and it’s sooo much easier to blame “evil man” rather than admit that “God” is nothing more than a pleasant diversion to the actual atrocities of life.
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Man IS evil. Blaming God is a cop-out, especially for those who claim He doesn’t exist. If you think he isn’t then tell that to the home invader after he breaks through your front door when you’re asleep, and has a knife at your throat. Are you then going to tell him, “Oh. You’re such a nice and good human being…” Be sure and clean yourself up before coming back to tell me all about what wonderful people they all are.
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Would you be willing to give up your free will, Jr., if it meant saving the lives of 10,000 starving children each and every day?
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The reason I ask is that I would bet that most decent people would give up their free will if it prevented 10,000 children from dying of starvation each and every day. And if that is true, then we have to ask, why is your god so insistent on human beings having a free will?
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Give up their freedom? Really, Gary? Well, it would be interesting if that were even possible, but given that it isn’t, you remain free to make you own choices. You have no idea what it would be like to trade away your freedom for a world of your own making, thinking that you have the higher road of understanding on how to formulate a perfect world. Your ideal of a utopia would be an even more horrid world to live within. You can assume a superiority in your ideals, but blessedly, they will only remain your ideals. Forcing your sense of good on all others isn’t a utopia at all, no matter how many people are dying. I would venture to say that your utopia would be an existence that not even you would enjoy for any lasting amount of time.
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Nope. Giving up free will isn’t a legitimate trade-off or saving lives. Your view of death and suffering is totally bereft of any depth of understanding. Those who have no hope for living on after this life are the ones who clamor endlessly about the horrors of death and suffering. That’s just your lot. You won’t accept anything else, so it really matters not one bit to wrestle this topic in such an atmosphere of stoic indifference to a more holistic vantagepoint.
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You are not thinking rationally.
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Gary, and you think YOU are the rational one here? Is that all you have in your arsenal? Just generalized and empty accusation?
Think about what you’re saying! YOU sound like you’re willing to take away the freedoms of BILLIONS of other people to save a few thousand? Who made you God?
Dude, you appear to have no clue how to rationalize to the logical conclusions of what you’re positing. For you to think that YOU are qualified to determine the right and wrong of deaths at the expense of freedom to billions of other people is a level of arrogance that’s almost unfathomable!
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God as a champion of free will? Tell that to the victim of rape or murder whose free will was violated.
But, hey–the rapist and murderer didn’t have their free will violated, so it’s all good.
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Then we should have a system that punishes and puts to death those who rape others, and THEN there would far fewer of them. The false claim that the death penalty doesn’t deter crime, that’s just pure BS!
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Completely off topic. I take it then that you have no response to my comment, “God as a champion of free will? Tell that to the victim of rape or murder whose free will was violated.”
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I wouldn’t go so far as to say all humans are evil. That is a fallback statement to the fairy tale put forth in that ancient book that so many seem to believe is true. However, I do think humans are essentially self-centered — and those that provide help and assistance to the out-of-sight/out-of-mind communities are a rare breed.
While I acknowledge that some of the fairy-tale believers fall into this group, I do not believe it is a qualifier.
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Swordman: “Man IS evil. Blaming God is a cop-out”
I’m amazed at how many Christians are quick to say that God’s greatest creation is actually crap. You worship your savior with that mouth?
But if it’s crap, I think we should figure out where they came from and blame that.
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Your attempt at recrafting my words to try and twist them back upon me is a wasted effort, and it’s intellectually dishonest.
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Then correct me. Show your original statement, then show what it meant, then show where I got confused.
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You need only go back and read them.
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I gave a simple path by which you could show the correct interpretation of what you said, and you couldn’t do it. I guess it confused us both.
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Trying to have a rational conversation with “Jr.” is like trying to catch a greased pig, Bob.
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I’m figuring that out! Thanks for the confirmation. I’ll reset my expectations.
It is surprising though that people like that stick around.
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I’m sure he feels it is his duty to defend Jesus from the attacks of hell-bound atheistic sinners like you and me. 🙂
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The created complaining about how the Creator runs things….in a blog….instead of being focused on feeding the hungry…not at all a surprise in today’s world!
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Hi Emmet. If your god is the creator, you are correct, he can do whatever he wants and establish whatever rules he wants. But that doesn’t mean we can’t label him as cruel and heartless for not preventing 10,000 little children from starving to death each and every day.
What evidence do you have that your god, Yahweh/Jesus the Christ, is our creator, Emmet?
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Labels only stick when they are true, Gary. Your subjective set of rules for measuring Deity is meaningless since you don’t have the perspective of Deity. You remain just another complainer against a God who refuses to be subject to His subjects.
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Swordman: the ball’s in your court. It’s not the skeptic’s obligation to prove that God doesn’t exist but the believer’s obligation to show that he does.
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You REALLY need to get a grip on what was actually said. I never said the skeptic must accept the existence of God. That’s in individual journey. Interestingly, not one skeptic can show how nature ever had the ability to form molecules into the one and only combination, out of a set of combinations at the magnitude of 1X10^79 billionth. Do you know how big a number that is. By comparison, you should win the lottery at least 1X10^79,000.
In case you are mathematically challenged, the universe, as we know it right now, can hold 1X10^128 electrons…the smallest known atom with a quantified mass.
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“you should win the lottery at least 1X10^79,000.”
Are you saying that the odds of any given Powerball (say) ticket has a chance of winning of 1 in 10^79000? You need to try again.
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I figured you were mathematically challenged. That’s very typical of most in modern culture. Nothing to be ashamed about. That’s the fault of failed public schools.
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In other words, you don’t know what the heck you were talking about either. Gotcha.
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Your prideful retorts are wasted. You don’t understand the math of magnitudes, and so you remain clueless.
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Yeah, that must be it. What a shame that I don’t have someone to teach it to me.
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You can always go to the library and educate yourself, or go to school. That’s what it takes to learn something like math. Most people prefer their gaming and palm gods (also known as cell phones) rather than to better themselves through educating themselves to eradicate their ignorance.
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Speaking about educating oneself: From which university did you graduate, Jr.?
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Huh? What’s the relevance of 10^79000000000?
“I never said the skeptic must accept the existence of God.”
And I never said you did. Maybe read more slowlier, for comprehension? I said that “it’s not the skeptic’s obligation to prove that God doesn’t exist.”
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